The Catholic Church of the Visitation in the Jerusalem suburb of Ein Karem is named after one of the most beautiful Gospel episodes - Mary's visit to Elizabeth.
The angel who announced to Mary that she would conceive the Messiah also told her about her relative Elizabeth, "called barren" and now bearing a son. As the evangelist Luke writes, the Virgin immediately hurried "to the hill country, to the city of Judah," where Elizabeth and her husband, the clergyman Zechariah, lived. Mary must have wanted not only to share the incredible news, but also to help the old woman. Elizabeth by this time was in her sixth month of hiding from people, apparently avoiding idle talk.
The meeting of the two pregnant women was amazing. Young Mary greeted Elizabeth - one can imagine that She did so with due respect. However, the older woman gave Her great honours. The Holy Spirit helped Elizabeth to realise Who she saw before her: "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb! And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord has come to me? For when the voice of your greeting reached my ears, a child cried out joyfully in my womb" (Luke 1:42-44). The child who cried out was the future John the Baptist.
For three months Mary lived in the "city of Judah." This was the present-day Ein Karem. It is believed that the place where Zechariah's house stood was found during the excavations conducted in Jerusalem in the IV century by Saint Helen the Equal Apostle, the mother of Emperor Constantine. She may have built the first church in the place where Mary and Elizabeth met. Later on the ruins the Crusaders erected a large two-storey church. It fell into disrepair under the Muslims when the Crusaders were driven out of the Holy Land.
In 1679, the Franciscan Order bought the building. Reconstruction on the lower level of the church did not begin until 1862. And in 1955 the final restoration of the church was completed. It was led by the Italian Franciscan monk and "architect of the Holy Land" Antonio Barlucci, who built and reconstructed many buildings here.
Barlucci decorated the upper church with a painted ceiling in the Tuscan style and frescoes dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The frescoes in the lower church depict scenes from the New Testament, including the beating of the infants. Joseph and Mary, saving little Jesus, fled to Egypt at that time, while Zechariah's family stayed at home. Apocrypha says that Elizabeth and her son hid from Herod's soldiers in a rock behind a stone. The stone kept in the Church of the Visitation is considered by tradition to be the one. The well from which Zacharias, Elizabeth and John are said to have drunk from can also be seen here.
The mosaic on the façade shows Mary hurrying to Elizabeth. Near the entrance is a sculptural group depicting their meeting. And on the wall are tablets with translations into forty-two languages of the world, including Vietnamese and Swahili, of the text of the Magnificat (Magnificat anima mea Dominum). It is the Virgin Mary's praise when Elizabeth recognised her as the Mother of God: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour ..." (Luke 1:46-47).
