Bonus pre-Advent commentary on The Visitation

Last updated on: November 28, 2025 at 9:03 pm by Jane the Actuary

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Bonus pre-Advent commentary on The Visitation 2025-11-28T21:03:21-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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https://boudewijnhuijgens.getarchive.net/media/the-visitation-by-camillo-procaccini-c-1602-oil-on-canvas-blanton-museum-of-776d51

Why is this “bonus” commentary? Merely because this is an angle that I don’t really see discussed but an incidental reference on twitter piqued my curiosity.

Consider the text in Luke 1:39 – 40: “With haste Mary arose and went into the hill country, to a town of Judah, and entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”

From this we get the Hail Mary, in part, and pro-life reflections on how the unborn child John recognized Jesus supernaturally.

But in the sort of twitter exchange which, generally speaking, seems to suggest that the algorithm is broken, a Muslim tried to defend the young age of marriage in Islam and the youth of Aisha, Muhammad’s 6 year old wife, by pointing to Mary’s probable age when she married Joseph, likely between 12 – 14 based on practices in Judea at the time. And a Christian responded by saying that Mary was old enough to travel independently — which I think we all pretty much take for granted. At least, it had never occurred to me before that there was anything interesting about Mary’s travel.

So I asked Grok.

And yes, AI can hallucinate, but the answer it gave seems fairly credible.

The early Christian Fathers, such as Origen, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria, discuss the “haste” of Mary’s journey, but they are silent on anything unusual about it, except that her haste was an indicator of her holiness because of her desire to aid Elizabeth, and an indicator of the miraculousness of her pregnancy, that it didn’t impede her “hasty” travel.

What’s more, in the Roman Empire, it would have been out of the question for a young/unmarried woman to travel in the way Mary did, under most circumstances/for most cultures/communities, but for Mary’s particular circumstances, it was entirely appropriate. In rural lower-class Jewish society in Galilee (especially) and Judea, women had more freedom of movement. The route from Nazareth to Jerusalem in particular was well-travelled, and, in the same way as the Holy Family travelled with a group to and from Jerusalem for Passover when Jesus was 12, so, too, would Mary have likely informally joined larger groups along the way. Grok also claims, and it seems plausible, that Mary’s travel to aid Elizabeth during her pregnancy was not in fact a sign of holiness but expected of her as a duty.

So why do I find this so interesting? I suppose because it’s a level of independence which we assume women didn’t have until recently, but was not unusual at the time, paired with the element of someone we now think of as maybe just barely old enough to stay at home alone, actually traveling independently.

But there’s another wrinkle: Jesus’s staying behind in the temple occurred when he was 12 years old, and Grok’s explanation of why Mary and Joseph were upset includes statements that travel was in fact dangerous, and they would have had real basis for worry.

So there’s probably not a simple straightforward answer, but it’s an interesting additional parallel.

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