Feast day: May 31
The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Soon after the Annunciation, Mary travels to help her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who greets her as 'the mother of my Lord' — and Mary answers with the Magnificat.
Immediately after the Annunciation, the Gospel of Luke tells, Mary 'arose and went with haste' into the hill country of Judea to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, who, though far advanced in years, was herself six months pregnant with the child who would be John the Baptist. The young woman newly bearing the Savior travels to serve the old woman bearing his herald — the feast celebrates this meeting of the two mothers and their unborn sons.
As Mary entered the house and greeted her, the child leaped in Elizabeth's womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out the words the Church has joined to the angel's in the Hail Mary: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' The unborn John rejoiced, the tradition says, at the nearness of his Lord, still hidden in Mary's womb.
To this greeting Mary answered with the Magnificat, the great song that begins 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior' — a hymn of a lowly handmaid lifted up, and of a God who scatters the proud, casts down the mighty, and fills the hungry with good things. The Church sings it every evening at Vespers.
Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months, until the birth of John drew near. Placed in the calendar at the end of May, between the Annunciation and the birth of the Baptist, the Visitation honors charity, the joy of the unborn, and the first proclamation of the Gospel — made not in a temple but in an ordinary home, between two expectant mothers.
At this meeting the unborn John the Baptist 'leaps for joy' in Elizabeth's womb, and Mary sings the Magnificat, the Church's evening prayer ever since.
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
— The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/15480a.htm
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