The First Songs of ChristmasSample

Long before Christmas actually arrives, it is already on everyone’s tongue. You hear its music in the shops and stores. You see its lights and colors in people’s windows. And that familiar catchphrase, “Merry Christmas,” while not as universal as it once was, still speaks its customary message of goodwill.

But when Elizabeth opened her door to Mary, who had just arrived from Nazareth, customary greetings went out the window. Instead she cried out, “Blessed are you!” 

It means “to speak well of, to express good wishes.” This is why her song, which begins in Luke 1:42 and covers four total verses, is traditionally known as the Beatitude of Elizabeth, conveying words of “supreme blessedness or happiness.” (The term beatitude is also applied to the individual verses of Matthew 5:3–12 because they begin with the same Latin word for “happy” that Elizabeth’s song employs.)

But notice: happiness is not what motivated Elizabeth to burst into blessing at the sight of Mary’s appearing, though Elizabeth did have good reason to be happy. Only recently she had been a childless woman, past childbearing age, but God had answered her lifelong prayer and miraculously enabled her to conceive.

And yet the words of blessing she spoke came not from being filled with happiness, but from being “filled with the Holy Spirit.” She was not only a woman who was “righteous before God,” who walked “blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Luke 1:6); she was also willing to be controlled and guided by God’s Spirit. And that’s where her blessing came from—because she actually had no way of knowing Mary’s news at that moment, except by a revelation of the Spirit. He provided her both the insight and the incentive to bless Mary in a way that celebrated what her young relative was experiencing. 

God has placed His Spirit inside His children to lead us, to counsel us, and, yes, even to show us what to say. His presence should affect the way we talk. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, our mouths should be filled with words like those of Elizabeth, words that are gracious and life-giving (“Blessed are you among women”), words that express our praise and worship (“and blessed is the fruit of your womb”).