Today’s Gospel reading follows on from the Annunciation in Luke. It tells of the meeting of the two most important women in the history of salvation at that moment in time: Mary and Elizabeth. Both women were expecting children that had been announced from above. After the Annunciation Mary headed to met Elizabeth — her immediate reaction was to go and help her kinswoman Elizabeth. The passage we reflect on today, after the greeting Mary gives to Elizabeth, focuses on what happened to Elizabeth and what Elizabeth says. What happens to Elizabeth is that the child leaps in her womb and she is filled with the Holy Spirit. When she speaks she sees Mary as most blessed, the mother of my Lord and acknowledges that the child leapt in her womb. John the Baptist reacts in his mother’s womb to the most blessed of mothers — the mother, Mary carrying Jesus ‘my lord’ – greeting his mother.