Among many things that the ongoing pandemic has changed is shopping habits. Closing down most non-essential shops during lockdown forced many previously reluctant customers to do their shopping on the internet and many of them became ‘new-born’ online shoppers. Unlike in most brick-and-mortar shops, where you pay and take the purchased goods home, those bought online have to be delivered by mail or a courier. Consequently, one of the most important competition strategies of online retailers is offering quick delivery; quicker than their competitors. It works because of the widespread culture of immediate gratification. Quite often only after having paid for goods we learn that the promise of fast delivery has some strings attached that make it either conditional or downright false. I still find it baffling to learn that, for some retailers, Aberdeen is part of the Scottish Highlands, not of the UK mainland…
A promise concerns the future. A promise is an announcement of future benefit. We find promises in business transactions, we find promises in personal relationships, we find promises in almost every aspect of our lives. Sometimes a promise is clearly expressed by words or signs; sometimes a promise is ambiguously suggested; sometimes a promise appears as wishful thinking without real purpose. A promise is inseparably associated with trust: I believe that somebody is going to redeem his or her promise. We don’t trust everybody unconditionally; we look for the opinions of other people, we look for advice, we try to find out more. We do all these things to ensure that a person or company giving a promise is trustworthy.
In today’s gospel, we look at the encounter of Mary and Elizabeth – two women whose trust was tested. The older one, Elizabeth, had been barren for years and had had no prospect of having a child. In her own words, she was too old for having a child when it was announced by the angel Gabriel. Mary was the opposite: she was very young and had no baby yet. The angel Gabriel’s announcement was equally troublesome for her as it was for Elizabeth. Both promises: one about John the Baptist regarding Elizabeth, and the other about Jesus regarding Mary, were apparently impossible. But both promises were eventually redeemed. Impossible became possible thanks to God, who gave the promise and to the women’s trust in His word, as testified by Elizabeth: ‘blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’
God’s promises are not a limited offer, just for a few chosen people like Mary or Elizabeth or canonised saints. In the sacrament of baptism, each one of us received the promise of eternal life. For the course of our earthly lives, we have the promise made by Jesus: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ which is a summary of many of His promises as recorded in the gospels. There’s one response required – to believe in them and to trust that Jesus keeps His promises. It’s crucial to trust His real promises, not those surprisingly common but completely unfounded, misplaced or unrealistic presumptions of a trouble-free life. St Paul warned against such an attitude: ‘If our hope in Christ is only for this life here on earth, then people should feel more sorry for us than for anyone else.’ (1 Corinthians 15:19) If we trust God, ‘we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’ (Hebrews 13:6)