Three Wise Women: The 12 Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna

After the presents are unwrapped, the cookies eaten, the guests gone home—find the deeper, quieter meanings of the season during the 12 Days of Christmas, with three wise women as your companions.

Long ago, the Wisdom of God revealed itself through the lives of three ordinary women. A young peasant girl in a patriarchal society, Mary of Nazareth’s pregnancy endangers her very life—and yet she makes a way, with God’s help, even where there seems to be no way. Elizabeth, a post-menopausal woman pitied and judged for her infertility, also becomes pregnant—and offers Mary a place of sanctuary and affirmation. Finally, Anna, an elder who showed up daily in the Temple for more than six decades, sees the realization of her impossible dream—the birth of the Messiah, the Savior of the World, among an oppressed and downtrodden people.

Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna lived in a society that considered women to be lower class, yet they heard the message of Wisdom, the Voice of God that creates the universe daily and gives birth to hope amid fear and anxiety. They heard—and they answered. Their stories challenge us to also say “yes” to the amazing possibilities of God’s wondrous world-changing love.