November 5 + Saints Zachary and Elizabeth

Zachary and Elizabeth were the father and the mother of Saint John the Baptist, the last and the greatest of the prophets and the precursor of Our Lord. Zachary was inspired by God through an angel to give Saint John the Baptist his name. Zachary was martyred in the Temple of Jerusalem by the Jews.

Elizabeth was the cousin of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was to her that Mary went in haste after she had conceived her Child, and after she learned that Elizabeth had conceived hers. The second phrase in the Hail Mary, “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,” was given to us by Elizabeth (Gospel according to St. Luke 1:42). And so, her memory is beautifully kept in the Rosary, where this phrase is mentioned fifty-three times. Elizabeth’s first greeting to Our Lady, when she saw her standing in her doorway was: “Whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” This was a sheer and unequivocal way of proclaiming Mary, her own cousin, to be the Mother of God.