This Mass on the morning of Christmas Eve provides a meditation on the ways in which God prepared the coming of Jesus as our saviour. All of God's dealings with Israel may be taken up into Zechariah's words: "he has visited his people." When Jesus wept over Jerusalem, it was because Jerusalem did not recognize the time of God's visitation.

God visited his people in many ways during the Old Testament guiding them to a greater understanding of his relationship with them and the significance of all his promises, especially the promise of a Messiah. All of these "visitations" were temporary and provision, part of a process, a salvation history, which would culminate in a great visitation, when Jesus, the Son of God would come amongst us as our Saviour.

Part of God's preparatory work for the coming of Jesus was the sending of John the Baptist whose birth we fittingly celebrate today through meditating on Zechariah's prayer of praise, the Benedictus.