Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Advent, December 22, 2020

Luke 1:46-56

Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior. for he has looked upon his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.”  Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and then returned to her home.

St. Luke relates the stories of the conceptions and births of the Lord Jesus and St. John the Baptist in such a way as to invite the reader to compare them.  They are, in fact, marked by striking similarities: childlessness (involuntary on the part of John’s parents; voluntary in the case of the Virgin Mary); visits by the Angel Gabriel; signs given by Gabriel (deafness in the case of Zechariah; the pregnancy of the barren Elizabeth, for Mary); and songs of thanksgiving on the parts of Zechariah and the Blessed Virgin.  

The song, or canticle, uttered by Zechariah, the Temple priest, begins, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel” (Luke 1, 68).  Because it begins with a blessing, it is referred to as the Benedictus.  This is chanted or recited as part of Lauds, or Morning Prayer, in the Breviary.  The words that follow the blessing show the reason for the blessing: “because he has visited and wrought the redemption of his people”, and then,  “he has raised up a horn of salvation to us, in the house of David his servant.”  These reasons for why God is blessed culminate with, “And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Highest: for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.”  In the remainder of the canticle, Zechariah foretells how his son, John, will do this.  Zechariah does not speak of himself at all, regarding himself as a mere witness to what was happening.

Mary begins her canticle with the words, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”  Thus, it is called the Magnificat [her soul proclaims, or “magnifies”].  This is chanted or recited at Vespers, or Evening Prayer, in the Breviary, as a sort of bookend with the Benedictus.  The canticles are about the same length and both contain praise and thanksgiving to God, but looking at just the first words of Mary’s canticle, we can see a difference: Mary does not see herself as a mere witness in God’s work, but as one called to participate actively in it, and as one provided the grace with which to do her part.  Her role as the Mother of Jesus is very different from that to be played by Zechariah in the life of his son, and not merely because she is a Mother and he is a father.  In her canticle, Mary declares that God has marvelously created his Handmaid for this purpose and made her distinct from all members of the human race.  Yet, glory is not to be attributed to her: she directs it all to God.

She continues, “my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”  We note here the use of the possessive pronoun “my”: she is not speaking here in a general way of the God of Israel, but of the God she knows personally, who has perfected her in grace, and who has touched her intimately in the conception of her Son.  Her relationship with God is unique and unrepeatable.  It reminds us of how the Lord Jesus will tell the women, after his Resurrection, that he is going to “my Father and their Father; my God and their God” (John 20, 17), distinguishing between the relationship humans have with God and his own.  “He has looked upon his lowly servant.”  This was always how she saw herself: the Handmaid, the guest who mingled with the servants at the wedding at Cana, and the woman who assisted our Lord in his Passion, standing beneath his Cross.  And she is not only a “servant”, a douleh — a slave — but she is a “lowly” one.  Even so, “From this day all generations will call me blessed”.  The slave is called forever blessed because “the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.”  That is, all that she has comes as a gift from God, whose name is “holy”:  she is holy only because he who is holy has made her so.  

“He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”  While this might sound like a turn in her speaking from herself to others, it is also about herself and what God has done for her.  She who has hungered for God is now filled with him in a miraculous way, and the proud — the devil, filled with pride — has been driven far from her.  “He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he remembered his promise of mercy.”  Here, Mary meditates on how God’s actions for and in her will lead to the salvation of Israel, that is, the body of those who believe in him.  “For he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children for ever.”  That is, God shows himself faithful in his promises which were related to the people by the Prophets.  The Virgin shows her awareness that this salvation is not only for her contemporaries, but for all those who would be reborn in grace unto the end of the world.  

In her canticle, Mary expresses her wonder at what God has done and is doing for Israel through her, that she is the one of whom Isaiah spoke hundreds of years before, the Virgin who would bear a Son; the woman whose virginity and maternity would be a sign of the divine nature of this Son (cf. Isaiah 7, 14); the Son who would be “the wonderful one, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9, 6).

We express this wonder too as we pray her canticle, and see more and more each day the wonders of the love of the God who has done great things for us.