Luke 1:46-55 The Magnificat (Mary’s Song of Praise):
My soul magnifies the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for God has looked with favor on God’s lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is God’s Name.
God has mercy on those who fear them
in every generation.
God has shown the strength of their arm,
God has scattered the proud in their conceit.
God has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich they have sent away empty.
God has come to the help of God’s servant Israel
for God has remembered their promise of mercy,
the promise God made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and his children forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.
At the time that Mary sang this song, she was pregnant with the Son of God. It’s easy to imagine the fear she must have felt knowing the kind of responsibility that was on her shoulders. It is not every day that a young girl from Nazareth is tasked with birthing and raising the savior of humanity, to do something revolutionary—something that has never been done before. Mary was a seemingly ordinary woman in the margins being asked to do the impossible. In the birth of Jesus, she would also birth a new world. A new world where the proud will be scattered and the mighty will be cast down from their thrones, where the rich will be sent away empty, and the hungry will be filled. It’s a lot to ask of someone.
Like Mary, we too are ordinary people, who are called to do what was once thought impossible.
The Magnificat, though, is not Mary’s Song of Fear, but a Song of Praise. Mary says that God has remembered God’s promise of mercy, and that all generations will call her blessed. She rejoices in God, who has chosen her to help carry out God’s impossible plan.
But the things that God is doing in the world are not impossible, but inevitable. The old world is passing away, and a new world is being born where God’s justice and mercy will rain. All of this is done through the Church, through us, who all play a part in God’s divine plan. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. More than that, we are being called to do so. Mary is humble and lowly, a young woman and seemingly powerless. We, too, often feel powerless. How easy it is to write off God’s plan for the world as being too big for such small people. But God has turned the world completely on its head with the birth of Christ. The powerless will be lifted up, those with power will be knocked down. Think to yourselves, if you feel that you are too small, too powerless to change the world: my soul magnifies the Lord.
Like Mary, each one of us has to be God’s magnifier. Each one of us has to be a messenger, a prophet, a preacher, a teacher, a servant, a carer, and most of all, a magnifier. The church will always exist as long as there is someone there to do the work. Wherever there is someone who is willing to lift up the poor, the sick, the oppressed, that is where the church is. Let us live fully into the responsibility of being God’s magnifying people.
Our Lady of Light 