The Magnificent 'Magnificat of Mary'

A PRE-CHRISTMAS STORY

I gave this talk in the Grail Chapel, Green Gully on the first Sunday of Advent, 28 November 2021. This was exactly one year after I spoke about Mary, a virgin and unmarried teenager, who receives a message from the Archangel Gabriel that she is about to become pregnant by the Holy Spirit (posted December 2020..[i]

Now her story continues, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

She travels across country to her kinswoman Elizabeth. Mary may have been impelled into action by the quickening. Many women feel it, at first a butterfly fluttering in the womb. In Greek psyche means both butterfly and soul and this inner movement was traditionally seen as the soul coming in. Quick is the old word for ‘living’.

There were many legends circulating about young Mary, most not included in the canonical gospels. Muslims honour Mary as the highest of all women and in the Koran (Quran), the holy book of Islam a chapter or surah was devoted to her. It describes a pure girl, whose parents dedicated her to the Temple where she spent her childhood being taught by Zechariah, husband of Elizabeth. Mary would have felt safe with her.

Elizabeth conceived in her old age and is carrying the babe who will become John the Baptist. When Mary arrives this baby ‘leaps for joy’ in her womb – probably a mighty kick, and the devout older woman honours and blesses her young friend. Mary’s response is extraordinary. Here it is in Luke 1:46-55:

And Mary said,

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

Mary is probably no more than 16 years old. We know that girls of this age can be truly amazing. Joan of arc was 17 when she first began her mission to save France. And today we have Malala Yousafzai, who at 15 survived being shot in the head by the Taliban yet went on campaigning for girls’ education, becoming the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then there’s young Greta Thunberg who began her lonely activism for climate change at 15 and inspired other schoolgirls, including the young leaders who enacted the School Strike for Climate (SS4C) in my country.

There must be something uniquely and impulsively courageous in girls who have passed puberty but are not yet adults. Many of them have a fire that, if it is not completely focused on physical appearance or boyfriends, enables them to take on such awesome roles – a pure fire that womanhood can subdue or transform into resentment.

A voice of holy fire and power

Luke wanted to write a true record of the events surrounding the Christ. He received his information about Mary from eyewitnesses, perhaps some from her own remembrances. But his choices of what to include are intriguing. He was an imaginative author with the ability to create inspired word pictures, never more so than in his story of young Mary. I think Luke must have had a soft spot for her.

He has Mary speak with power in what came to be known as ‘the Magnificat’. My concern here is not whether or not she did say these words; I want to consider their significance for Luke and for us. He could have found inspiration in Hannah’s declaration when she dedicated her ‘miraculous’ little son Samuel, God’s gift to her in her barrenness, to the Lord’s service (1 Samuel 1 & 2:1-10). The form is also reminiscent of many of the psalms in the Bible. These were the ritual songs of praise and victory performed during the festivals in the Temple. They were chanted by men trained for this sacred work. In the first century, a female doing such a thing was unthinkable – and probably blasphemous.

As a declaration by a young pregnant woman, it reveals how truly extraordinary Mary was. I think that was Luke’s intention.

Let’s look closely at the Magnificat. It is well-known in the Catholic church, not so much in others. The first part is regularly quoted as an example of devotion to God – the ideal Christian woman with her eyes metaphorically downcast, speaking from a place of humility – as the Lord’s handmaid. We know this term today through the humiliation of the red-cloaked ‘handmaids’ in A Handmaid’s Tale, a title Margaret Atwood surely chose with intended irony. Yet traditionally a handmaid was hands-on, hand-in-hand close to her employer, sharing secrets not even the family could know. That is how Mary is with God.

And her ‘soul magnifies the Lord’, that is, the divine is made larger and more magnificent through and because of her, and that’s why her spirit rejoices. The words look conventional, until you recognise where Mary is coming from – a place of conviction and knowing. She may not know the whole reality of her child yet. But she affirms that she is indeed chosen and will be honoured down the ages.

Mary continues. Behold, she declares, I know how the Lord deals with the proud, the powerful and the rich. This latter part of the Magnificat is often left out as inappropriate for sweet and gentle Mary, too political or confronting for the establishment.