Tuesday of
Late Advent
December 22, 2015 8:30am
So, Mary is visiting her cousin
Elizabeth and Elizabeth declares how blessed Mary is.
We heard yesterday in the gospel.
Mary then responds with the
prayer or canticle of praise that we just heard.
This is usually called the Magnificat.
That word Magnificat is the first word in the Latin version of this prayer.
It literally means magnify, so Mary is saying that her “soul magnifies the greatness of the Lord.”
The word magnify means to make something larger.
Obviously, Mary does not make God
larger, but she recognizes that God is larger than herself.
She humbly looks to God as the
almighty One.
She listens and accepts God’s
message as the direction her life is to take.
She sees herself as a servant of
God on this earth.
Mary also magnifies the Lord by making other people larger.
Specifically, she is sensitive to
the lowly persons on this earth.
In her prayer, she discerns that
God is turning things upside down.
Mary says, “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.”
Mary magnifies or makes larger
the lowly ones of this world.
She is alert to this from God’s
treatment of her.
She implicitly foresees how her
son will treat the last, the least, the little, and the lost of this world.
She implicitly foresees the
parable on the Last Judgment about the separation of the sheep and goats and
that our treatment of these persons, our decision to magnify them or not magnify
them, this will determine whether we are sheep or goats.
So, there is a beauty and a depth
to the prayer that Mary offers here today – the Magnificat.
