On the Feast of the Annunciation we commemorate both the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she was chosen to be the mother of the incarnate God and also our Lady’s response to that invitation She sums up her response by composing a beautiful hymn. The Theotokos’s hymn (Luke 1: 48 – 55) is called the Magnificat, after its first word in Latin. This beautiful poem presents us with many insights into the Christian life which are especially helpful as we begin Great Lent.
The hymn begins with praise: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and any spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” The Theotokos’s love for and devotion to God are not superficial. She extols God not merely with her tongue or even with her mind, but with her inmost being, her soul and spirit. The word “soul” is often used in Scripture to indicate the entire personality. The “spirit” is the particular part of our soul through which we experience the Divine; we perceive spiritual things through our soul just as we experience the physical world through our senses (sight, touch, hearing, etc.). The Theotokos’s spiritual perception is riveted upon her God; her whole personality proclaims His glory and goodness.
We must be like the Theotokos. Our whole personality must acknowledge God’s greatness, both as creator and ruler of the world and as master and sovereign of our own lives. Our spirit too must be turned toward God. If it is not, it turns back in upon ourselves, and we become self-centered and self-absorbed. Our sins spring from this spiritual self~idolatry, this turning away from God into ourselves. We must reorient our lives toward the spiritual and reopen ourselves to the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit.
The Virgin now gives the reason for her praise. In this she follows the example of many of the Old Testament Psalms, which expand their praise of God by recounting His mighty acts of salvation. The Theotokos divides her account of God’s wonderful deeds into two parts. Vss 48-50 refer more to recent events, her conception of the Savior and His incarnation; the second section (vss 51-53) looks ahead to the consummation the work begun by the Lord’s coming into the world,
In the first verse we are told why God chose the Virgin Mary to play her special part in salvation: “Because He looked upon the humility of His servant” (vs 48a). This should not surprise us; humility is the basic. It involves acknowledging our weakness and sin, fixing our spirit upon God, and opening our life to His forgiveness and grace, Humility grows from our realization that we have no higher calling than that which the Virgin claims, to be God’s servants, to fulfill His commandments and do His will.
The Theotokos also refers to her own experience. Humility can arise from within; it can also be forced upon us from outside by afflictions or by the attacks of others God has revealed to the Virgin something of the difficulties she will face as the Lord’s mother: Slanders regarding her pregnancy, which caused even St Joseph to waver; attacks upon her Son by His opponents and critics; the agony of seeing Him betrayed, condemned, and crucified St Simeon warns her of sorrows to come, saying “a sword will pierce your heart” (Luke 2:35), This prospect does not dismay her, however, because she realizes that God will support and encourage her in these trials, and ultimately He will drown her sorrows in the Resurrection joy.
Humility, however, is not merely something within ourselves, a trait of our character whose potency we tap. The Theotokos’s words are so simple that we easily overlook their depth. She does not say that she was humble but that God “has looked upon” her humility. The phrase “looked upon” can also be translated “visited”, as in the prayer, “. . . visit and heal our infirmities for Thy name’s sake.” When we open ourselves to God, He opens Himself to us. He draws near to the humble soul, which then feels His redeeming presence, vibrates with His transfiguring power, quickens with His grace.
Mary now speaks of another blessing she receives: “From now on all generations will call me blessed.” With these words Mary echoes the words of her kinswoman Elizabeth, “Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42). But the Virgin uses a different word for “blessed”; she employs the same term that Christ uses in the Beatitudes, This links her future status and the praise that later generations will lavish upon her with her humility, faith, and love for God. She is called “blessed” because her life exemplifies the virtues which our Lord commends in the Beatitudes: poverty of spirit, meekness, yearning for righteousness, mercy, faithfulness in the face of persecution and affliction. In this she is no different from us. We too are called to pursue this blessed life. If we do so, her reward will be ours: to be acknowledged as blessed not only by men, but by our Lord. Christ Himself makes this point: When a women in a crowd to which He is speaking cries out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you . . . ,” He responds, “Rather, blessed are those who hear God’s Word and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28). The Theotokos is not blessed because she bore the Lord, but she was chosen to be Mother of God because she lived the blessed life of faith, love, and grace.
The Theotokos underlines these points by listing in vss 45-50 the reasons why future generations will praise her. She notes three things: (1) “because He did great things for me,” (2) because “His name is holy,” and (3) because “His mercy is unto generation after generation to those who hear Him.” Here she illustrates Christ’s saying, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11) She is worthy of the praise of future generations because of her faith and humility, of her being a true servant, for whom and through whom God has done wonders.
The Virgin also reminds us that “His name is holy.” In Hebrew someone’s “name” indicates their power and authority; we use the same expression in English when we speak of acting in someone’s “name.” The word “holy” originally meant “separate” or “different”. To say that God is holy calls attention to His righteousness, justice, and mercy, and contrasts them with the world’s sinfulness and wickedness.
In using the expression here the Virgin refers to the work of salvation that God has begun. As the prophet Isaiah noted, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord.” (55: 8). Prideful humanity, however, always has its own expectations of what God should do As Isaiah adds, “They all look to their own way, everyone for his gain.” (56: 11). We often have a program for how God should run the universe, or at least our corner of it. Many of the Theotokos’s contemporaries had their own ideas about how God should act in salvation, and they slandered our Lady and rejected her Son because His birth from a virgin mother, His message about how they should live, and His death on the Cross did not square with their preconceived notions. Humility includes abandoning our dead-end street for the way of God. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55: 7). What matters is God’s plan, not ours. He is holy (in other words, different from us). He brings salvation into the world and into our lives according to His sovereign will and power, in His own way and in His own time.
“His mercy is unto generation after generation to those who fear Him.” Like Isaiah, the Virgin couples her assertion of God’s demand for obedience with a reminder of His gentleness and love. God works in His own way and in His own time, but He is not fickle or capricious. Even the reference to “those who fear Him” does not contradict this fact. A Christian’s “fear of God” is not the terror we feel when threatened by a tyrant, who might chastise out of pique and punish on a whim. It is the awe and reverence that we naturally feel in the presence of the Almighty, It is tempered by the remembrance that God does not exploit our weakness nor presume upon His power. God calls us to be His faithful servants, but He does not extort our service by force; rather, He entices us through love, The Theotokos reminds us that throughout history those who set their hope in Him and open their lives to Him are ever bathed in His forgiveness and mercy.
In the first section of the body of the hymn (vss 48-50), the Virgin reflected the message brought by the angel, that she would be the mother of the Savior. She now turns, in the second section (vss 51-53), to the consummation of the Lord’s work, begun by His incarnation.
“He has done a mighty deed with His arm” (vs 50a). The “mighty deed” is what has already begun, the Incarnation of the Word of God, and its culmination, His death and Resurrection. The Annunciation has set in motion a chain of events culminating in the salvation of mankind. That Christ rescues us from sin’s enslavement is truly the greatest of God’s mighty deeds. He accomplishes redemption “with His arm” that is, by His own strength and according to His own Will, without constraint or compulsion.
“He scattered the arrogant in the inner disposition of their heart” (vs 50b). By His death and Resurrection our Lord conquers the forces of evil which hold us captive, the devil and his minions, both spiritual (the demons) and human. Satan asserts and maintains control over us through pride. God, on the contrary, works through humility. “He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant. . .” (Liturgy of St Basil; see Philippians 2.8-8). God saves us by humbling Himself, and He continues to choose as His servants those who are humble. Thus salvation enters the world through a humble young woman and, through her, God destroys the whole edifice of spiritual oppression built up by Satan over the millennia.
Our “inner disposition” determines whom we serve. The haughtiness of the wicked arises in their “heart”, in their inmost being. Likewise true humility cannot be a superficial pose; those who desire to serve God must, like the Theotokos, empty themselves of all vanity and self-will. They must rejoice in spirit in God and His salvation (see vs 47).
“He deposed princes from their thrones and exalted the humble” (vs 52). Our Lord Himself calls Satan the prince of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 18:11), and St Paul includes the demons as “princes of this world” (I Corinthians 2:6, 8). A prince is a ruler, one who wields power. We rightly call the demons “princes” because the sin they promote is an exercise of power. Sin ultimately strips us of our dignity as God’s creatures and denies God His rightful place as Lord of His creation. We grasp at and manipulate things and people for our selfish ends. This passion becomes so strong that, paradoxically, its objects come to possess and master us. We fear their loss and the emptiness we imagine it will bring. Sin wrenches our personality; it alienates us from others as we seek to bend them to our will and to use them for our purposes, Sin leads to grasping and hoarding, coercion and manipulation, violence and fear.
As the Theotokos points out here, her divine Son’s coming into the world is a spiritual revolution. He overthrows the power of those who have dominated mankind since the Fall. By His death and Resurrection and His sending of the Holy Spirit, He ends the reign of violence and fear which marks Satan’s dominion. But Christ’s revolution is not the replacing of one kind of power with another, Our Lord’s dominion is one of love, based on communion, not coercion; on service, not manipulation; on emptying, not grasping.
Christ’s Kingdom exalts humility. He restores to their rightful place the “humble”, those enslaved to sin and death. Our Lady again underscores how we avail ourselves of the benefits of Christ’s work, We must confess our sinful and humiliating situation and our powerlessness to escape it. We must surrender ourselves to Christ who alone can rescue us.
“He filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” (vs 53). Fallen man, caught up in sin, is deprived of the good things our Creator intended us to share. Satan offers us only the transient pleasures of sin, the brief illusion of prosperity and well-being. Christ offers us a genuinely fulfilled life of righteousness in this world and eternal life in His Kingdom, where truly “they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing” (Psalm 33:10). We are still trapped in a fallen world, eagerly awaiting Christ’s return and His Kingdom, but we are already touched by His providential and compassionate grace. As He assures us. if we “hunger and thirst after righteousness” we shall “be filled” (Matthew 5: 8).
“He has come to the aid of Israel, His child, recalling His mercies, as He has spoken to our fathers, to Abraham and to his Offspring forever” (vss 54-55). The Theotokos ends her hymn by linking past and future. “His mercies” are God’s past acts of mercy and redemption: the preservation of Noah, the covenants with Abraham and the patriarchs, the Exodus, the anointing of David. These and more, recorded in the Old Testament, are foreshadowings of the great act of mercy, the salvation brought by Christ. The mention of the old Israel, however, evokes the Church, the new Chosen People, through whom the Holy Spirit continues the work of redemption.
Our Lady’s mention of Abraham and his “Offspring” cements the connection of the Israel of the past and the Church, still for her in the future. As St Paul points out the “Offspring” of Abraham has two meanings, (1) our Lord Jesus Christ, and (2) those who believe in Hint and the salvation He brought.
Abraham’s great Offspring is the Savior whose birth has just been announced (see Galatians 3:16), He it is whom the Father promised; in Him “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 22: 18). There is that second meaning for “Offspring”, however. St Paul asserts that Abraham’s “offspring” are not his physical descendants but those who have the faith of Abraham and who are united to the true Offspring (Romans 4: 16 – 25; Galatians 3: 29).
The Apostle seems to recall the Theotokos’s words. She has ended her hymn by invoking God’s pledge to Abraham in the distant past. She reminds us, however, that the Lord’s promise is an eternal one, confirmed by His incarnation, sealed by the blood of His Cross and the glory of His Resurrection, ratified by His sending of the Holy Spirit, and realized when He returns in the sovereign majesty of His Kingdom. She bids us exult with her in these wonderful events set in motion at the angel’s greeting. She reminds us, however, that we are not merely to appreciate what our Lord has done, but to receive into our hearts the grace unleashed by these events. She calls us to surrender ourselves to Him in faith as she has already done She invites us to join her in the Kingdom of her Son.
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