Read and listen to the prayer of the “Magnificat”
English
My soul magnifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior,
because he looked at the humility of his servant.
From now on, all generations will call me blessed.
Great things the Almighty has done in me
and Holy is his name:
from generation to generation his mercy
He spreads over those who fear him.
He explained the power of his arm,
He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart.
has overthrown the powerful from the thrones,
He raised the humble;
He has filled the hungry with goods,
He sent the rich back empty-handed.
He helped Israel, his servant,
Remembering his mercy,
As he promised our fathers,
to Abraham and his descendants, forever.
Glory to the Father and the Son
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, and now and always
in the centuries.
Amen.
Latino
Magníficat
ánima mea Dóminum,
et exsultávit spíritus meus
in Deo salvatóre meo,
quia respéxit humilitátem ancíllæ suæ.
Ecce enim ex hoc beátam me dicent
omnes generatiónes,
quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est,
et sanctum nomen eius,
et misericórdia eius in progénies et progénies
timéntibus eum.
Fecit poténtiam in bráchio suo,
dispérsit supérbos mente cordis sui;
depósuit poténtes de sede
et exaltávit húmiles;
esuriéntes implévit bonis
et dívites dimísit inánes.
Suscépit Israel púerum suum,
recordátus misericórdiæ,
sicut locútus est ad patres nostros,
Abraham et sémini eius in sæcula.
Glória Patri, et Fílio
et Spirítui Sancto.
Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc et semper,
et in sǽcula sæculórum.
Amen.
Commentary on the Magnificat
In this meditation we go up with Mary “to the mountain” and enter the house of Elizabeth.
The Mother of God will speak to us firsthand with her song of praise which is the Magnificat.
Today the whole Church is huddling around the successor of Peter who celebrates her 50th priesthood and the song of the Virgin is the prayer that most spontaneously rises from the heart in circumstances like this. A meditation on it is our little way of participating even at this time in such a recurrence.
To understand the place and purpose that the song of the Virgin has in the Gospel of Luke, it is necessary to preface some mention of the Gospel songs in general.
The hymns scattered in the Gospels of childhood – Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc dimittis – have the function of poetically explaining the spiritual sense of the events narrated – Annunciation, Visitation, Christmas –, giving them the form of a confession of faith and praise.
As such, they are an integral part of the historical narrative.
They are not interludes or detached pieces, because every historical event consists of two elements: the fact and the meaning of the fact.
Songs already insert the liturgy into history. “The Christian liturgy – it was written – has its beginnings in the hymns of childhood history.”
We have, in other words, in these songs, an embryo of the Christmas liturgy.
They realize the essential element of the liturgy which is to be a festive and believing celebration of the event of salvation.
Many problems remain unsolved about these songs, according to scholars: the real authors, the sources, the internal structure…
We can, fortunately, ignore all these critical problems and let them continue to be studied with fruit by those who deal with this kind of problem.
We must not wait for all these dark points to be solved, so that we can already build up with these songs.
Not because these problems are not important, but because there is a certainty that relativizes all those uncertainties: Luke accepted these songs in his Gospel and the Church welcomed the Gospel of Luke in his canon.
These songs are “the word of God” inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The Magnificat is Mary’s because the Holy Spirit “attributed” it to it and this makes it more “his” than if he had written it materially of his own hand!
In fact, we do not care so much to know if the Magnificat composed it Mary, but to know if she composed it by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Even if we were very certain that it was composed directly by Mary, it would not interest us for this, but because the Holy Spirit speaks in it.
The song of Mary contains a new look on God and the world; in the first part, which embraces verses 46-50, Mary’s gaze is brought upon God; in the second part, which embraces the remaining verses, her gaze is brought to the world and history.
A new look at God
The first movement of the Magnificat is towards God; God has absolute primacy over everything.
Mary does not delay in responding to Elizabeth’s greeting; she does not enter into dialogue with men, but with God. She gathers her soul and sinks her into the infinite that is God.
In the Magnificat, an unprecedented and unparalleled experience of God in history has been “fixed” forever. It is the most sublime example of the so-called numinous language.
It has been observed that the appearance of divine reality on the horizon of a creature usually produces two opposing feelings: one of fear and one of love. God presents himself as “the terrible and fascinating mystery”, tremendous for his majesty, fascinating for his goodness.
When the light of God, for the first time, shone in Augustine’s soul, he confesses that he “trembled with love and terror” and that even later the contact with God made him “shudder and burn” together.
We find something similar in the song of Mary, expressed in a biblical way, through the titles.
God is seen as “Adonai” (who says much more than our “Lord” with whom he is translated), as “God”, as “Powerful” and especially as Qadosh, “Holy”: Holy is his name!
At the same time, however, this holy and powerful God is seen, with infinite confidence, as “my Savior”, as a benevolent, lovable reality, as “own” God, as a God for the creature.
But it is above all Mary’s insistence on mercy that highlights this benevolent and “fascinating” aspect of divine reality.
“His mercy stretches from generation to generation”: these words suggest the idea of a majestic river that flows from the heart of God and runs through all of human history.
Now this river has come to a “closed” and starts again at a higher level.
“He remembered his mercy”: the promise to Abraham and the Fathers was fulfilled.
The knowledge of God provokes, by reaction and contrast, a new perception or knowledge of self and of one’s being, which is the true one.
The self is understood only in front of God, “coram Deo. In the presence of God, the creature, therefore, finally knows itself in the truth.
And so we see that it also happens in the Magnificat.
Mary feels “looked” at by God, she herself enters into that look, she sees herself as God sees her.
And how do you see yourself in this divine light? As “little” (“humility” here means real smallness and lowliness, not the virtue of humility!) and how “servant.”
One perceives as a little nothing that God has deigned to look at. Mary does not attribute divine election to her virtue of humility, but to divine favor, to grace.
To think differently (as certain famous authors have done) is to destroy Mary’s humility suddenly. Humility has a very special status: those who do not believe they have it have it have it; there are no one who believes they have it.
From this recognition of God, of self and of truth, joy and exultation are released: “My spirit rejoices…”
Bursting joy of truth, joy for divine action, joy of pure and gratuitous praise.
Mary magnifies God for herself, even if she magnifies him for what he has done in her, that is, starting from his own experience, as all the great prayers of the Bible do. The jubilation of Mary is the eschatological jubilation for the definitive action of God and is the creature jubilation of feeling a creature loved by the Creator, in the service of the Holy One, of love, of beauty, of eternity.
It is the fullness of joy.
St. Bonaventure, who had direct experience of the transforming effects of God’s visit to the soul, speaks of the coming of the Holy Spirit in Mary, at the time of the Annunciation, as a fire that inflames her all.
The Holy Spirit came over in her as the divine fire that inflamed his mind and sanctified his flesh, giving it a perfect purity.
Oh, if you were able to hear, to some extent, what and how great was the fire descended from heaven, what refreshment brought […].
If I could hear the jubilant song of the Virgin!
Even the most demanding and rigorous scientific exegesis is realized that here we are faced with words that cannot be understood with the normal means of philological analysis and confesses: “He who reads these lines is called to share the jubilation; only the concelebrating community of believers in Christ and his faithful is up to these texts.”
It is a word “in the Spirit” that cannot be understood except in the Spirit.
A new look at the world
The Magnificat consists of two parts.
What changes, in the transition from the first to the second part, is neither the expressive medium nor the tone; from this point of view, the song is a continuous flow that does not present any cesures; the series of verbs to the past continues that narrate what God has done, or rather has “begun to do”.
What changes is only the scope of God’s action: from the things he has done “in her”, one goes to observe the things he has done in the world and in history.
We consider the effects of the definitive manifestation of God, his reflections on humanity and history.
Here we observe a second characteristic of evangelical wisdom that consists in uniting to the intoxication of contact with God sobriety in looking at the world, in reconciling each other the greatest transport and abandonment towards God to the greatest realism critical of history and men.
With a series of powerful verbs to the aorist, Mary describes, starting from verse 51, an overthrow and a radical change of the parts between men: “She has overthrown – she has raised up; she has filled – she has sent back empty-handed.”
A sudden and irreversible turning point, because the work of God who does not change and does not go back, as men do in their things.
In this change, two categories of people emerge: on the one hand, the category of the superb-powerful-rich, on the other the category of the humble-hungry.
It is important that we understand what such a reversal consists of and where it is produced, because otherwise there is the risk of misunderstanding the whole song and with it the evangelical beatitudes that are here anticipated almost with the same words.
Let’s look at the story: what happened, in fact, when he took to realize the event sung by Mary? Has there been a social and external revolution, so the rich are, suddenly, impoverished and the hungry, have been satisfied with food? Was there a more just distribution of goods between the classes? No. No.
Perhaps that the powerful have been materially overthrown by the thrones and the humble raised? No;
Herod continued to be called “the Great” and Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt because of him.
So if what was expected was a social and visible change, there was a total denial from history.
So where did that overthrow happen? (Because it happened!)
It happened in faith! The kingdom of God has manifested itself and this thing has provoked a silent, but radical revolution.
As if it had been discovered a good that, suddenly, devalued the current currency.
The rich man appears as a man who put aside a large sum of money, but in the night there was a one hundred percent devaluation and in the morning he got up that he was a poor wretch.
The poor and the hungry, on the contrary, are advantaged, because they are more ready to accept the new reality, they do not fear change; they have their hearts ready.
The overthrow sung by Mary is of the same kind – I said – of that proclaimed by Jesus with the beatitudes and with the parable of the rich epulon.
Mary speaks of wealth and poverty starting from God; once again, she speaks “coram Deo”, takes God as a measure, not man. It establishes the “definitive” criterion, eschatological.
To say, therefore, that it is a reversal that took place “in faith” does not mean to say that it is less real and radical, less serious, but that it is infinitely more so.
This is not a design created by the wave on the sand of the sea that the next wave erases.
It is an eternal wealth and an equally eternal poverty.
The Magnificat on the mouth of the Church
St. Irenaeus, commenting on the Annunciation, says that “Mary, full of exultation, cried prophetically in the name of the Church: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
Mary is like the solo voice that first intones an air that must then be repeated by the choir. This is a peaceful conviction of Tradition. Origen also makes it his own: “It is for them (i.e. for those who believe) that Mary magnifies the Lord”15.
He also speaks of a “prophecy of Mary” about the Magnificat16.
This means the expression “Mary figure of the Church” (typus Ecclesiae), used by the Fathers and welcomed by the Second Vatican Council (cf. LG 63).
To say that Mary is the “figure of the Church” means to say that it is the personification, the representation in a sensitive form of a spiritual reality; it means that it is a model of the Church.
She is also a figure of the Church in the sense that in her person the idea of the Church is realized, from the beginning and in a perfect way; that she constitutes, under the head that is Christ, the main member, and the firstfruit.
But what does “Church” mean here and in place of which Irenaean Church says that Mary intones the Magnificat? Not in place of the nominal Church, but of the royal Church, that is, not of the Church in the abstract, but of the concrete Church, of the people and souls that make up the Church.
The Magnificat is not only to be recited, but to be lived, to be made our own by each of us; it is “our” song. When we say, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” that “mine” is to be taken in a direct sense, not reported.
May the soul of Mary be in each one to magnify the Lord, and in each one the spirit of Mary to rejoice in God.
For if according to the flesh one is the mother of Christ, according to faith all souls beget Christ; for each one accepts in himself the Word of God.
In the light of these principles, let us now try to apply to us – to the Church and to the soul – the song of Mary, and to see what we must do to “resemble” Mary not only in words, but also in deeds.
A school of evangelical conversion
Where Mary proclaims the overthrow of the powerful and the proud, the Magnificat reminds the Church of the Church what is the essential proclamation that she must proclaim to the world. He teaches her to be “prophetic” too.
The Church lives and implements the song of the Virgin when she repeats with Mary: “She has overthrown the powerful, she has sent the rich back empty-handed!”, and repeats it with faith, distinguishing this proclamation from all the other pronouncements that she also has the right to make, in matters of justice, peace, social order, as a qualified interpreter of the natural and guardian law of Christ’s commandment of brotherly love.
If the two perspectives are distinct, they are not separated and without any mutual influence.
On the contrary, the proclamation of faith of what God has done in the history of salvation (which is the perspective in which the Magnificat is placed) becomes the best indication of what man must do, in turn, in his own human history and, indeed, of what the Church herself has the task of doing, by virtue of the charity that he must have even for the rich, in view of his salvation.
More than “an incitement to overthrow the powerful from the thrones to raise the humble”, the Magnificat is a salutary warning addressed to the rich and powerful about the tremendous danger that run, just as it will be, in the intentions of Jesus, the parable of the rich epulon.
That of the Magnificat is therefore not the only way to deal with the problem, so felt today, of wealth and poverty, hunger and satiety; there are others who are also legitimate who start from history, and not from faith, and to whom Christians rightly give their support and the Church her discernment.
But this evangelical way is what the Church must proclaim always and to all as her specific mandate and with which she must support the common effort of all men of good will.
It is universally valid and always relevant.
If by hypothesis (alas, remote!) There were a time and place where there were no more injustices and social inequalities among men, but all were rich and full, not for this reason the Church should cease to proclaim there, with Mary, that God sends the rich back empty-handed.
In fact, he should proclaim it even more strongly there.
The Magnificat is current in rich countries, no less than in third world countries.
There are plans and aspects of reality that are not caught with the naked eye, but only with the help of a special light: either with infrared rays, or with ultraviolet rays.
The image obtained with this special light is very different and surprising for those who are used to seeing the same panorama in natural light.
The Church possesses, thanks to the word of God, a different image of the reality of the world, the only definitive, because obtained with the light of God and because it is the same one that has God.
It cannot conceal this image.
On the contrary, it must spread it, without ever getting tired, making it known to men, because it goes away from their eternal destiny.
It is the image that will eventually remain when “the pattern of this world” is passed.
Make it known, sometimes, with simple, direct and prophetic words, like those of Mary, as they say the things of which one is intimately and quietly persuaded.
And this also at the cost of seeming naive and out of the world, in the face of the dominant opinion and spirit of the time.
The Revelation gives us an example of this prophetic, direct and courageous language, in which, to human opinion, the divine truth is opposed: “You say [and this “you” can be the individual person, as an entire society can be]: “I am rich, I am enriched; I need nothing!”, but you do not know that you are an unhappy, a miserable, a poor, blind and naked (Ap).
In a famous fairy tale by Andersen, there is talk of a king who has been made to believe, by lestophants, that there is a wonderful fabric that has the prerogative of being invisible to the foolish and inept and visible only to the wise.
He, first, of course, does not see it, but is afraid to say it, as a theme of passing for one of the fools, and so he fans all his ministers and all the people.
The king parades through the streets without anything on, but everyone, in order not to betray himself, pretends to admire the beautiful dress, until you hear the voice of a child shouting in the crowd: “But the king is naked!”, breaking the spell, and everyone finally has the courage to admit that that famous dress does not exist.
The Church must be like the voice of that child, who, to a certain world who is all infatuated with their wealth and who induces to hold crazy and foolish those who show that they do not believe in them, repeats, in the words of Revelation: “You do not know that you are naked!”.
Here we see how Mary really, in the Magnificat, “speaks prophetically for the Church”: she, first, starting from God, has laid bare the great poverty of the wealth of this world.
The Magnificat, alone, justifies the title of “Star of Evangelization” that St. Paul VI attributed to Mary in his “Evangelii Nuntiandi”.
The Magnificat, reference to conversion
It would be to completely misunderstand this part of the Magnificat that speaks of the proud and the humble, the rich and the hungry, if we confined it only within the sphere of the things that the Church and the believer must preach to the world.
This is not something that should only be preached, but something that must first be practiced. Mary can proclaim the bliss of the humble and the poor because she is herself among the humble and the poor.
The overthrow she envisaged must take place first of all in the depths of those who repeat the Magnificat and pray with it. God, says Mary, has overthrown the proud “in the thoughts of their hearts.”
Suddenly, the speech is brought from outside to inside, from theological discussions, in which everyone is right, to the thoughts of the heart, in which we are all wrong.
The man who lives “for himself”, whose God is not the Lord, but his own “I”, is a man who has built himself a throne and sits on it by dictating law to others.
Now God – says Mary – overthrows these from their throne; he lays bare their untruth and injustice.
There is an inner world, made of thoughts, wills, desires and passions, from which – says St. James – come the wars and the quarrels, the injustices and the abuses that are among us (cf. Gk 4, 1) and until no one begins with healing this root, nothing really changes in the world and if something changes it is to reproduce, shortly thereafter, the same situation as before.
How close the song of Mary reaches us, how it looks at us thoroughly and how it really puts “the axe at the root”!
What foolishness and inconsistency would it be mine, if every day, to the Vespers, I repeated, with Mary, that God “overturned the powerful from the thrones” and in the meantime I continued to crave power, a higher place, a human promotion, a career advancement and lose peace if it delays to arrive; if every day I proclaimed, with Mary, that God “has always sent back the rich with empty hands” and in the meantime
What foolishness would mine be if I kept repeating, with Mary, that God “looks towards the humble”, who approaches them, while keeping at a distance the proud and the rich of everything, and then I were those who do exactly the opposite.
Every day – Luther wrote commenting on the Magnificat – we must see that everyone strives to rise above himself, to a position of honor, power, wealth, domination, a comfortable life and all that is great and proud.
And everyone wants to be with such people, runs after them, serves them willingly, everyone wants to participate in their greatness […].
No one wants to look down, where there is poverty, reproach, need, affliction and anguish, indeed everyone looks away from such a condition.
Everyone escapes the people so tried, the scans, leaves them alone, no one thinks of helping them, assisting them and making them also become something: they must remain low and be despised.
God – Mary reminds us – does the opposite of this: he keeps the proud at a distance and raises the humble and the little ones up to himself; he is more willingly with the needy and the hungry who storm him with supplications and requests, than with the rich and the full who do not need him and ask him nothing.
In doing so, Mary urges us, with maternal sweetness, to imitate God, to make our own choice.
He teaches us the ways of God. The Magnificat is truly a wonderful school of evangelical wisdom.
A school of continuous conversion.
Like all Scripture, it is a mirror (cf. Jn 1, 23) and we know that two very different uses can be made of the mirror.
It can be used facing outwards, towards others, as a ustory mirror, projecting the sunlight towards a distant point until it was set on fire, as Archimedes did with Roman ships, or it can be used by keeping it facing it, to see in it its own face and correct its defects and ugliness.
St. James urges us to use it above all in this second way, to put “in focus” ourselves, before others.
“Writing,” said St. Gregory the Great, “grows by force of being read.” The same happens with the Magnificat, his words are enriched, not consumed, by the use.
Before us hosts of saints or simple believers prayed with these words, they savored the truth, put the content into practice.
For the communion of saints in the mystical body, all this immense heritage now adheres to the Magnificat. It is good to pray to him in this way, in chorus, with all the prayer workers of the Church.
God listens to him like that.
To enter this choir that crosses the centuries, it is enough that we intend to re-present to God the feelings and transport of Mary who first intoned it “in the name of the Church”, of the doctors who commented on him, of the artists who musiced him with faith, of the pious and humble of heart who lived it.
Thanks to this wonderful song, Mary continues to magnify the Lord for all generations; her voice, like that of a corifea, sustains and drags that of the Church.
A prayer of the psalter invites everyone to join him, saying, “Magnify the Lord with me” (Ps 34, 4).
Mary repeats to her children the same words. If I can dare to interpret his thought, the Holy Father, on the day of his priestly Jubilee, addresses to all of us the same invitation: “Magnify the Lord with me.”
And we, Holiness, promise to do so.
Preaching at the Pontifical House of Father Raniero Cantalamessa
🍝 La Pasta che fa bene al cuore
Partecipa alla Seconda Edizione del nostro evento di solidarietà.
Unisciti a noi per trasformare un piatto di pasta in un gesto d’amore ❤️
