Words of hope and joy arise in Mary in this reading. In response to the news that she is about to be the mother of God's chosen one, Mary, a young Jewish woman - three strikes against her in the power structure of the world around her - proclaims the power and faithfulness of God. Mary's militant song proclaims a God whose reign transforms the lives of those who are poor, hungry, and lowly and whose
favor disdains those who are rich, satisfied, and powerful.
This is the Magnificant because Mary sings that her soul "maginifies the Lord." Mary's soul, Mary's life, our lives, like a magnifying glass, should magnify, make larger and clearer, the image of the living God.
et in nc
After reading last week's gospel discussion, I find myself irritated at comments from "liturgical baptist." I am wondering if he follows the liturgical tradition of baptizing infants? And for his service with vestments walking down the aisle following the cross, to which "liturgical" meaning of the eucharist does he lift up: transubstanciation? consubstanciation? I am non-plussed by his numbers and statistics boasting. While he lifts up a gender-exclusive rendering of Paul's quotation of inclusivity, I am left wondering if he is majoring in externals and showmanship (something about which when it comes to religiosity, Jesus has much to say). Pax in the wilderness.
From Mary's song of great praise to gripes about somebody's liturgical stance? Please, let's all keep our minds on what is holy and relevant to the Advent of our Savior. Thank you ever so much.
Being a Protestant and having very little of Mary
involved in my religious thinking, I've often wondered why she was chosen among all the Jewish women. Was it because she was extremely pious, or because she had many priests in her lineage? I really don't know. I don't follow the idea that Mary herself was so pure, but that God took a very ordinary young (very young) woman and gave her an extraordinary job to do. (Similar to David, Moses,
Abraham, Deborah, Paul, and hosts of others in the OT and NT. Ordinary people chosen for great tasks)
The wonder of it for me is that she was so happy to take it all on. Of course, at this point, she did not understand that in 33 or so years, she would be standing at the foot of Calvary........
I am amazed at what people can do when they believe
in something so strongly - the promise of the Messiah and the indwelling of God in this case. The world has many people both heralded and unheralded who have risen from obscurity to tackle some major calling put before them.
Churches are called to bring the Messiah to the people, to be the place where the faith incubates and grows and is then shared with the world. Do we raise up songs of praise and glory to God for that task, as Mary did? Or do we grudgingly say OK, we'll do it, but don't ask us to be happy about it!
Mary celebrated the opportunity and joyously carried it out. That, to my Protestant mind, is
her greatest contribution to the faith.
PS. This is not any attempt to detract from Mary for those of you who venerate her. I am only going with my own faith background which doesn't much include her.
KHC
Faithful to the last, Mary has been important to Christian devotion throughout history because in her, the God-bearer, is seen a representatio of the church itself. Mary's song (the Magnificat) is a powerful statement of justice, still apt for us today as we come with our own neediness to experience God's justice and mercy in word and sacrament.
If we didn't know it as Mary's song, we might mistake it for a psalm of David, who was Mary's grandfather twenty-eight generations earlier (according to Mt 1.17). If we didn't know about divine inversion, we might fail to realize how dramatically God turns things upside down. Mary's song is for all seasons. It is a healing balm for those singed by the fires of the world; and it is ballast for those off balance. Long associated with evening prayer, this is the true soul music, for it is full of promise and affirmation for the soul.
Mary's song is surprisingly nuanced, with beat and rhythm. God, Mary croons, has looked with favor by lifting up a lowly servant. While there is no direct mention that she who sings is carrying God's son, that pregnant reality is implied in every syllable. We know who is in Mary's womb. She and anyone can rejoice that God provides a Savior.
We must not overlook the great inversions. In Mary's song everything is condition-contrary-to-fact: the proud are scattered, the powerful are brought low, the lowly are raise up, the hungry are filled, the rich are sent away empty. That's not the way things are, of course, but that's the way the song goes.
Many literal-minded people find little sense in this exultant expression. How sad, for countless generations have called Mary blessed. They have been lifted by her sacred song which is, after all, the poetry of faith in which things do not have to be literally true to be really true. Mary sang her psalm, like her venerable grandfather from twenty-eight generations back. More than a hundred generations since, believers are still joining the song. With the voice of faith we sing not of the way things are, but of the way things really are. We sing of God's grace, God's giving, God's inversions. God chose Mary to bear a son who was and is the savior of the world. That is such a good story, it deserves the best song.
Robert Brusic
To pax in wilderness:
Your candor is interesting. Your knowledge of the Eucharist appears adequate. Your questions to tlb are revealing. All makes sense but your name. Where is the peace? In your heart, mind, church, confession, understanding...? where is the peace? Ever heard the story of the Good Prodestant? Humm, who is my neighbor...?
It seems ok that one would see one's self as liturgical, regardless of the confession, denomination...
What does this worship experience say to the worshippers? How does it draw them closer to the holy and help them live out their faith in the m-f world?
What about vatican II? Are we one body which includes all? If not, why worry about those who are just " playing " at liturgy, church or any of the rest... since only one confession/denomination is in. But I don't think that is what Jesus had in mind when he prayed, " that they may be one."
What if by God's grand plan there is grace to be accepted and given... to all...by all?
I give you permission to worship as liturgically or non liturgacally as you please and I give the same to myself and others. Viva la differance!
Shalom,
sobinumc
It was never supposed to be this way. She was not supposed to be here; here, in the white, stainless steel surroundings; here, surrounded by men in white laboratory coats and women who wore soft-soled shoes so that they might move silently across the hard pale-yellow tile floors. Love was never meant to end in such manner. Yet, regardless of how things were supposed to be, here she was and the news was not good. No, the news was horrible, tragic, the harbinger of a life of poverty, a life of lack, or worse. After the doctor had left the room, she sat in shocked silence, the waves of fear crashing around her in the horrendous tempest of bitter reality. This could simply not be happening to her. Her tears fell onto the now rumpled sheets stretched across the metal framework of the examination table, making small dark dots of moisture. Pregnant. She was pregnant.
Expecting statements of his unfailing support, she had told him that she thought she might be pregnant. But instead, she found that the flame of childish love is indeed fickle. She found that she asked for that which he was unprepared to offer. At first she cried. Then she pled with him. Finally, she screamed and slammed her small fist into his chest, but his demeanor never changed. It was her problem. It was her child. This could not be. She had been certain that he would care. He had promised his undying love. She had been so sure. Naivety, the assailant of youthful indiscretion. He shrugged his seventeen-year-old shoulders, turned his back, and left her standing in the dirty snow on the rickety porch steps of her father’s weather-beaten house. After all, commitment is such a big word.
Had her mother still been living, perhaps she would have found solace in the embrace of her loving arms. But cancer had been a devastating foe and her mother had died two years before, leaving her and her now alcoholic father. Telling him would only bring deeper darkness to the nightmare. Metaphorically, the news would kill him. Her reality would be much more concrete. She could already imagine his hard hands smashing into the soft flesh of her oft-pummeled face. Covergirl, the facial salve of the beautiful and the mask of the battered, would not cover the wounds this news would garner. For what was sure to come, there would not be enough makeup in the whole of the cosmos.
With apparently nowhere else to turn, she turned to others in white lab jackets. In her fear, in the face of hopelessness, caring hands reached out to her. Though, in that time and at that place, their actions put them outside of Caesar’s rules; though, in that time and at that place, they ran the very real risk of prosecution, arrest, and imprisonment; still, they reached out to her. They did it not because they wished to end life, but because they wished to protect that life which was beyond the womb. They wished to protect her. Thus, the deed was done. And the life created in a promise unkept, died as surely as that promise died.
With the gratitude of being released from the hell that would have been, she left those in the white lab coats. She felt as if she had overstepped the prison walls, felt the burden of her condition lifted from her broken existence. She was free. “Thank God,” she was free…
Except that, as the years passed, as the seasons changed, as she moved beyond youthful naivety into the sagacious veracity of adulthood which hard living brings, she realized she wasn’t free. Somewhere along the road a small voice began to assert it’s presence. Somewhere along the journey she realized she wasn’t alone. She was surprised when she first heard it, wondering when it had joined her and from where it had come. Perhaps it stemmed from the many hours she had spent in that church on the corner, the one with the chipped crucifix hanging above the alter. Perhaps it came to her as she sat in silence, there on the stained pews in the shadows of the far corner, waiting for a happiness that never seemed to come. Perhaps it came to her for no other reason than somewhere along the road from that day unto this, she had learned to listen.
She never knew from where it came, but come it did. And with the presence, with the voice, came the realization of the enormity of that which she had done. “Who might I have been?” the voice whispered. “What life might I have known?” She was crushed by the pain, overcome by the pain, almost destroyed by the pain. “Oh God, what had she done?” Those around her, those who knew her story, took her into their arms and wept with her, even those who disagreed, even those who fully believed she had been wrong. They took her to their breasts and they loved her in her pain, loved her through her pain. It was love, real love, the perfect love which cast out all fear.
In the many years that had passed, in the many years since those with white lab coats loved her when no others would, abortion had been legalized. Now, angry words screamed from apposing sides, angry words as sharp as swords, angry words as destructive as bombs. The shouts cascaded over her, some demanding that she shout with them as they sat outside of those places peopled by the ones wearing the white lab coats … and peopled by young women, clutching their Covergirl, facing the hell to come. Others demanded that she side with them, for after all, she had known the fear, the very real fear of the living nightmare. After all, they shrieked, the alternative would have been so much worse. After all, it was her body. Angry words, all demanding that she scream with them.
Yet, she could not. For as that perfect love cascaded down around her, she understood from where that voice stemmed. It was the voice of the one whom brought mercy from generation to generation. It was the voice of the one who lifted up the lowly and called them blessed. It was the voice of one born into the trough of animals, born into the realm of the pain, born so that the shouts might be loved into silence. It was the voice of the child she had terminated, the child who now looked back at her with no condemnation, only love.
Peace and grace,
Nail-Bender in NC
Thank you Nail-Bender for your beautiful story. It is not an easy decision for any young woman to make, and my experience is that it is never made lightly. You give them a real sense of hope, and perhaps some peace of mind. This God of ours shows compassion. Mary is lucky to have such caring support around her, or she and child may have been stoned to death. We don't talk about that either.
Blessings,
ruraloracle in BC
