Magnificat!
15. August 2012
Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, August 15 2012. Abbot Gregory Collins.
In the crypt of Dormition Abbey.
Kai Maria eipen, Megalunei e psyche mou ton Kurion!
"And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord”
Mary’s inspired proclamation, her Magnificat, as recorded by St. Luke, was taken up by the great hymn writers of the Christian East so that it became a typical way of proclaiming God’s greatness in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church. Still today in Byzantine worship, we call one of the hymns sung on great feasts a Megalynarion, or in English, a “hymn of magnification.” In those celebrations one sings over and over again, “Megalunomen, megalunomen, megalunomen, megalunomen”: We magnify, we magnify, we magnify, we magnify you, O Lord!
Mary: God's magnifying glass
To magnify something is to make it appear bigger. Like the Burning Bush at Sinai, Mary is God’s magnifying glass, through which he appeared in the world. His divine light, the eternal Logos that shines in the darkness, the true light no darkness can ever quench, focused itself so intensely within Mary’s womb that it took flesh and was born as Jesus - the longed-for Christ, the Savior of the human race. He is the true light that enlightens all who come into this world. In Mary, God’s magnifying glass, he manifested himself as human for the first time, becoming visible to our eyes. That is why the Church has always honored Mary, giving her the title Theotokos - God-bearer - naming her devotionally as Mater Dei, Mother of God, and offering her the special veneration of hyperdoulia as the first and greatest of the saints.
But we must try to understand such language correctly as the Fathers and Councils of the Church understood them. Mary is human! She is definitely not divine. Nor is she Mother of God in general but in the specific sense of her divinely given mission: to give birth to, nourish and nurture the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Word-made-flesh. As St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in the early second century, Mary’s child-bearing is one of the silent mysteries of God. It is to be venerated not analyzed, pondered in silence, not picked apart by logic. It belongs to the heart of the mystery, to the celebration of the liturgy: it is a poem to be proclaimed, a song to be sung. She teaches us to sing it in her Magnificat.
The glory of divine grace
But what especially does Mary magnify? She sings of the glory of divine grace, the heart of the Christian Gospel: “The Almighty has done great things for me and Holy is his Name! He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation!” That is Mary’s magnification of God’s great Name, her message to us and to all those generations whom she prophesied would call her blessed. It is the fundamental message of her Jewish religion, of the faith of Abraham and Sarah and their descendents, faith in God, who, “Stoops from the heights to look down, to look down upon heaven and earth.”
God’s overflowing grace, his free and unmerited favor, all that divine generosity which the author of the Pastoral Epistles called his philanthropia or love for humankind: that is Mary’s song. By highlighting these things, she magnifies her Lord and Savior. In confessing her lowliness before the glory of the divine majesty she was exalted by God. She became the perfect image of the self-emptying Christ revealed in the Gospels, the one who taught that those who humble themselves will be exalted. This humble girl from Nazareth was raised up by grace to become what John saw in his Apocalypse: a great sign appearing in heaven, the Mother of the Messiah standing at the heart of the mystery of the Temple. She is the Hodegetria, the signpost, the one who points towards the Way.
To magnify the God of our salvation
Today we magnify her as we recall the unique grace accorded her: the glorification of her body before the general resurrection on the Last Day. But still more, we magnify with her the God of our salvation, singing to him with Mary her unending Magnficat: megalunomen, megalunomen, megalunomen!
We magnify,
we magnify,
we magnify you, O Lord!