Mary’s Magnificat is among my favorite prayers, committed to memory and meditated upon as a promise through life’s trials. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid.” This prayer-song is, for me, an acknowledgement, in the midst of feeling shamed, misunderstood, rejected (fill-in-the-blank–what is it for you?), that God looks with impossibly magnificent love on those humbled to their knees. I believe this prayer, falling from the lips of the one Full-of-Grace, echoes through the centuries to open our own empty souls, like the virgin’s womb, to receive the abundant gifts and graces of God.
Mary’s womb has just become the new Ark of the Covenant, not containing manna from Heaven and the tablets of the law, but holding the very Bread of Life, the Christ Child, whose law is to “proclaim good news for the poor… freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4.18). Mary rejoices in the upside-down spiritual physics of God, favoring the humble, the unlikely, the underdog.
