Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-56)
Introduction
Introduction
Observations
Critics shake their heads over its many quotations and allusions to Hannah’s song and to other poetical parts of the Old Testament, and declare that these are fatal to its being accepted as Mary’s. Why? must the simple village maiden be a poetess because she is the mother of our Lord? What is more likely than that she should east her emotions into forms so familiar to her, and especially that Hannah’s hymn should colour hers? These old psalms provided the mould into which her glowing emotions almost instinctively would run, and the very absence of ‘originality’ in the song favours its genuineness.
There are moods in which the devout soul dwells on its own calm blessedness and on God, its source, more directly than on the gift which brings it.
the very absence of ‘originality’ in the song favours its genuineness.
Little does Mary as yet know that ‘a sword shall pierce through’ her ‘own soul also,’ and that not only will ‘all generations’ call her ‘blessed,’ but that one of her names will be ‘Our Lady of Sorrows.’ For her and for us, the future is mercifully veiled. Only one eye saw the shadow of the Cross stretching black and grim athwart the earliest days of Jesus, and that eye was His own. How wonderful the calmness with which He pressed towards that ‘mark’ during all His earthly life!
Not when Gabriel spoke, but when a woman like herself called her ‘mother of my Lord,’ did she break into praise.
We need not attribute to the maiden from Nazareth philosophical accuracy when she speaks of her ‘soul’ and ‘spirit.’ Her first words are a burst of rapturous and wondering praise, in which the full heart runs over. Silence is impossible, and speech a relief.