Christian Art | Mary And Elizabeth | Magnificat
Luke 1: 46-56 – 22nd December Weekday (Audio Bible, Spoken Word)
46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.
53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.
54 He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;
55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
56 And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house.
In this, the Magnificat, Mary’s soul overflows with joy as she contemplates the wonderful blessing God has bestowed on her, surpassing indeed the gifts to any other person in history. Through her obedience and humility, Mary has been magnified herself by the Lord, such that we now recognize her greatness and call her blessed – each day, indeed, as we recite or sing the canticle as part of evening prayer.
Mary praises the strength and justice of God. He is a force at work in the world, scattering the proud and the boastful, upending the vanities of the world, feeding the hungry and exalting those of low degree, the poor, the oppressed, and the socially neglected. There is a revolutionary spirit to her words, to her Messianic vision, which recall Samuel’s mother Hannah’s prayer – with which Mary would have been very familiar:
AND Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the Lord, mine horn is exalted in the Lord: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.
2 There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.
3 Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
4 The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
5 They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.
6 The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.
7 The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up.
8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them.
9 He will keep the feet of his saints, and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.
10 The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall he thunder upon them: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth; and he shall give strength unto his king, and exalt the horn of his anointed. (1 Samuel 2: 1-10)
The Lord was with Samuel, ‘and did let none of his words fall to the ground’, and his word came to all Israel; he was prophet and judge. Through God’s blessing of Mary and through her perfect obedience, Christ will be born to fulfil the prayers, hopes and expectations of ages. A young woman’s joyful response to the Lord, to praise and thank the Lord for the child she carries, expands into a vision of God’s active presence with the people of Israel through history, which in itself carries the knowledge that the kingdom of God is now come in the person of Jesus. There is here a grand sense of the purpose of history up to this point, and this is aligned with a vision of the new generations to come, as the immense human family of the future worships Christ.
‘Now anyone who refuses to humble himself simply cannot be saved, nor can he say with the prophet: “Behold, the Lord is my helper; it is God who lifts up my life.” But whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’ St Bede
Magnificat | Endnotes | ‘My Soul Proclaims The Greatness Of The Lord’
The Magnificat expresses Mary’s deep awareness of God’s action in her life and in the world. Mary rejoices that God lifts the lowly, fulfils His promises, and brings salvation to all who trust in Him (Luke 1:46-55). Our recent leaders of the Church have reflected upon how this song of praise invites us into a living response of faith.
Pope Saint John Paul II spoke often of the Magnificat as a model of Christian discipleship. For him, Mary’s song is not simply praise, but a transformation of vision: Mary sees the world not by the standards of power or wealth, but through the eyes of faith. Her rejoicing comes from a heart opened to God’s mercy and justice. In this way, the Magnificat becomes a summons for believers to align our lives with God’s priorities — to lift up the humble, feed the hungry, and bear witness to the hope born of Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI emphasised the Magnificat as a revelation of God’s constant care for His people. Pope Benedict noted that Mary’s words reveal the ‘logic of God’ — a logic that overturns human expectations: the proud are scattered, the mighty cast down, and the hungry filled with good things. This is not a political manifesto, but a spiritual truth about how God’s kingdom grows. We are invited to trust God’s fidelity to his promises and to recognise that our salvation comes from God’s mercy, not from human effort alone.
Pope Francis often returned to the Magnificat when speaking of the Church’s mission. For Pope Francis, Mary’s praise is inseparable from her compassion for the poor and her attention to those on the margins. Mary’s song is lived out in concrete acts of mercy. Francis explains that Christians are called not only to proclaim God’s greatness but to live it by reaching out to the poor, the suffering, and those who feel forgotten. In this way, the Magnificat becomes not only a prayer but a way of life marked by tenderness and service.
Pope Leo XIV continues the teaching for our times. From his first words to the world — ‘peace be with you all’ — Pope Leo connects the gift of peace with the faithful witness of Christians in the world. Pope Leo underlines that peace is not static but a gift moving us toward others, requiring dialogue, charity, and unity. In his apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te, he calls the Church to see Christ in the poor and to respond to God’s love with concrete love for those in need. The peace proclaimed by Christ, and echoed by Leo, is a peace active in justice and mercy, mirroring Mary’s own response in the Magnificat.
As we pray and reflect with evening prayer, vespers, and during Advent and beyond, the Magnificat invites us to open our hearts to God’s transformative action. Like Mary, may we proclaim God’s greatness not only with words but with lives shaped by mercy, humility, and peace.
In this Easter sermon, Saint Augustine speaks tenderly and passionately to the newly baptized, those who have recently passed through the saving waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil. His words are full of warmth, joy, and hope, as he invites these ‘little children in Christ’ to recognize the extraordinary gift they have received and to live according to the new life that has been planted within them [ … ]
Saint Gregory begins by contrasting superficial knowledge of God with actual participation in God’s life. It is not enough to know about God; we must come to possess Him inwardly. Drawing on the doctrine of the imago Dei (image of God), Gregory teaches that the divine image implanted within us at creation has been tarnished by sin. Yet this image is not destroyed—it can be restored. The human heart, when purified, becomes like a polished mirror capable of reflecting divine light [ … ]
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
