WEEK FOUR
Dec 21 – Dec 27
JOY IS COME INTO THE WORLD

Day 22—Sunday, December 21

And Mary said: “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; for behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him. He has done mighty deeds with His arm; he has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones, and has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things; and sent away the rich empty-handed. He has given help to Israel His servant, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever.”
Luke 1:46-55

MARY’S JOYFUL RESPONSE
We often think of Mary as someone who was minding her own business until the day that Gabriel appeared with God’s announcement. We imagine her to be like us, focused on her own tasks of growing up and preparing for her future life. We meditate on her anxiety about the costs of being an unwed mother. We hear her words of submission, spoken with quiet resignation to the will of God.

But in her song of exultation to her cousin Elizabeth, Mary reveals herself to be fiercely joyful in the work of God being accomplished through her.

The joy of Mary’s song ripples from the opening lines: Mary magnifies the All Mighty and rejoices in the deepest part of who she is. She has not been humiliated by the stigma of becoming an unwed mother. She considers herself lifted from her humble state and sees her exaltation in light of both the history and the future of Israel’s dealings with the Lord. She speaks of Abraham, her forefathers, future generations, and herself all woven in the pattern of the Lord mercifully remembering His servant Israel.

As she sings, we hear echoes of other women with miraculous sons, including Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist; Sarah, mother to all Israel; and Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel, who dedicated her son to the service of the Lord with song. Carolyn Jennings brings out these echoes between the songs of Mary and Hannah in her setting of Mary’s song, A New Magnificat. The choral setting begins with Hannah’s opening acclamation (voiced throughout by the altos):

Hannah: “My heart exults in the Lord;

my strength is exalted in the Lord…”

Hannah’s line is followed by the sopranos who pick up Mary’s words from Luke 1:

 Mary: “My soul magnifies the Lord,

 and my spirit rejoices in God my savior…”

Both parts revolve around the same unchanging tonal center. They come together for a rising and falling refrain, “My heart overflows, Alleluia!”. The music has both movement and rootedness, as each part repeats its own melodic stanza, each with its own internal echoes or short rises and falls back to the same starting places. But after trading stanzas twice with a lilting chant-like melody, the music shifts; a war-like note is sounded and the two parts begin to trade more swiftly back and forth as the orchestra builds underneath:

Hannah: The bows of the mighty are broken,

Mary: Strong is the arm of the Lord,

Hannah: but the feeble put on strength,

Mary: who has scattered the proud in their hearts…

The whole choir finally joins the swell with a much slower, increasingly grand affirmation from Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2:

“For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s

And on them, God has set the world.”

Meanwhile, Hannah and Mary continue to sing the same melodies, but they are thoroughly overwhelmed by this larger statement of the providential ordering of God. The result is both expansive and grounded, repeating yet ever renewed. In drawing out the echoes between Hannah and Mary’s miraculous pregnancies, Magnificat furnishes an image of God’s unchanging, faithful providence, one that lifts and lowers, promises and fulfills, establishes and upturns, exalts and humbles and raises us again.

Since Israel is her people, too, Mary’s vision extends past herself. Her joy is for more than herself, and thus it can vaunt, it can boast of the cataclysmic upendings that are in store for the proud and mighty. God entirely subverts the world’s standards of security: here the poor, the humble, and the hungry are the blessed.

Mary’s first sentences are the only lines where she talks about herself; the rest of the song is devoted to describing the ever-renewed work of the Lord. He has done, He has shown, He has scattered, He has brought down, He has exalted, He has filled, He has sent away empty, He has helped. Mary is not merely looking forward to what her great Son will accomplish; she is looking at the great Savior of Israel and celebrating the work He has already done, and is now and ever continuing, for the sake of His promise to Abraham.

We are waiting too, as we look for Christ to come in glory. We can learn from Mary the right kind of hope to bring to our own tasks in these last days. We are not to be minding our own business, after all, but should attune ourselves to Christ’s work with an audacious hope. For this hope expects to be crowned with the kind of exultant joy that we could never create on our own, but could only be the gracious gift of God.

Almighty and everlasting God,
Who has established the pillars of the earth,
and providentially orders all things
to accomplish more good than we could ask for or imagine,
Enlighten the eyes of our hearts,
to know the riches of the hope to which you’ve called us,
that we, like your servant Mary,
May watch and wait for Your coming,
Longing to shout for joy
At the fulfillment of Your promises.
O Come to us, our King!
Amen.

Diane Vincent, Torrey Honors Institute