My soul magnifies the Lord,
"For the Virgin, with lofty thoughts and deep penetration, contemplates the boundless mystery, the further she advances, magnifying God."
- St. Basil
But we too can magnify the Lord. How can this be? How can we magnify the one who "could neither receive increase or decrease"? Origen answers his own question:
"each one of us forming his soul after the image of Christ, makes it great or little, base or noble, after the likeness of the original; so when I have made my soul great in thought, word, and deed, the image of God is made great, and the Lord Himself, whose image it is, is magnified in my soul."- Origen
How did Mary magnify the Lord? We know that Mary treasured the words and deeds of God in her heart (see Luke 2:19). And so she magnified him by her thoughts wherein she treasured what God had done, by her word, whereby she praised God and spoke her fiat accepting his will, and by her deeds, with which she lived a life of fidelity to his will. We too are made in the image of God. We too are meant to magnify him with all that we are. Let us repent of the times we have not treasured God's actions in our lives, of the times our words have not been used to speak in faith, or have given voice to doubt, and of the deeds by which we have followed something less than God's will for us.
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
Like Mary, our spirit can only rejoice when we first magnify the Lord by our faith. We are called to have "the spirit of Mary so that [we] may rejoice in the Lord" according to Saint Ambrose.
"But the soul first magnifies the Lord, that it may afterwards rejoice in God; for unless we have first believed, we can not rejoice."- Origen
Mary's faith is not something which she achieves for herself and for which she is rewarded. It is a grace with which she was filled at her conception and with which she continued to cooperate throughout her life, which is why Gabriel called her by the title "full of grace". Even her cooperation was not something she could have achieved on her own. Only covered and overshadowed by the Holy Spirit could she hope to walk in the plan of God for her life. Because of this Mary was able to rejoice like no one else, and in doing so showed us the joy that available to us all.
The first-fruit of the Spirit is peace and joy. Because then the holy Virgin had drunk in all the graces of the Spirit, she rightly adds, And my spirit hath leaped for joy.- St. Basil.
for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.
God regards and looks with favor on humility wherever he finds it. Humility is nothing other than the condition of a heart that is ready to welcome him, that is not too filled with other things for him to find room. Only Mary embodied this lowliness perfectly and could thereby welcome not just the presence of God, but his incarnation.
O true lowliness, which hath borne God to men, hath given life to mortals, made new heavens and a pure earth, opened the gates of Paradise, and set free the souls of men. The lowliness of Mary was made the heavenly ladder, by which God descended upon earth.- St. Augustine
When we cooperate with the Spirit to be humble we ourselves are transformed into heavenly ladders by which the presence of God descends to earth. How costly, then, is pride, which is too full of itself to grant him the free access he desires.
In the rest of her Magnificat we see Mary looking at her situation with the eyes of faith. She realized that miraculous things had taken place even though they had been completely hidden from the proud, the mighty, and the rich. She was able to see in her own circumstances, which were by no means easy, the fullness of the fulfillment of the promises of God.
for he remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
Mary did not try to make God's plans for her conform to any plans which she herself may have had (which she indeed must have at least considered before his will was made known). She was able to see that her deepest fulfillment could only by found on offering every gift she had received back to the one who had given it, just as Hannah offered the one desire of her own heart back to the Lord.
I prayed for this child, and the LORD granted my request.
Now I, in turn, give him to the LORD;
as long as he lives, he shall be dedicated to the LORD.
Hannah and Mary both show us how to magnify the Lord. Doing so is a work of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of it is the perfect joy Jesus promised us all.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (see John 15:11)
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