The Liberating Message behind the Magnificat
One of my favorite songs of high school mass was the Dominican Magnificat. Though I’m over 12 years removed from attending a mass at St. Mary’s Dominican High School in New Orleans, I’ve always kept that song in my mental worship rolodex. But it wasn’t until my pastor covered this song at the beginning of a sermon during the Christmas season that I learned more about the spiritual, cultural, and social significance of this song.
First, some background.
The Magnificat is the name given to Mary’s (the Mother of Jesus) hymn of praise found in the Gospel of Luke 1:46-56. The song is named after the first line of this scriptural passage translated into Latin: “Magnificat anima mea Dominum,” which means “My soul magnifies the Lord.” There have since been many versions of this song produced, but the one I am most familiar with is the Dominican Magnificat. “Dominican” is used here as an adjective that identifies the specific Catholic “order” (read: community) that wrote this version of the Magnificat. Thus, as I went to a Dominican high school, this was the version we sang during mass.
Great! So, why so special?
For starters, the Magnificat in Luke is the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament of the Bible. Is this significant? Yes. Mary was super young, unmarried, and pregnant. Given the negative attention that a status like this could bring someone in our modern culture (abating significantly over the last few decades), imagine how much worse it could have been thousands of years ago. It would likely result in embarrassing, public derision. All things considered, someone in this disposition was used in an incredible way to show God’s glory and the great value He placed on women.
Here’s where it gets more fascinating.
Over the course of history, the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised of the world have identified with Mary’s song because it echoes God’s great love for the poor. So it has been used as a song of resilience, a battle cry, and as a result, it has been perceived as a threat to the rich and powerful. India (while under British rule), Guatemala, and Argentina at one point banned public recitation of this song because they found this song to be subversive. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian preached a sermon with incredible things to say about this song:
“This song of Mary's is the oldest Advent hymn. It is the most passionate, most vehement, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here…a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God's power and of the powerlessness of men… she is significant to God and appointed to be the mother of the Savior of the world. Not because of some remarkable human trait in her, not because of some great piety, not because of her modesty, not because of any particular virtue in her, but apart from any of these characteristics, only because God's gracious will is to love the humble and lowly, the insignificant…He loves the lost, the forgotten, the insignificant, the outcasts, the weak, and the broken. Where men say, "lost," he says "found;" where men say "no," he says "yes." Where men look with indifference or superiority, he looks with burning love, such as nowhere else is to be found…When we reach a point in our lives at which we are not only ashamed of ourselves, but believe God is ashamed of us too, when we feel so far from God, more than we have ever felt in our lives, than and precisely then, God is nearer to us than he has ever been. It is then that he breaks into our lives. It is then that he lets us know that feeling of despair is taken away from us, so that we may grasp the wonder of his love, his nearness to us, and his grace.”
All that said, as my pastor did this brief review of Mary’s song, the Holy Spirit overwhelmed me with a tender heart (that’s one way I know God is speaking to me. If you see me tearing up in church, it’s likely not because I’m sad, but because God is revealing to me something incredibly and personally profound). At this point, I pulled up the lyrics to the Dominican Magnificat on my phone and was reminded of the tenets of Dominican tradition: to praise, to bless, and to preach.
“To Praise, my soul rejoices in God. To praise, my soul shall glorify the Lord.” To work, create, and relate as praise to God.
“To bless, to bless the people of God. To bless, to bless the name of the Lord.” To intentionally bring honor to God in everything I say and do, thus producing a right love for others.
“To preach, to preach the Word of our Lord. To preach, to preach His truth to the earth.” To make the Gospel, the saving power of God, known to a world that so desperately needs it.
At the time of this sermon, I’d been praying about a more fully realized vision for 2020. This song affirmed this past year’s experiences and is preparing me for the coming year’s great exploits. No, I won’t be joining the Order of the Preachers. Anyway, I do have some questions about the implications of tying your spiritual journey on Earth to another fallible human’s name, but we do that all the time for other reasons too… I digress. So as I usually devote the months of December and January to cast vision (more on this in another post), and in this instance, I’m so glad for the opportunity to use seemingly inconsequential spiritual experiences of the past as guideposts for my future. They remind me where I’ve been, still while showing me where I’m going.
In love and veritas,
Chioma