And
Mary said,
My
soul doth magnify the Lord,
And
my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For
he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
for,
behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For
he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name.
And
his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
He
hath shewed strength with his arm;
he
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He
hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and
exalted them of low degree.
He
hath filled the hungry with good things;
and
the rich he hath sent empty away.
He
hath helped his servant Israel,
in
remembrance of his mercy;
As
he spake to our fathers,
to
Abraham, and to his seed forever.
Roughly 700 years before the
Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to the Incarnate Word of God, the Prophet Micah
saw His Advent. At that time, the Kingdom
of Israel to the north was separated from the Kingdom of Judah to the south, and
while both had their ups and downs, the north was in much worse shape
spiritually, having given themselves over to worship pagan gods and left the
Law and Promises of Moses behind. Micah
saw the coming destruction of the northern tribes by Assyria which came in his
lifetime, as well as the near-fall of Jerusalem to that same barbaric
army. Yet the calamity God gave Micah to
see and speak to the people of both north and south, came also with a promise—that
He would send forth His Messiah to save and restore His people, gathering the faithful
remnant from the darkness of their oppression, and reigning over them in peace,
protection, and providence forever.
While Assyria would not be the last calamity to befall the Hebrew
people, with Babylon, Greece, Persia, and eventually Rome all holding sway over
them, the ultimate fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy was found in the Only
Begotten Son of God, Jesus the Christ.
This is what blessed Mary
sang when she was greeted by her elderly cousin, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was miraculously pregnant with the
forerunner of Jesus who would be known in time as John the Baptist, about six months prior to Mary’s miraculous conception of the Eternal Word made flesh in
Jesus. Thus we read that John, still in
his mother’s womb, leapt for joy at the greeting of Mary, knowing that the
Mother of God, the holy Theotokos, had come bearing the long-promised Lord and
Savior of the world. Mary’s prophetic
song of joy was an acknowledgement that the prophecies which had come centuries
before her time were being fulfilled in the Son she was given to bear. All the rejoicing and accolades and
celebration were oriented toward the coming of the Just One, whose mercy
remained upon His faithful people from generation to generation. The Promises of Redemption made to Adam and
Eve in the Garden, to Noah after the great deluge, to Abraham and his seed all
the way down to her present day, were being fulfilled in her time. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of
the world was come, and in Him all the world would be reconciled to God their
Savior.
Of course, as in Micah’s
time and Mary’s time, plenty of people still rejected the God of all Creation
to pursue their own passions, ambitions, and lusts. In this, Mary’s prayer reflects the truth of
God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, that the rich, the self-righteous, and the prideful
would be knocked down while He lifted up the poor, the humble, and the penitent;
that those who clung to God’s Promises by faith would see His grace and mercy,
being fed to fullness on the love and providence of God Almighty, while the
unbelieving would be sent away hungry.
Not long after Mary would give birth, the wicked King Herod would
butcher the children of her entire village trying to murder her Son, and thirty
some years later, the religious and secular authorities would conspire to
betray and murder him on a Roman cross. Yet
the machinations of evil men cannot undo the mercies and grace of God, for the
weakness and folly of God is greater than the highest summits of fallen men. What God has ordained since the foundation of
the world, that men would be saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in His
Son alone, would not be derailed by the works of those who sought to save
themselves, or to vainly think themselves masters of Creation. For what God opens, no man can close—and what
God closes, no man can open.
And thus the Church
remembers the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, from whose humanity our
Lord Jesus Christ took His own human nature, even as His divine nature was from
everlasting to everlasting with the Father and the Son, one God, now and
forever. The humble faith and “yes” of
Mary was the counterpoint to Eve’s rebellious “no” in the Garden thousands of
years prior, and by the mercies and grace of God at work in her, all generations
since have called Mary blessed. Her title
in Greek has been Theotokos, the God-bearer, and there have been none like her
since the foundation of the world, and there will be none like her to the end—a
unique vessel of God, sanctified by God to the work of bringing forth and
rearing the Savior of the World. The
Blessed Virgin Mary asked for no worship of herself, but in her blessed
faithfulness bore witness to the Word and Promises of God fulfilled in her Son. If our Lord’s later proclamation that there
was no man born of women greater than His earthly cousin John the Baptist, the Church
has remembered also that there has been no woman greater in the history of the
world than His blessed mother.
As the season of Advent
presses inexorably into Christmas, the people of God sing with blessed Mary of
the promises of the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation won for us
by her Son, Jesus Christ. For there is
no other name given under heaven whereby the world might be reconciled to God
the Father and saved from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil, but by
Jesus Christ alone. His Word and Work is
the life and light of the world to all who will hear Him, abide in Him, and
live in Him by grace through faith. And
joined to our Savior by such saving faith, we hear with the Apostle John that we
behold in Mary, the Mother of God, our own mother, and that she beholds in us
that we are adopted siblings of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the
world. With blessed Mary the Church
sings and rejoices in God our Savior, for He has done great things for us, and
reconciled the world to Himself through Christ our Lord. Soli Deo Gloria! Amen.
