Thoughts on Advent 4.

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." Mary's words echo across centuries, still startling in their boldness, their revolutionary hope. I wonder sometimes if we've domesticated this song, turned it into something safe and gentle when it's meant to shake the foundations of how we see both God and ourselves.

Consider for a moment where Mary is standing when she sings. She's a young woman, likely no more than fifteen, carrying an unexpected child in a culture where such a pregnancy could mean death. Yet here, in Elizabeth's doorway, she doesn't whisper her faith - she proclaims it. Her song isn't just praise; it's prophecy. It's politics. It's poetry that rewrites the world.

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote about faith as a leap into the dark, a movement of infinite resignation followed by a leap of faith. But Mary shows us something different - not resignation, but radical receptivity. Not a leap into darkness, but a dance into light. "Here am I," she had said to Gabriel, and now, in Elizabeth's home, she shows us what that "yes" looks like when it grows into song.

"He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts." There's an edge to Mary's prophecy that should make us uncomfortable. She's singing about a God who upends hierarchies, who lifts up the lowly and sends the rich away empty. In our world of carefully curated influence and anxiously maintained status, how do we hear these words? What would it mean to truly believe in this kind of divine revolution?

I'm reminded of Dorothy Day, another woman who took Mary's song seriously. Day once wrote, "I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least." She understood what Mary was singing about - that God's mercy doesn't just comfort us; it commits us to a new way of being in the world. The Magnificat isn't just about personal piety; it's about transformed social reality.

There's a scene in Marilynne Robinson's novel "Gilead" where the narrator reflects on the way light falls through stained glass onto the church floor, creating "a sort of cascade of colors falling into the center aisle." Mary's song feels like that to me - light breaking through the familiar patterns of power and privilege, illuminating a new way of seeing.

But what does this mean for us, here, now? How do we sing the Magnificat in our own lives? Perhaps we might pause and ask ourselves:

- Where do we need God's strength to scatter the proud thoughts in our own hearts?

- How are we being called to participate in God's lifting up of the lowly?

- What would it mean to live as if we truly believed God fills the hungry with good things?

The theologian Walter Brueggemann suggests that prophetic imagination is about both criticizing and energizing - naming what's wrong while awakening hope for what could be. Mary's song does exactly this. She sees the world as it is, with all its broken systems and hierarchies, and she dares to imagine it transformed by God's mercy.

"He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy." This line always catches my heart. Mary isn't just singing about personal blessing; she's placing herself within the long story of God's faithfulness. She remembers - and remembering, in biblical terms, is never just about looking back. It's about standing in the present moment and letting memory become hope.

Annie Dillard once wrote that we should wear crash helmets to church - that the power we casually invoke in our worship should strike us with holy fear. Perhaps we should approach the Magnificat the same way. This isn't just a pretty prayer; it's a manifesto of hope, a declaration that God's mercy changes everything.

As we sit with Mary's song, perhaps we might let it sing us into new ways of being. Could we dare to believe, with her, that God's mercy extends to those who fear him "from generation to generation"? Could we risk letting her song rewrite our assumptions about power and status? Could we join our voices to hers, adding our own harmony to this ancient melody of hope?

Because here's the truth that Mary knew: God's mercy isn't just about forgiveness. It's about transformation. It's about a world turned right-side up, where the hungry are filled and the humble are lifted up. It's about a love that doesn't just comfort us but commits us to a new way of living.

So let us sing with Mary, letting her words become our own. Let us dare to believe in a God who scatters the proud and lifts up the lowly. Let us open ourselves to be magnifiers of divine love, letting God's mercy flow through us into a world hungry for hope.

For the Magnificat isn't just Mary's song. It's meant to become ours too - a song of praise, a cry of hope, a commitment to participating in God's ongoing work of turning the world right-side up.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​