Mid-Advent 1
Lk
1:46-55
12/3/25
Tonight we hear Mary say, “My soul
magnifies the Lord” as she praises God for what he has done for her, and how he
is carrying out his saving action for Israel. The Latin translation of Mary’s
statement “Magnificat” provides us with the name by which Mary’s song has been
known in the Church. In the Magnificat
we learn that God uses the lowly as he carries out his mighty act of salvation.
Mary begins the Magnificat by praising
God as she says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of
his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he
who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Mary’s words have been prompted by
her meeting with Elizabeth – her elderly relative who is now miraculously
pregnant. Mary was pregnant with our Lord Jesus, and Elizabeth was pregnant
with John the Baptist. When the two met,
John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and prompted by the Holy Spirit she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you
among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother
of my Lord should come to me. For behold, when the sound of your greeting
came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”
Mary
acknowledges that God has indeed done great things for her. As she says, “for he has
looked on the humble estate of his servant.” Mary recognizes the fact that she
was a nobody. She was a teenage girl living in the village of Nazareth in
Galilee. She had no status due to royalty or wealth. No one of that day
recognized her as being anything, and there was no chance that anyone in the
future would remember her.
But then Mary continues, “For
behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who
is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” God
had done great things for Mary, and because of God’s action now all generations
would call her blessed.
Mary had been a nobody. But God had
chosen her to carry and give birth to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The angel
Gabriel was sent from God to announce that she would give birth to the Christ –
the fulfillment of God’s promises to King David. He had said, “Do not be
afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He
will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord
God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.”
This was incredible. Mary would be the one through whom God would
act to fulfill his promises to Israel. But the truly awe inspiring information
was still to come. For when Mary asked how she a virgin was going to have this
child, Gabriel answered, “The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow
you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy— the Son
of God.”
All generations of Christians have
blessed Mary, because they have understood that Mary was the instrument through
whom God carried out the incarnation of the Son of God. She was, as the early
Church confessed, the Theotokos – the God bearer. She carried in her womb and
gave birth to the One who is true God and true man.
Mary points out that while her
experience may be unique, it is in fact also representative of how God acts.
She says, “And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to
generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud
in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their
thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry
with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
God is the One who exalts the
humble. During Advent we prepare to celebrate how God acted in the birth of
Jesus Christ to do this for us – people who were trapped in sin. God acted to save us, the ones who had no
ability to help ourselves. Instead of wrath, God has shown us mercy.
God has acted in power with this arm. Mary says, “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of God’s promise spoken to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the promise spoken to David; the promise spoken through Isaiah.
Jesus was the Christ – he was the
Messiah descended from King David. He
was the One of whom Gabriel said, “And the Lord God will give to him the
throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of
Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
But the presence of the Son of God as a human fetus in Mary’s womb reveals
a surprising truth. God acted in power
through Jesus to free us from Satan, sin, and death. But this power was present
in humility. Christ did not come as a mighty king who was powerful in war.
Instead, he came as One who served.
St Paul said this about Christ, “who, though he was in the
form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness
of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The Son of God humbled himself as he did not
use his almighty power for his own sake.
He displayed mighty power in his miracles, but that power was always
directed in the service of others.
Jesus humbled himself to the point of death – even death on a cross
– in order to free us from sin and Satan. He redeemed us through his sacrifice
and was buried in a tomb. But after humbling himself in service to us, God
exalted him on Easter when he raised him from the dead. God brought Jesus
through death and raised him up in order to give us victory over the grave. The
Lord who has risen from the dead, and has been exalted to the right hand of
God, will raise up our bodies when he returns in glory on the Last Day. Through
the humility and exaltation of Jesus, we have been raised up from the humility
of our sin, and we will share in the exaltation of the resurrection of the
body.
Mary is obviously the central figure in our text tonight. As she
says, “For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he
who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” Mary
was the instrument through whom God carried out the incarnation as he worked to
give us forgiveness and eternal life in Christ. She is rightly honored as the
one who had this great role in God’s plan of salvation.
Mary provides for us a model and example of faith, as she trusted
in the Lord. The angel Gabriel announced news to Mary that was going to turn
her life upside down. She was going to become pregnant in way that would appear
to others as if she had broken the Sixth Commandment. She had been chosen by
God to be part of his plan to bring salvation to Israel – and to all the world.
She was going to be the mother of the Son of God. Mary hadn’t been given a
choice in all of this. But rather than questioning why God was doing this she
replied, “Behold, I am the
servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
Mary believed God’s Word. She trusted and believed that he would fulfill his word. As Elizabeth said to her: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” In this she provides an example for us who are also called to believe and trust that God will fulfill his word of promise to care for us in our lives, and also to bring about the consummation of his saving work on the Last Day.
At the same time, all of our thought about Mary must also remain
within the bounds of what Scripture reveals about her. She was not free
from original sin at her birth, and she continued to be a sinner during her
life just like you and me. Mary was not
“taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen
over all things.” Scripture reveals
nothing about any of this, and sadly these beliefs as taught by the Roman
Catholic church are the assertions of man that have no truth revealed by God.
Instead, because they have been repeated by men in the past they are labeled
“Tradition” and declared to be divine revelation. But this is not the inspired apostolic
tradition that we find in Scripture, and so these false beliefs fuel
practices that focus attention on Mary instead of Christ.
In our text tonight, we learn that God uses the lowly as he carries
out his mighty act of salvation. He took
Mary in her humble state and used her as the instrument of the incarnation. The
Son of God, Jesus Christ, in her womb is God present through humble means, and
he is in the world to die on the cross.
But now we bless and honor Mary for the way God used her. And more
importantly, Christ who humbled himself to the point of death has been exalted
in the resurrection. Because of Jesus,
we who were trapped in the humility of our sin now have forgiveness as the
children of God. And we know that we will share in the exaltation of the
resurrection on the Last Day.
