My soul magnifies the Lord
My soul magnifies the Lord
On the occasion of the Fast of the Virgin, last week we spoke about the visitation of the Virgin to Elizabeth, and we took from it a lesson about the meetings of the saints.
And tonight we continue our talk about the visitation of the Virgin to Elizabeth, as we contemplate the hymn of the Virgin, especially its opening phrases.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior’ (Luke 1:46).
When the Virgin saw that Elizabeth praised her, saying, ‘Blessed are you among women; blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord; and why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me,’ she did not wish to let her continue in her praise.
Rather, she turned the subject of the meeting from praise of herself to praise of the Lord.
And she chanted her well-known hymn, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord…’ Thus she cut short Elizabeth’s praise of her and turned her thoughts toward the Lord.
In reality, we find a very great difference between the Virgin who contemplated the greatness of the Lord, and righteous Job in his speech about his personal greatness:
Righteous Job stood praising himself and said, ‘… The young men saw me and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood. The princes refrained from talking and laid their hand on their mouth. The voice of the nobles was hushed, and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth. For when the ear heard, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw, it gave witness to me. Because I delivered the poor who cried out, the fatherless and the one who had none to help him. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame…’
But the Lady the Virgin did not magnify herself; rather, she magnified the Lord…
All her words were about God, who has shown strength with His arm, ‘holy is His name, and His mercy is from generation to generation; He has scattered the proud, put down the mighty, and exalted the lowly; He has filled the hungry…’
All her words were about God, not about herself. She did not say that she had done anything great; rather, ‘He who is mighty has done great things for me.’
The Virgin desired to disappear so that God might appear. She cut short Elizabeth’s praise of her in order to praise God.
God filled her heart, her mind, her time, and her mouth, and occupied her attention.
The Virgin is occupied with God, contemplating His works, His mercy, and His holy name. She did not speak to Elizabeth about her circumstances, nor did she wander with her into social or family conversations; rather, she spoke to her about God, and it was a spiritual meeting.
Would that we take this as a training for our lives: to be occupied with God, and that God be the subject of our conversations and the center of our thinking.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’ This phrase reminds us of the saying of the Lord Christ, ‘I have glorified You on the earth’ (John 17), and of our saying in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Hallowed be Your name.’ It reminds us that God be all in all in our lives: ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Your holy name give glory.’
It also reminds us of the saints’ constant occupation with God. God became for them food day and night; He became their hymn, their song, their speech, and their meditation.
Ask yourself: with what do you occupy your time? With God or with something else?
‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’ If you wish to magnify the Lord, then keep away from magnifying yourself and everything related to you.
The people magnified King Herod and said of his voice, ‘This is the voice of a god,’ so an angel of the Lord struck him with worms and he died, because he did not give glory to the Lord.
And the people of Ephesus magnified Artemis. And the poet magnified his father, saying:
‘My father is like Khosrow whose palace was exalted; where among the people is a father like my father?’
Contemplation on the greatness of God:
There are many fields for contemplating the greatness of God:
God is unlimited in His greatness, unlimited in His power, unlimited with regard to place and time. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The whole universe cannot contain Him, and time does not limit Him. He exists before time; He is eternal before the ages. He is unlimited in His perfection, in His holiness, in His goodness, in His beauty. Moses saw something of His beauty, and his face shone so that the people could not bear to look at him, so he put a veil over his face.
God is unlimited in His knowledge, in His understanding, in His wisdom… How vast is the difference between His knowledge and the knowledge of mankind. All the knowledge of mankind is foolishness before God.
People know some things about some things, but God knows everything about everything and about everyone. He knows without means or instruments, without progression, with full certainty. He knows the hidden things; He knows the unseen and the future; He reads hearts and thoughts.
Before Him we say as Job said, ‘I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.’
Truly, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’
Every attribute of God—if you contemplate it, you are overwhelmed and say, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord,’ and you feel the insignificance of the whole universe and the insignificance of yourself before Him.
Would that we contemplate the aspects of divine greatness and the perfections therein.
And when we magnify God, it is not because He needs our magnification, but because our spirits, our thoughts, and our tongues are sanctified by the name of God, His remembrance, and His attributes, and our spirits rise to a divine realm that lifts us with it to a height higher than ourselves.
God is not in need of our glorification, nor of the glorification of nature, which declares the glory of God and proclaims the work of His hands, nor of the glorification of the angels. Rather, His attributes, His nature, and His divinity glorify Him. He is glorified in Himself.
And if contemplation of the attributes of God and of His divinity is higher than you, you can magnify the Lord in His creation, in nature, and in yourself.
Merely contemplating a lily of the field, which Solomon could not clothe like one of them, or contemplating the heavens and the planets and the laws that govern them as they hang in the skies, or contemplating the organs of the body that work in marvelous wisdom according to wonderful laws—all this and more, we stand before it and say, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’
And if we magnify the Lord for present things, how much more should we magnify Him for future things, for what eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.
The mere raising of the dead is a wondrous matter; we stand before it and say, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’ Truly, how does He raise the dust and grant it life!
As for the greatness we see in man who has reached the moon and Mars, it is also a gift from God, who granted man intelligence and knowledge. Before this greatness we say, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’
Before the greatness of God, man is crushed and his heart is humbled… Who am I? Merely a simple human in this vast universe, living in a brief period of time set in the midst of the ages… What is my being, my knowledge, and my power before God, the Unlimited, who is able to do all things?
Before the greatness of God, we feel small and that we are nothing… And if God looks upon us, we say:
‘For He has regarded the lowliness of His maidservant.’
And when your soul is crushed, you receive gifts from the Lord.
God gains nothing by your glorification. He neither increases nor decreases… But you increase in love, you increase in reverence, you increase in humility, you increase in depth, whenever you contemplate the greatness of God and your soul magnifies the Lord… and your spirit rejoices in God your Savior.
It is wondrous that all these contemplations with which the hymn of the Virgin abounds came forth from a girl about fourteen years of age, yet an age filled with the Spirit, deep in its experience, an age raised in the temple.
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.’ The life of rejoicing in the Spirit is a long subject, which we leave to another opportunity.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Seventh Year (Issue No. 34) – 20-8-1976
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