The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(transferred from May 31)

The Collect
Father in heaven, by your grace the virgin mother of your incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping your word: Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
~BCP, p. 240

The Psalm
113

The Readings

I Samuel 2:1-10     +     Romans 12:9-16b     +     Luke 1:39-57

And Mary said,

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior . . .

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

~Luke 1:46-47, 52-53

'Mary's Song,' the Magnificat, has long been a central part of Christian prayer and witness. In the Prayer Book it is the canticle appointed to be sung at Daily Evening Prayer. Through centuries of repetition and musical setting, its words have become familiar to many of us. Yet how powerful and unsettling those words can be. The Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was later executed by the Nazis, called Mary's song "at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung . . . a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind." At various times its use has been discouraged or limited by regimes who feared its implications (e.g. in British-ruled India, and in Latin America during times of revolution). And Mary's song is not an outlier--as we see today, it clearly echoes Hannah's song in I Samuel, which itself draws from Psalm 113. These themes--reversal, liberation, care for the downtrodden, upending of oppression--are woven throughout scripture, most forcefully in the prophets of Israel. As I've reflected on before, that many of us can so often forget or even be oblivious to this fact is an indication of the extent to which we have lives of relative comfort and privilege. It takes intentional and imaginative effort for us really to hear what these scriptures are saying.

It takes intentional effort also to hear the cries and grievances of those suffering today. It takes intentional effort not to dismiss their cries or to focus on some other deflecting issue. It takes intentional effort, and a willingness to enter into pain, to do as St. Paul instructs and "weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:15). At this time in our nation, with grief, anger, and frustration literally exploding onto the streets of our cities, we do well to listen to Bishop Michael Curry's reminder that violence is not the instrument of the path of love to which we are called. But, as he further states, and as Mary's song reminds us, the path of love is also not silence in the face of injustice, or a desire "more for tranquility than for justice." It is not to heal brokenness superficially, saying 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace (Jer. 6:14). The gospel which Mary's song at her visitation anticipates and proclaims is indeed good news--but it is news that will always be unsettling to a world of established inequities whose systems are founded on fear and self-preservation. If the church is to proclaim such a gospel, it must first (and continually) listen deeply in order to understand it. And then, counting the cost, move into the world embracing the scandal and reproach of that message--like Mary, the young, unwed mother who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.

Closing Prayer

O God, give to us, and to all your church, an increase of the gifts of your Spirit for these days, that we may grow in wisdom and understanding, in counsel and strength, in knowledge and the fear of the Lord; that in our own lives we may magnify your holy Name. Amen. 

The Visitation by Janet McKenzie