Word to the Wise
Saturday, December 22, 2007 - Saturday of the Third Week of Advent
[1 Samuel 1:24-28 and Luke 1:46-56]My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior for he has looked upon his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
The "Magnificat" or "Canticle of Mary" has been the object of great musical composition, art and countless sermons! It stands alone as a work of art in the gospel because it uses expressions that are familiar from other sources in the bible and combines them in a real gem of a song! It is in the Magnificat that we see Mary as disciple. She has accepted the identity of her child as the Messiah and now she proclaims the gospel of that Messiah to Elizabeth (and to all who read those words.) In his wonderful little book: A COMING CHRIST IN ADVENT - ESSAYS ON THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES PREPARING FOR THE BIRTH OF JESUS, Fr. Raymond Brown, SS, quotes the following words from Pope Paul VI's document on devotion to the Blessed Mother (Marialis Cultus): "The Virgin Mary has always been proposed to the faithful by the church as an example to be imitated, not precisely in the type of life she led and much less for the sociocultural background in which she lived and which scarcely today exists anywhere. Rather she is held up as an example to the faithful for the way in which in her own particular life she fully and responsibly accepted the will of God, because she heard the word of God and acted on it, and because charity and the spirit of service were the driving force of her actions. She is worthy of imitation because she was the first and most perfect of Christ's disciples." Those words of Pope Paul's give us a "program" and a model for observing Christmas and every New Year! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
63 ms
4
