Home > Advent Blog 2022
My Soul Magnifies the Lord
December 22, 2022
Isaiah 29:13-24 | Revelation 21:22-22:5 | Luke 1:39-56
Not being a Biblical scholar, I’m on shaky ground when I claim that nowhere else in the Good Book has an angel of the Lord spoken directly to a woman before Gabriel speaks to Mary just prior to these verses with the Annunciation. But I believe we can agree that if this Biblical event is not unique, it is almost unheard of.
The Archangel Gabriel tells Mary, a woman, and therefore a person by law and definition without status or societal power, that the Lord is with her. And not only is the Lord with her, but that God will impregnate her with His Son Jesus. Notice Gabriel does not approach Joseph with his almost hallucinogenic and deeply mysterious announcement, as he did with Zacharias, coming to him instead of to his wife Elizabeth. No, Gabriel comes to Mary, because God has chosen an unwed virgin to carry His child, a woman without even a modicum of the cultural status that marriage and age can bestow.
The Virgin Mary not only accepts, but rejoices in Gabriel’s announcement, somehow understanding that she, and therefore each one of us humans, is so much larger, so much grander, then we see ourselves. That God sees us always not only with eyes of Love, but with a gaze that discerns our innate divine beauty, and therefore our magnificence, a simpler reflection of His (Hers).
After her extraordinary conversion, which she then goes on to honor throughout her entire life, what does Mary do? She runs to share her Good News with her older cousin and girlfriend, Elizabeth, who has her own miracle occurring in her old age pregnancy with John the Baptist. And almost of course, given the profoundly paradoxical nature of these passages, Elizabeth already knows Mary’s News. Elizabeth knows because her babe in the womb, John, has alerted his mother by leaping for joy at the mere sight of Mary.
How earthy! How mysterious! How fantastic! As these two good women, one young and one old, bare their bodies and their souls to magnify God.
May we do the same. Amen.
Judith Sutphen
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