Dear Participants,

Welcome to Day Five of our retreat! Today's topic is Mary and the Magnificat. 

There is a not-so-subliminal message in the Magnificat: The Kingdom is here, convert! We are not talking about moral conversion. We have to understand the message for what it says: turn and look at this Kingdom! There is such an extraordinary landscape, and we still look at the tomb, towards darkness, or we are so preoccupied to be worthy of the Kingdom, to be adorned with a nuptial garment without too many holes and spots that we forget the One who invited us! There is indeed a peace of mind in coming back to these faith fundamentals: God is, it's enough. Christ is victorious!

It is not rare to hear or read in today's media about the grim climate. Everyone has, had, good reasons to succumb to the prevailing gloom. Even Mary, in the heart of the Roman occupation, with a collaborating bloodthirsty king, could have thrown the towel. But she didn't despair: all the gloom-causing stuff was secondary. What mattered most, the substance, was the invisible.

Scholars insisted on similarities between the Magnificat and other canticles from the Old Testament. In the Bible of Jerusalem, seventeen references were noted, sending back to Old Testament texts. But one doesn't need to be a biblical scholar to notice a fundamental difference between the Old Testament texts and the Magnificat: the verb tenses (yes, grammar again!); Where we used to find future tense, in the old writings, we now have present tense. This is the present tense of completion. 

One may wonder how what used to be a prophecy for the future is becoming a "now" event: the answer is by praise! Praise is precisely what makes the event of Salvation a reality, present, palpable, right under our eyes. Praise is the answer, the only right answer to the Salvation event. God is here, let us sing a song of praise!

Simple description, affirmation, are not enough, we need to reach thanksgiving and praise level. A laudative attitude is what helps us perceive God's presence and His works. 

In Psalm 22, we read the following verse: "But You are holy, You who inhabit the praises of Israel."

Inner praise enables God to dwell in our heart, our world. It is essential. We now understand why God is more present where he is more praised. This is what happens during the Eucharist, for example. 

After the grammar lesson, let's study the etymology of the verb "to magnify," from which the Magnificate came: from the Latin word Magnus, "great," Magnificus "great, elevated, noble," Magnificare "esteem greatly, extol, make much of." It means "to speak or act for the glory or honor of someone or something." A modern meaning is "to enlarge by using a lens," or "to intensify, dramatize, heighten." 

By magnifying God, we are both glorifying him, in the archaic meaning of the term, and augmenting him, amplifying him, increasing him, in the modern sense. But we often tend to be intellectualists, dismissing praise as being a naivety, or a spiritualized auto-suggestion. By praise, God grows within us!

We ought to praise God for all things, good and bad, but not just any old how: we ought to affirm that contradictions and trials aren't the end of it, we ought to express our trust in God, just as St. Maximilian Kolbe sang the Lord's praises in the train to Auschwitz. It's not easy, far from it. This is why we can rely on Mary to help us and teach us. 

Let us pray:

In the presence of all the heavenly court, I choose you this day, for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to you as your slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present, and future; leaving to you the entire and full right of disposing of me, and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and eternity. Amen. 

Artwork: The Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.