Most of the significant moments in Mary?s life that are recorded for us in the gospels have been painted: the annunciation, the stable and its visitors, the flight into Egypt, the miracle at Cana, the Crucifixion, entombment and even Easter and Pentecost. The one moment of drama of which I know no painting is the first performance of the Magnificat. There are certainly pictures of the moments leading up to it ? the meeting with Elizabeth in the hill town which is her home; but no paintings of Mary?s great hymn of adoration. Of course it might be hard to think quite how such a verbal moment should be visually represented ? and her appearance might differ according to which lines she is singing; wrapt in wonder at the beginning as she magnifies God; but then later on including the people around her as she sings of God?s grace to the humble and meek and the abasement of the rich and proud ? a revolutionary moment sung as it were on the spiritual barricades.
As today is Mothering Sunday, Mary?s day, and all mothers? day, and a day too for mother church ? I want to reflect not on our readings but on this canticle we hear each Sunday and what it can teach us about prayer. In some ways we lose things from it in translation, but in other ways we gain from Cranmer?s genius as a writer. We lose out in the first place because of natural English word order. In both Greek and Latin the verb can come first in the sentence ? ?Magnificat? – as in the great setting by Bach. In English the self- reference comes first; My soul doth magnify. But this is not a nebulous opening ? a reference to some spiritual part of our minds. The soul means the self in all its aspects mind, heart, imagination, body, past present and future. All of me in every part magnifies, extols, makes great, the Lord. We are reminded of a telescope or magnifying glass. Prayer starts with making God bigger, recognising God is far greater than anything we can possibly imagine, transcendent, above all knowledge, wholly other. Prayer begins with the difficult process of letting God be his proper size.
It is a curious business ? this magnifying God. We are not as it were hero worshipping God or idolising him. We are not projecting onto God the characteristics of what we think the perfect being might be like. Magnifying God is in the first place a process of letting go of all language and imagery ? a process of self transcendence. And yet if we are not careful this can sound like an abstractly intellectual process. If God is so much beyond me ? what can I possibly have to do with him or he with me? Doesn?t this process involve God floating off into an outer space of meaninglessness. If I can?t refer to God in any way am I not reduced to silence ? and what?s more, a silence of profound emptiness? Surely that is not what prayer is about, neither is it in the spirit of the Magnificat?
As Mary goes on to say ? my spirit ? again another word meaning my whole self ? exults in God my Saviour. This is an exultant kind of magnifying, which promises good to the so exultant self. And so I think that if we find this language of negation too abstract we have gone astray ? we have not understood. Letting God be his proper size by abandoning all language and imagery is an exultant experience as it were of flinging the soul out into space ? or as Hopkins puts it ? the heart rears wings bold and bolder, and hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.? This is not a process of dry detachment, of neglectful abandonment of the world we live in.
We magnify God exultantly ? we rejoice in the fact that no word or image is adequate to describe him. We say no to every word and image in order to purify our encounter with the God who is wholly other. All my words and images try to pin him down, define him, grasp him, make him safe and manageable, so I can control my encounter with him. But once we can truly magnify God we let go of all that; we allow him to be wholly other so that we can stand before him, present ourselves to him as simply and nakedly ourselves, bereft of all control and therefore in absolute trust, a resignation of all attempts to negotiate how the other sees me.
And so in this moment of self transcendence this transcendent God ?hath regarded the lowliness of his hand maiden.? This letting go of all language and imagery is a form of service to God, and also an act of humility, a recognition of my total dependence on the other. This is not, I repeat, an attempt to reject or annihilate the self, not a form of self hatred, but simply a willingness to let go of self consciousness before the other.
For then he that is mighty magnifies me. And this is where Cranmer?s translation is so inspired. For in the original and in most other translations we read ?he that is mighty has done great things to or for me.? But Cranmer goes back to the word in the first line. ?My soul doth magnify the Lord,? and now, ?he that is might hath magnified me?. Prayer is you might say a process of reciprocal magnification, or magnifying reciprocity. In this process of letting go before God there is a sense of growing ? the soul is enlarged by enlarging God.
And as the soul is enlarged so it is able to hallow the name of God. And of course the naming of God is not a retreat back into language again. For God?s name is simply an acknowledgement of the mystery ? ?Jahweh? ?I am who I am? as Moses is told on Sinai.
And so we see in the magnificat the same process as in the Lord?s prayer. Our Father in heaven ? another way of magnifying God ? setting God in the unimaginable beyond; and then ?hallowed be thy name?. This process of letting God be God is the means whereby we become holy so as to hallow, pronounce in holiness the divine name. Self transcendence is a process of sanctification. And so the magnificat turns from the otherness of God to the otherness of neighbour.
And the holiness God requires is like the revolutionary holiness of Jesus in whose presence the last are always first and the first last. ?He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.? We see now why the abandonment of language at the start of prayer is so important. The imagination of the heart refers to the fantasies and projections, the self pity and self justification, and self centredness, which are all in their way a form of pride. And all these things scatter and fragment the soul?s energies and so prevent the faithful encounter with God, which will always lead us back to our neighbour in need, to the humble and meek, the poor and the hungry. As we learn self transcendence before God so we become more open and available to our neighbour. Thus prayer leads to action and the two become inseparable.
Although as I said to start with I know of no painting of the first performance of the Magnificat there is an icon known as the Virgin of the Sign. In it Mary looks out at you with her eyes open and her hands raised. On her breast is a roundel or medallion in which is depicted the infant Christ. The presence of Jesus in the icon is to remind us that in all our prayer it is the Spirit of Christ in us who is praying with us and for us. Prayer isn?t something we think up for ourselves it is part of the life of God in us. Jesus is as it were hidden in our prayer, however, weak or occasional or distracted our prayer might seem. Jesus is our motive to go on trying. This icon does not obviously have to do with the Magnificat. But as Archbishop Rowan has commented, ?Mary opens her hands to God in prayer, but her eyes are open to the world. It is not a bad image for our praying.? And it is a good image for praying the Magnificat. The empty hands have let go of all images, all words, all attempts to restrict the transcendence of God. The empty hands are open to the otherness of God, as the open eyes are hospitable to the needs of the world. And so Mary in her prayer, as we in ours, magnifies the Lord, and she is magnified, as we are too our enlarged in heart and mind for the sake of those who need our love and service. Amen
Stephen Tucker