“AND Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaiden, for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is His name, and His mercy is from generation to generation to them that fear Him. He hath showed might with His arm, He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath received Israel His servant, being mindful of His mercy, as He spoke to your fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.”
We may say a few words concerning each of these heads. Mary does not say that her tongue magnifies the Lord, but her soul, for the soul can understand the greatness of God far better than the tongue can describe it. God had magnified the soul of Mary above all men and angels, He had even Himself become Man in her womb, and now she gives Him back all this greatness, which is His and not hers. She will speak no word of her own greatness, all greatness is His, all His gifts are to be referred to Him. All creatures praise and magnify: Him, she above all. Then she shows her gratitude by exulting and rejoicing in Him. He is her Saviour, her Jesus, her own, He belongs to her more than to all the world. She has no joy but in Him, her thoughts rejoice to dwell on Him, her memory feeds itself upon Him, the salvation which He works out for all the world she rejoices in more than all the world, for it belongs most of all to her.
There are two things in God on which the contemplations of men and of angels are turned with an everlasting gaze of ecstatic wonder–His majesty and His goodness. The first generates chaste fear, the second ardent love. They venerate His majesty and love His goodness. The one requires the other, for love without reverence is a waste, and reverence without love is a pain.
Mary proceeds to speak of the great instance of His goodness, which has been shown in His treatment of her. “Because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid, for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,” I shall be called blessed not only by one or two, but by all the generations of mankind. She speaks as the one who had been chosen to be the promised Mother, in whose seed all the generations of the world were to be blessed, the Woman between whom and Satan enmities had been placed by God, and who was to crush the head of the serpent under her virgin foot. “He hath regarded her humility,” for her love and choice of humility, as her great virtue, was inspired by Him first, and then next she was chosen and accepted for her humility, and then, again, she was exalted for her humility.
Her humility, then, she says, was the one quality beyond all others for which God looked upon her. She was noble and high born, but God did not regard her noble or royal blood and high rank, for He looketh on those things, that are lowly, and regardeth the lofty afar off. She was beautiful, but beauty is vain. She might have been powerful, but He it is that humbles the mighty. She might have been wise, but God chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. Her virginity was beautiful in His eyes, yet it was not that that He looked upon. Nor could He have regarded her prudence, or riches in this world, nor the fact that she had been sanctified in the womb, nor her gifts of prayer and contemplation, nor her watchfulness over her senses, nor even her faith, nor her hope, nor her most wonderful charity. And so she leaves these virtues unspoken of, and says only, “He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid, for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.”