Written by O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of heaven: come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
During the Advent season, we receive from God (through the prophet Isaiah) a litany of incredible promises. We read the following passage from Isaiah on the Third Sunday of Advent:
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.”
Isaiah 65:17-20
Such are the promises that would be fulfilled in the birth of the Savior and consummated at His Second Coming. No longer will God’s people weep or cry out in distress. No longer will man have his life cut short, and no longer will babies face slaughter in the womb. Yet in this age, God chose of all possible means to visit us in the very form of an infant, those most vulnerable and persecuted people among us. God could have chosen any other means by which to visit His people, but He chose incomprehensibly to come in ultimate humility! And that infant would be born not of any woman, but of a pure Virgin, the one whom all generations would call “blessed.” Such is the love of God for us.
In Isaiah chapter 7, the LORD delivers this promise through the prophet to His people:
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).
Isaiah uses a Hebrew word to describe the mother – “almah” – meaning a “young woman” or a “maiden.” Yet by the time the Gospel of Matthew records the angel’s visit to Joseph to deliver this same prophecy, the meaning of this Hebrew word had blossomed into a fuller meaning through the Greek translation – “parthenos” – meaning “virgin.” God’s miraculous promises in Isaiah were thus miraculously inaugurated by the Virgin birth, through the cooperation of her great Fiat:
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
It is the Virgin Mary’s posture of unique humility and thanksgiving before the LORD which we are called to emulate during the Advent season. This is why we read her Magnificat, “The Song of Mary” – to remind ourselves of her generous offering of her whole self to God in faith (in expectation of the Lord’s first Advent), and to call ourselves to do the same (as we diligently prepare for His second Advent).
Our lives must be ordered to magnify the glory of God – not as a microscope to enlarge something small, but as a telescope to bring into focus that which is impossibly large.
Mary’s Magnificat appears in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1, from which the English Standard Version translates, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” the wording from which we receive the prayer’s name, Magnificat.
Our lives must be ordered to magnify the glory of God – not as a microscope to enlarge something small, but as a telescope to bring into focus that which is impossibly large. We can take this analogy one step further by reflecting on our posture when using each instrument. With a microscope, we are bent over, looking down, examining and fixating on incredibly small, minute details. With a telescope, on the other hand, we fix our gaze upward, broadening our horizons to the stars, and focusing not on microscopic details, but outward, toward the expanse of the cosmos.
The posture of our own lives before the LORD is equally instructive. With a microscope, we (the observer) are exponentially larger than the object of our study. Likewise, when we spend our lives focused on ourselves, we get spiritually (if not physically) hunched over, looking inward and downward at our own selfish preoccupations – how we look, the stuff we have, the stuff we don’t have, the ways people have wronged us, plus all the things that need to change in order for us to finally be happy.
With a telescope, however, we are infinitely smaller than the expanse of heavenly bodies we observe. Our posture, therefore, dictates our perspective on reality. When we, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, offer our whole selves to magnify the Lord, we point a telescope at His glory, rather than hold our grievances under a microscope. It is when we submit ourselves to the infinite goodness of God’s promises for eternity that our long list of troubles becomes nothing more than a “light momentary affliction.” In that same posture before God, we enter into the reality promised through the prophet Isaiah:
“For behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (Isaiah 65:17).
The words of John the Baptist should reinforce this posture of humility in our hearts. In chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, the disciples of John the Baptist observe that Jesus, the one whom John had baptized himself, was now also baptizing others in Judea. The followers of John, understandably, call this out.
And John answers, “You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:28-30).
John describes himself as the “friend of the bridegroom,” translated literally from “the best man.” In Jewish tradition, the best man was the one who arranged the wedding, so the arrival of the bridegroom would be nothing but joy for him. Conflict between the best man and the groom would be unthinkable, as it is in our own wedding traditions today. Hence John rightly and willingly understands that he must decrease, and Jesus must decrease. For how awful would a wedding be if the best man spent all his energy putting all the attention on himself? It would be ridiculous! The wedding wouldn’t work; the best man would need to be kicked out.
The Lord has indeed done great things for us. Will we choose to magnify them with the telescope of our lives?
Beloved, we commit this same error when we devote all our time and energy to focus on ourselves. Our modern “sensibilities” and indeed our very human nature tell us at every moment that we are the stars of the show; we are the “main characters” of our own lives, and everyone else is an extra. And nothing brings out our self-centeredness quite like the modern Christmas season, when we kick the consumerism into overdrive and place a premium on style over substance. Every signal we receive tells us to “increase ourselves” and to cast aside anyone who would ask us to do otherwise.
Such is our fallen human nature. Whether holidays, sports, business, and even ministry (one could argue especially in ministry), we far too often cling to a vision which places us center stage; like the aging professional sports star, we insist on playing past our prime, focusing on those things which preserve a false vision of our lives where we can be the star of the show. And while God does appoint seasons in our lives where we may serve His good purposes in one way or another, we are wrong to think they were ever about us. He must increase, and we must decrease.
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Luke 1:46-49
The Lord has indeed done great things for us. Will we choose to magnify them with the telescope of our lives? Or will we grab the microscope to stoop down and fixate on the germs of our own sins and shortcomings? God has promised us a future so exuberant that everything bothering us at this very moment, and every pain we face in the future, will not even register as a distant memory. “He who calls [us] is faithful,” Saint Paul says, “he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).
Advent is our reminder that God’s plan for our lives is infinitely greater than what we face in our present moment – an opportunity for us to look ahead to the second coming of our Lord and say with the Blessed Virgin at His first, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” May we rejoice at hearing His voice, and in faith offer our whole selves to Him in obedience, that He may increase, and we may gladly decrease. In so doing, through the work of Christ, the Canticle of Mary is the song “of both the Mother of God and of the Church” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2619), the song of all whose hope is met in the fulfillment of God’s eternal promises.
May the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ever increase in our own lives and in our hearts this Advent and Christmas.