The Magnificat

 

My celebrated interlocutor Xerxes has written a column praising Mary for the Magnificat as a declaration of female empowerment:

“This is no gentle maid, meek and mild. She speaks of ‘scattering the proud… bringing down the powerful… lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty…’

            This is one tough woman. ‘I am woman,’ she would sing, like Helen Reddy. ‘Hear me roar!’”

I have some trouble hearing the Virgin Mary roar. Here is the Magnificat, in English translation. As it happens, it is the responsorial for today's mass:

My soul magnifies the Lord 

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;

Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;

For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;

Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is His name;

And His mercy is from generation to generation

on those who fear Him.

He has shown might with His arm,

He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and has exalted the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich He has sent away empty.

He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of His mercy

Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

Note that Xerxes has it pretty much backwards. Mary is not saying she will scatter the proud or bring down the powerful. She says God has already done this.

One presumes from this that she is not talking political power, not talking politics at all. 

And the tone is the polar opposite of Helen Reddy’s in “I Am Woman.” Reddy is aggressively boastful, saying, in essence, “I am God”:

“If I have to, I can do anything

I am strong

I am invincible.”

 Mary by contrast says her soul magnifies the Lord, rather than herself; she then refers to herself in the third person, to “the lowliness of His handmaid.

Mary’s attitude is the religious attitude. Helen Reddy’s attitude is the antithesis of the religious attitude.