The Magnificat: the song of the Virgin Mary (Lk 1,46-55)

A girl from Nazareth enters the house of her beloved Elizabeth, in the mountain of Judah, and breaks to sing. What he sings is not a cradle song: it is a hymn where God He brings down the mighty from the throne y fire the rich empty. The Church has been praying it every afternoon, in Vesperas, for over a thousand five hundred years. It's called Magnícite for his first Latin word.

And it has a particularity that should be said from the beginning, because it explains its strength: almost every verse is woven with Old Testament threads. Mary doesn't improvise. Pray with the words of your people.

The text

En latín comeenza Magnificat anima mea Dominum, et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo, quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae...

A word that almost always mistranslates

The Greek says Tapeinosisand does not mean the under of humility, but the condicion humildeThe real little one who doesn't count for anyone. Benedict XVI explained this precisely: it indicates a concrete situation of humility and poverty. Mary is not praising her own modesty; she is noticing that God has fixed herself on a stranger. It is the difference between boasting humble and knowing poor.

And there is a precise echo behind it: the term probably comes from the song of Anne, the mother of Samuel, when he asks the Lord to look. «the aflicción de tu sierva» (1 Samuel 1,11).

The song of Anne: the model

A thousand years earlier, another humiliated woman - barren, despised - had sung in the Shiloh sanctuary an amazingly similar anthem (1 Samuel 2: 1-10):

The coincidence is not casual or plagiarism: it is b.. Whoever sings gets in line with those who have already sung.

Full map of biblical resonances

This is the heart of the Magnificat, and it deserves to be seen whole:

Add Psalm 113, which sings to the God who "He raises from dust to destitute."and the joy of the "daughter of Zion" of Sofoniah 3,14-17. The result is what specialists call a Himno anthológico: a mosaic of Scripture. This is also the sum of the Magisterium, quoting Benedict XVI: the Magnificat "is entirely woven by the threads of Holy Scripture".

The technical question that is often hidden: did Mary or Isabel say it?

It deserves to be told, because it's real and because the answer is firm. A few ancient Latin manuscripts - the codex of the Vetus Latina known as Vercellensis, Veronensis and Rehdigeranus, between the 4th and 8th centuries - read "And said Isabel." for "And said Mary.". The same is true of the Armenian version of a passage of Saint Irene (which elsewhere attributes it to Mary) and a writing of Nicetas of Remesiana around 400.

The issue was discussed in depth at the beginning of the 20th century - Harnack came to propose that the original only said "She said "-, and the textual criticism considers it resolved: all Greek manuscripts and all ancient versions attribute the song to Mary; the variant is exclusively Latin. There is also an internal argument difficult to draw: the verse "will congratulate me every generation" It would be strange in Isabel's mouth.

Did Lucas make it up or did he already exist?

Es una ciestión abiertaAnd it's said here as such. Much of the current exegesis thinks Luke incorporated an earlier anthem born in the circles of the Duam - the "poor of Yahweh," those who did not expect anything of their strength and all of God - related to the Jewish anthem of the time, like the Hodayot of Qumrán. Some exegets consider that the verse about the generations that will congratulate her is added by Luke himself, as he is the only one personally referred to Mary. Others defend the entire Lucana composition.

What no one is discussing is the essence: Luke puts it on Mary's lips and the text is woven of Scripture.

Seven verbs that change history

In the original Greek, the second movement of the song chain siete verbos en aoristoAnd he made feuds, and scattered, and brought down, and exalted, and hung, and fired, and helped. Benedict XVI noted that these seven actions show the style in which the Lord acts permanently in history, and summarized it in a phrase: "is on the side of the last.".

Investment: from a woman to a people

There is a frame in the Greek text that illuminates everything. The word with which Mary appoints her own small, Tapeinosis, is the same root of the tapeinoús, the humble to whom God exalts. What God does with this girl is the miniature of what He does with his people: la inversión personal anuncia la inversión histórica.

That's why the song is not a devout and kind piece. St. John Paul II said this without softening it:

And Paul VI came to the fore, already in 1974, of those who imagine the Virgin as a docile and deactivated woman: remember that Mary was something "completely different from a passively remissive woman or of alienating religiosity", y que He did not hesitate to proclaim that God defends the humble and the oppressed.. The Aparecida Conference formulated this: the Magnificat shows Mary as a woman able to commit to her reality and have a prophetic voice before her.

Quién alaba a quién

It is appropriate to look at something that the text itself resolves: in the Magnificat Mary is not the term of praise, but who praises. The subject of all the saving verbs is God: he looks, he does great works, he scatters, he melts, he exalts, he hires, he helps. She proclaims.

That is why this song is the best school to understand the distinction that the Church maintains without ambiguity: God is given Adora; a María se la venera and is asked to intercede. The Catechism says this with the words of the Council: the veneration of the Virgin, though at all unique, "is essentially different from the veneration veneration given to the incarnate Word, as well as to the Father and the Holy Spirit, but it greatly favors it.". Saint Ambrose brought him to the practical ground: each must have the soul of Mary to proclaim the greatness of the Lord.

Why do you sing to be late

El Magníficat es el cántico evangélico de Vísperas, as in Benedictus lo es de Laudes. La General management of the Liturgy of the Hours orders to say con solemnidadwith his own antiphon according to the day or the party. In Solemn Vespers the assembly stands and the altar is incited, as at the beginning of the Mass: therefore it is sung slower than the psalms.

Its liturgical use is prior to the year 500. Two honest details:

• La Saint Benedict's rule (6th century) prescribes a canticum of Evangelia, «Evangelical Clantic», pero no lo nombra. Its identification with the Magnificat is the traditional and unanimous reading, not an express mention.
• The oldest liturgical testimony preserved - the rule of San Cesáreo de Arléswritten before 502 - assigns to Laudenot Vespers, just like the Greek Churches do today. In Byzantine tradition it is sung in Maitines.

The allegorical reasons given by the medieval authors to sing it at sunset - that the world was saved "in its dusk" by Mary's own, or that she would come to Elizabeth's house at the fall of the afternoon - are pious, not historical.

En la música

It is sung in the eight Gregorian ways, and shares with the Benedictus the honor of carrying your own intonation in each verse. They put it in polyphony Josquin, Morales, Palestrina, Victoria, Orlando di Lasso and the Gabrieli. Monteverdi lo situó como cumbre de upper Vespers of the Blessed Virgin (1610); Vivaldi He composed it in the lower sun; Bach He wrote his in 1723 and then reviewed it in a major. In the 20th century he was approached Penderecki (1974), Arvo Pärt (1989) y John Rutter (1990). También Lutero He dedicated a famous comment, beginning in 1520 and finished in the Wartburg the following year.

What you sing every afternoon

The background scene is no smaller. Lucas describes the Visitation with echoes of transfer of the ark of the alliance María parte hacia Judá, Isabel exclaima "Is there soy yo para that I visit the madre de mi Señor?" as David before the ark, and remains 3 monthslike the ark in the house of Obededom. The one who brings God into his bosom is the new ark on the way.

And when that girl opens her mouth, she talks about herself only to say that God looked at her little one. Everything else says about him. That is why the Church repeats her song when the evening falls, when she takes stock of the day: to remember who really holds the story, and what side she gets on.