The wonder of Mary

LOGARTA

In preparation of the celebration of Our Mother’s birthday, I looked for materials on her and asked my sister Delia for these.

She provided me with “The Mary Book,” “The Lights of the Immaculate,” “Mary’s Way of the Cross,” and “Mary in the Gospels.”

The last was chosen because it would also help for my Bible-sharing sessions with Alay Kapwa. It is a small but very beautiful book.

This slim volume written by Giovanni Maria Bigotto, FMS, includes chapters as: “God’s Sweet Mother,” “Mary, the First One,” “The Woman in the Completion of Time,” “An Enthusiastic Yes,” “The Heart, the Centre of Prayer,” “The Beloved Disciple,” “A Feast of Love,” “Here Is Your Mother,” “And From That Hour the Disciple Took Her into His Home,” and “The Magnificat.”

Because I can really relate to “The Magnificat” and actually cherish this canticle, we choose to share the discussion here.

It is introduced with a quote from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus Caritas Est: “This hymn is wholly woven from biblical threads extracted from the Word of God. Mary showed herself very conversant with the Holy Scripture, referring to it with great ease.”

And the author points out: “A new canticle was an improvised psalm woven from a number of spontaneous biblical quotations.

Mary’s song bounds from one quotation to another, as if the entire Old Testament permeated her voice and passed into the New Testament through her.”

In her song Mary let us know God. The author enumerates and discusses the dimensions of our God revealed in Mary’s praise. This God is a “saving,” “personal God” — “My Saviour.” I find this totally reassuring. And this God is also “a God used to working wonders. He is a God who gives life, freedom and nobility abundantly.” I have to assert this intensely as I pray for the hostages in Marawi.

We are also reminded by the canticle that “God is a God of Love. God’s love and gifts to humanity are entirely gratuitous, never deserved, never owed, always the generous free bounty that is one with the holiness of God!” This implies a continuing sense of gratitude on our part.

As we face our multidimensional crisis, we are reminded of a “God who favors the little ones. He scatters the proud, pulls down the powerful, sends the rich away empty.” In her song Mary also stresses God’s presence among his people, “the one who walks with his people” because “God is faithful.”

We also get to know Mary in “The Magnificat.” Bigotto states, “Mary is an intelligent woman. She understands and proclaims what God has achieved in her, ‘The Lord has worked wonders for me.’ It is characteristic of her to reflect, to seek to understand, to ponder in her heart as a sanctuary of prayer; she even has the clear intuition about what the wonders worked in her will evoke in the future: ‘all generations will call me blessed.’”

At the same time, the song reveals her to be a woman of faith: “It is only through faith that the presence of God can be found in the events of history.

Through faith she is able to discover what God has in mind for her: no accident, this child of hers, but the gift of a loving God coming to save us.”
In the song, Mary’s humility is repeatedly declared. So this humility is clarified: “She knows the truth of herself, is confident of her acceptance of unique mission, and happily calls herself ‘the humble servant’, placing herself not among the proud, but among Israel’s little ones, the anawim.”

The entire song is full of Mary’s joy and gratitude. So we fill ourselves with love, joy and gratitude on her special day and always.