The Covid-19 global pandemic has devastated all aspects of our lives – health, economic, emotional, social, mental and spiritual. There is fear, anguish, and ambiguity surrounding our very existence, and each day appears to bring worse news than the one before. This isn’t helped by a daily news cycle which further exacerbate our anxiety: disasters due to climate change, war and conflict, corruption in politics, fake news and conspiracy theories. The biggest challenge of the pandemic is how to find hope, even positivity amidst this pandemic.
To hope is not just to make a tough present situation more bearable and look forward to a better life but also to envision a better world and a better future. Hope speaks to a world vividly aware of the “not yet” dimensions of human and social existence, and of the fact that hope at its human level is of the stuff of meaningful existence. It is hope that changes us, hope that changes the world.
In today’s Sunday liturgy, all Catholic churches around the world celebrates the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a great celebration of hope. The taking up by God of Mary’s body and soul into heaven represents the quintessential work of God’s recreation of humanity. The feast is a proclamation of our faith about the transformation that God will recreate for all of us at the fullness of time. Mary’s assumption represents the hope and final destiny of all of creation—all will be transformed in God’s glory. As the Marian theologian, John Janaro articulates,
Mary is … an icon of the whole redemption of creation. In her we see already the radical fulfillment of all things, the perfect penetration of divine love into created being. The glorification of Mary in the Assumption is the beginning of the New Creation in which God will “be all, in all” (1 Cor. 15:28), and it reveals the eternal value of every moment in every life, the transcendent significance of each circumstance in life, because everything comes forth from God and is ordained to his glory.[1]
In the gospel of today’s feast, we hear the great hymn of Mary—the Magnificat. The magnificat showed us a portrait of Mary, which many of us may have never imagined. Many of us see Mary as the meek, mild and humble virgin woman who can never break a plate. Pope Paul VI, in his Mariological apostolic exhortation, Marialis Cultus, dispels the mistaken notion of Mary as meek and passive
Mary of Nazareth, while completely devoted to the will of God, was far from being a timidly submissive woman or one whose piety was repellent to others; on the contrary, she was a woman who did not hesitate to proclaim that God vindicates the humble and the oppressed, and removes the powerful people of this world from their privileged positions (cf Lk. 1:51-53).[2]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian killed by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler, shows how the magnificat expresses the prophetic character of Mary,
This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about collapsing thrones and humbled lords of this world, about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind. These are the tones of the women prophets of the Old Testament that now come to life in Mary’s mouth.[3]
Mary powerfully proclaimed in her song, the magnificat, the future social order that will come through the grace and power of God. Mary’s song began as a jubilant reaction to the profound truth of God’s growing within her followed by the prophetic declaration of a new social order that God will usher. As American Mariologist S.M. Roten explains,
The magnificat as Mary’s reaction to God who inhabits her virginal womb proclaimed both the past and the future acts of God; it is retrospective and prophetic at the same time. Mary’s prayer par excellence, the song of the messianic times in which there mingles the joy of the ancient and the new Israel.[4] Her song announces not only the birth of Christ, but also the birth of a new people, a liberated people, a people whose life will be centered on the Spirit of Life.[5] Mary’s song is the magna carta of any and all authentic faith experience.[6]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the magnificat a sign of a new time, “Mary’s prayer is revealed to us at the dawning of the fullness of time” (CCC, #2617). The dawn of the fullness of time—new heaven and new earth—implies that God’s kingdom has already begun and is active here and now. Mary is the first human being who belongs to the social order ordained by God; the social order that is counter-symbol to the present order of the world.
The magnificat of Mary is, indeed, a prophetic expression of the reign of God, though unwelcome by our present world because of its reversal of fortunes theme, will be celebrated by all humanity and creation at the end of time. Translated in concrete terms, it conveys the hope of eradication of poverty, sound health and education for all, better future, end of all wars, genuine peace, justice for all especially the poor, and harmony with all creation. We can only achieve this vision, not through domination, violence, hatred but through service, collaboration and love for one another.
Mary awakens in us our deepest identity that we are the embodiment of the promise of a new society, a redeemed people and a transformed community working for the prosperity and peace for all. Mary inspires us to confront the disordered systems and structures and proclaim the orderly system of God, which brings true prosperity and justice for all. Mary invites us to be at the side of the poor, excluded and anawim in our society today in cooperating with God in realizing God’s reign here and now.
Like Mary, we who are her devotees are called to be prophets today. As prophet, we are called to proclaim defiance and resiliency against all social structures and systems that is contrary to the Gospel. We are called to announce the liberation from all forms of oppression and domination, and at the same time, pronounce alternative path of service towards the coming of God’s reign.
The life of Mary challenges us to open our eyes to the reality of poverty around us, in the society and the world. Like Mary, we are called to participate in bringing justice, mercy, and lasting compassion to those most in need. Just as Mary identified with the anawim and was not timid, we also ought to be bold and daring in proclaiming God’s justice and peace.
The biggest challenge of today’s feast is to sing, proclaim and live Mary’s magnificat. We can truly sing and live the magnificat if like Mary we humble ourselves to the power of God, to allow God to be God. Like Mary, we can learn how to proclaim, live and practice the new social order, which Mary sang in the magnificat.
[1] John Janaro, “The Blessed Virgin in the Ecclesial Movement “Communion and Liberation”,” Marian Studies: Vol. 54, Article 12 (2003). Available at: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/m_studies/vol54/iss1/12, 127.
[2] Marialis Cultus, #37.
[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer as quoted in Elizabeth Johnson, “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary,” Catholic Magazine,December 2003 (Vol. 68, No. 12, pg. 12).
[4] Marialis Cultus, #18.
[5] Father Johann G. Roten, S.M. The “Merciless” Magnificat. Accessed at https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/m/magnificat-reflection.php
[6] Roten, The “Merciless” Magnificat.
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