Journal

VISITATION

31 May 2010

31st May:  THE VISIT OF MARY TO ELIZABETH

A reading from the letters of Adam of Perseigne

“My soul magnifies the Lord.”  The soul of Mary “magnifies” the Lord, because she was first magnified by him.  For Mary could not have magnified the Lord if the Lord had not magnified her previously.  Hence, she magnifies him by whom she is magnified.  And this she does not only by the praise of her mouth, not only by the holiness of her body, but by the unique quality of her love ...
Mary’s tongue, life, and soul magnify the Lord.  Her tongue, by proclaiming the holy magnificence of the divine glory.  Her life, by meriting the same glory by her works.  Her soul,  by loving it in a unique way, by reaching it in the flight of contemplation, by holding in her mind and in her womb the magnificence which nothing is able to hold.
“My soul,” she says, “magnifies the Lord.”  How do you magnify him?  Do you make greater him whose greatness is infinite?  “Great is the Lord and highly to be praised,” says the Psalmist.  He is great, so great that his greatness nears no comparison and is immeasurable.  How then do you magnify him, O Mary, since you are not making him greater?  You magnify him because you praise him.  You magnify him because amid this world’s darkness, being more luminous that the sun, more beautiful than the moon, more fragrant than the rose and whiter than know, you reveal more fully the splendour of God.
You magnify him, not by giving him an increase of his boundless magnitude, but by bringing, amid the world’s darkness, the light of the true divinity ....  You magnify him when you are raised to so high a dignity that you receive the fullness of grace; when you merit to receive the visit of the Holy Spirit; and when, you become the Mother of God, while remaining an inviolate Virgin, you give birth to a Saviour for a world that is being lost.
But whence do you get the power to do this?  From the fact that the Lord is with you, the Lord who makes his gifts become your merits.  That is why it is said that you “magnify” him so much more to the extent that you are more magnified in and by him.
Your soul, then, magnifies the Lord only in the sense that you yourself are magnified by him, even to receiving magnificently the fullness of grace and reaching the magnificence of a unique glory ....  For you are the receptacle of the Word, the cellar of the new wine which inebriates the sobriety of believers.  You are the Mother of God!

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