THE VISITATION II
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
rejoiced in God my Saviour.
S. Luke I. 46, 47.
Forasmuch as we have no excuse, because of the multitude of our sins,
we plead through thee, O Virgin Mother of God, with Him whom thou
didst bear.
Lo, great is thine intercession, strong and acceptable with our Saviour.
O Stainless Mother, reject not us sinners in thine intercession with Him
Whom thou didst bear.
COPTIC.
Wonderful was this day in the little town of Judah where these two
women, each in her way an instrument of God in the upbuilding of His
Kingdom, met and rejoiced together. There is revealed to us something of
the possibilities of our religion when we try to follow the thought of
these two women. They are so utterly devoted to God that God can speak
to them. I think that it is well for us to dwell on this fact for a
moment. We are apt to look upon inspiration, what is described as being
filled with the Holy Ghost, as somewhat of a mechanical mode of God's
operation. Our mistaken view is that God takes control of the faculties
of a human being and uses them for His own purposes.
But that is quite to misunderstand God's method. God uses the faculties
of a man in proportion as the man yields himself to Him; and one who is
living a sincere religion becomes in a degree the medium of God's
self-expression. This possibility of expressing God increases as we
increase in sanctity. Those who have completely yielded themselves to
God in a life of sanctity become in a deep sense the representatives of
God: they have, in S. Paul's phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so
becoming the divine instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no
opposition to God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active
executants of them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument
of God, to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence.
There is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt,
as true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is not
the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the Church: that is
given only under certain special circumstances and for special purposes.
But there is no need to limit the inspiring action of the Holy Spirit to
such utterances as for special reasons have received official
recognition.
What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy Spirit--that He
wants to speak through every man. And it helps to clear our minds if we
go to our Bibles with the expectation of finding here, not exceptions to
all rules which obtain in common life, but types of the divine action.
The isolation of Bible history has done much to create a feeling of its
unreality. What has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel,
safely be disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if
what we find there is customary modes of divine action in life,
exceptional in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall
take will be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same order
of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.
In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
to be His instruments is evidence of the divine approval; and that
approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
must be holy.
So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or
as deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral religion.
We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing Magnificat, or to
think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her thoughts which were
quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired she was, but inspired, no
doubt, to utter thoughts that had many times filled her mind.
Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude
which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that exalts God and
not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Saviour." That is the starting-place of all holy souls--the
adoration of God. True humility is never self-conscious because self is
lost in the vision of God. S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very
Son of God. Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the
full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by
God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That
which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning for
her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only
brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath done me great
things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.
One never gets through wondering at the beauty of humility; and it is
one of the marks of how far we are from spiritual apprehension when we
find this splendid virtue unattractive. It does indeed cut across many
of the instinctive impulses of our nature; it can hardly be said to have
dawned on humanity as a virtue until the Incarnation of God. Therein it
has revealed to us God's attitude in His work and, by consequence, the
natural attitude of all such as would associate themselves with God. It
is not so much a self-denying as a self-forgetting virtue. It is ruined
by the very consciousness of it. Such phrases as "practicing humility"
seem self-contradictory--when one begins to practice humility it becomes
something else. We do not conceive of our Lady as setting out to be
humble, of thinking of what a humble person would do under such and such
circumstances. She does not, as I was saying, think of herself at all,
but thinks of God. The "great things" she has are His gift. That He has
looked upon her low estate, and that in consequence of His visitation
"all generations shall call her blessed," is a manifestation of the
divine glory and goodness, not an occasion of pride to the recipient of
God's gifts.
We who are so self-seeking, who are so greedy of praise, who are
constantly wanting what we feel is our due, who hunger to be
"appreciated," who are full of proud boasting about our accomplishment,
will do well to meditate upon this point of view. We acknowledge the
supremacy of God with our lips, but in our acts we are quite prone to
assume that we are independent actors in the universe where whatever we
have is due to our own creative powers. We claim a certain lordship over
life, a certain independent use of it. We resent the pressure of
religious principle as setting up a sort of counter-claim to control
that which it is ours to dispose of as we will. Most of our difficulties
come from this godless attitude which claims independence of life. It
results in a religion which is willing to pay God tribute, but is not
willing to belong to God. But the humble person has nothing of his own
and moreover wants nothing; he wants simply that God shall use him, that
he shall be found a ready instrument in God's hands.
It is this readiness that we find in Blessed Mary when she answered the
astonishing announcement of the angel with her, "Behold the Handmaid of
the Lord." It is that quality which we find in her here when she
construes God's purpose in terms which go out far beyond her individual
life and sees in her experience but one item in God's dealing with
humanity in His age-long work of "bringing His wanderers home." We
should have far less difficulty and find our lives far more significant
if we could get rid of our wretched egotism and find it possible to lose
ourselves in the work of God. We should then find the work important
because it is God's work and not because we are associated with it. We
should also find it less easy to be discouraged because we should not
understand our failure to be the failure of God. Discouragement is but
one of the aspects of egotism, and not the most attractive.
We cannot rise to anything like a passion of holiness unless we have
found God to be all in all. Only so can we lose ourselves in God. And I
must, at whatever risk of over-dwelling, stress the fact that we can
only attain this point of view by dwelling on God and not on self. Let
God be the foreground of our thought. Let our souls magnify the Lord.
Let us dwell upon the "great things" God has done for us. In every life
there is such a wonderful manifestation of the divine goodness--only we
do not take time to look for it. It is well to take the time: to write
out, if need be, our spiritual history. We shall then find abundant
evidence of the goodness of God. It may be that it is a goodness that is
seen chiefly in offers, in opportunities to be something which we have
declined or have only imperfectly realized. Be that as it may, there is
no life, I am quite convinced, that has not a spiritual history which is
a marvellous history of what God at least wanted to do for it. It is
also a history of what He actually has done: a history of graces, of
rich gifts, of deliverances. It matters not that we have been so
heedless as to miss most of what God has done. The facts stand and are
discoverable whenever we care to pay enough attention to them to
ascertain their true meaning. When we do that, then surely we shall be
compelled to do, what blessed Mary never needed to do, fall at God's
feet in an act of penitence, seeing ourselves, perhaps for the first
time, in the light of God's mind.
The Magnificat, if we consider it as a personal expression, is a
wonderful expression of selfless devotion, where the perception of the
glory and majesty of God excludes all other thoughts. It is, too, a
thanksgiving for the personal gift which is her vocation to be the
Mother of the Saviour. Out of her lowliness she has been exalted--how
highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We can see what was
necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and to-day we think of her
as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven far above all other
creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her, and in the words of her
canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as our thanksgiving, too, for the
vocation that God sent her and for the gift which through her has
come to us.
But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat. Essentially it
is the presentation of the constant antithesis which runs through all
revelation between the flesh and the spirit, between the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of this world. It embodies the conception of God
striving to save a world which has revolted from Him, and now at last
entering upon that stage of His work which is the beginning of a triumph
over all the powers of the adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted
powers are still presented under the Old Testament terminology which was
the natural form of her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud,
the mighty, the rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble,
the god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our terminology
changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New Testament we shall
get the presentation as the contrast between the children of this world
and the sons of God. We shall find the briefest expression of the latter
to be the saints.
We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual contrast. Nor
do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of labour leaders, regard
social position as being the exclusive seat of arrogancy. But we know
that the spiritual values which are expressed in the varying terminology
are constant; we know that the warfare between God and not-God is still
the most important phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look
out on the battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where
before our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There come
moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of power in
the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and of the rich is
so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of the world is so
intoxicating, the contagion of the crowd which follows the uplifted
banner of Satan is so penetrating, that we hardly wonder to see the new
generations carried away in the sweep of popular enthusiasm. Here is
excitement, exhilarating enjoyment, the throb and sting of the flesh,
the breathless whirl of gaiety, the physical quiet of satisfied desires.
What is there to appeal on the other side? As the crowds troop past to
the sound of music and dancing they for a moment raise their eyes, and
above them rises a hill whereon is a Cross and on the Cross an emaciated
Victim is nailed, and at the foot of the Cross a small group of
discouraged folk--S. John, The blessed Mother, the other Mary--stunned
by the grief born of the death of Son and Friend.
These two utterances stand in eternal contrast: "All these things will
I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me": and, "I, if I be
lifted up, will draw all men unto me." As yet the appeal made from an
"exceeding high mountain" visibly seems to prevail against that made
from "the place which is called Calvary."
And what have we to counteract the depression which is the natural
reaction from the spectacle of the world-rejection of Christ? We have
the truth which is embodied in Mary's Magnificat, we have the fact of
Mary's vocation to be the Mother of God. The revelation of God's meaning
and purpose is a basis of optimism which no promise of Satan can
overthrow. When all is said, the view from the exceeding high mountain
is a view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called
Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well. From this point of
vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt
flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing
life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life
to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who
have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the substance
to the shadow, nor to mistake the toys of childhood for the riches of
manhood. "In the meantime life is passing and the shadows draw in and
you have not attained" so they say. True: we count not ourselves to have
yet attained; but we press on toward the mark of our high calling in
Christ Jesus our Lord. We are not in a hurry, because the crown we are
seeking is amaranthine, unfading. We are not compelled to compress our
enjoyment within a given time; we do not awake each morning with the
thought that we may not outlast the daylight; we are not hurried and
fevered with the sense of our fragility. The kingdoms of the world and
the glory of them must be seized now: Satan cannot afford to wait
because his kingdom has an end. But God can afford to wait because of
His Kingdom there is no end.
We are content then with _promises_ and with such partial fulfilment as
we find on our pilgrim-way. We are content because we see the end in the
beginning. To those who in the first days of the Church objected that
though the promises were wonderful and abundant the fulfilment was
small; to those who said we do not yet see the perfection of the
kingdom; the answer of inspiration was: True, we do not yet see the
accomplishment of all of God's promises, but we do see Jesus. And there
is where we stand to-day. The work that God has to do in the
spiritualising of the human race is tremendous; but we actually see its
beginning in Jesus, and we are content to wait with God for the perfect
accomplishment.
And we must remember when we think of the work of God in terms of time,
that the length of time that is required to accomplish the
spiritualisation of the human race is not to be estimated in terms of
the divine will but in terms of the human will. It is not divine power
but human resistance which is the determining factor, for God will not
compel us to obey Him, nor would compelled obedience have any spiritual
value. And we can estimate something of the human resistance that has to
be overcome by concentrating attention upon one unit of that resistance.
That is, we can learn from the study of our own life what is the
resistance of one human being to the triumph of the will of God; and,
taking oneself as a fair sample of the race can multiply our resistance
to God's will by the numbers of the race. We are perfectly certain of
the will of God: God wills that all men shall come to the knowledge of
the truth and be saved. "This is the will of God, even your
sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing
into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited
existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the
noon-day darkness lifted from Calvary.
Therefore the rejoicing of blessed Mary, whose Song reads the necessary
end in the beginning, is well considered; and we rejoice with her and in
her. It is our privilege--and it is a vast privilege--to rejoice in
blessed Mary as the instrument of God in bringing the triumph of His
Kingdom one stage nearer its accomplishment. And in especial we rejoice
because we see in her one more, and the most marked, illustration of the
divine method. "He hath regarded the low estate of His Handmaiden." "He
hath exalted them of low degree." "He hath filled the hungry." The
method of God is to work to His results through those who are
spiritually receptive. The less of self there is in us the more room
there is for God. "The Kingdom of God is within you," that is, the
starting-point of God's work in the building of the Kingdom is within
the soul of man. He must master the inner man, must win the allegiance
of our souls, before His work can make any progress at all. The Kingdom
of God cometh not "with observation," that is, from the outside in an
exhibition of power; it must of necessity come from the inside in
demonstration of the Spirit. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God."
In blessed Mary we see the new starting-point in this last stage of the
work of God. For the foreseen merits of her Son she is brought into
union with God and spared the taint of sin, and becomes the second Eve,
the Mother of the new race. Acting upon her pure humanity, the Holy
Spirit produces that humanity which joined to the divinity in the Second
Person of the Blessed Trinity becomes the Christ, the Son of the Living
God. In Mary's rejoicing in this so great fact, the bringing of human
redemption, we rightly share. It is with a right understanding of her
Song that the Church throughout the ages has embodied it in its worship
and through it constantly rejoices in God its Saviour. The actual
detailed accomplishment of God's work in man's redemption is going on
under our eyes. It is regrettable that human stupidity seems to prefer
dwelling upon what seem God's failures, and are actually our own, rather
than upon the constant triumphs of grace. But God reigns; and we can
always find grounds of optimism if we can find that He is day by day
reigning more perfectly in us. When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come," the
field to examine for the fulfilment of our prayers is the field of our
own souls.
Our Lady took the road
To Zachary's abode;
O'er mountain, vale and lea,
Full many a league sped she
Toward Hebron's holy hill,
By God's command and will.
Full light did Mary, make
Of trouble for his sake.
God's Very Son of yore
Within her breast she bore;
And angels bright and fair,
Unseen, her fellows were.
She, ere she took her way,
An orison would say,
That God her steps might tend
Safe to their journey's end;
And there, in manner meet,
Her cousin she 'gan greet.
Elizabeth full fain
Eft bowed her head again;
She wist 'twas God's own Bride,
As, worshipful she cried:
'O Lady, Full of Grace,
Whence do I see thy face?'
O House and Home of bliss,
O earthly Paradis--
Nay, Heaven itself on ground
Wherein the Lord is found,
The Lord of Glory bright,
In goodness great and might--
Clean Maiden thou that art,
Come, visit this my heart;
And bring me chief my Good,
God's Son in Flesh and Blood;
Bless body, soul; and bide
For ever by my side.
From the Köln Gesang-Buch. XVI Cent.
PART TWO