Cantici Magnificat Expositio [Incertus]

Exposition of the Canticle Magnificat So that she might proclaim the new coming of the Son of God into flesh, the angel Gabriel, who entered with a new gesture of salutation, venerates the Virgin, saying, "Hail, full of grace," etc.; "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:28, 38). As soon as the Holy Spirit comes into the Virgin, and the grace of all virtues fills the sacrosanct dwelling at the coming of God, there is no doubt of the celestial joys and eternal sweetness—what wondrous and indescribable sweetness the Virgin herself conceived, when that eternal light with all the splendor of its majesty descended into her, and He whom the world does not contain placed Himself entirely within the Virgin's womb. I boldly declare that not even she herself could fully explain what she was able to comprehend. But taught by the Holy Spirit, she had learned to conceal such things through her humility. She soon rises and goes up into the hill country of Judea. There Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, recognized what and how great was the one who had come to her, and she revealed how unworthy she judged herself of her visitation, saying: "Why is this to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? Behold" (ibid., 43), etc. Then Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord" (ibid., 46). You have seen the majesty; you have tasted the sweetness: therefore what you had drawn within, you poured forth without, and you exulted in His justice: "Because my spirit has exulted." The soul magnifies, the spirit exults. And again: "In my God my savior" (ibid., 47). "God" denotes power, "savior" denotes mercy.

There are indeed two things which the blessed spirits of angels and men draw from that fountain of the good by eternal contemplation: namely, the incomprehensible majesty of God, and his ineffable goodness. The one generates chaste fear, the other begets love. On account of majesty they venerate God, and on account of goodness they love him: so that neither is love without reverence dissolute, nor reverence without love penal. For they admire as they love, and they love as they admire: so that love burns inextinguishably through admiration, and admiration glows sweetly in love. For because they never suffice to comprehend perfectly the one whom they see, they remain, as it were, awake in admiration regarding him. But the more keenly they gaze, the more ardently they love, because it is true sweetness; and true sweetness, the more perfectly it is felt, the more desirably it is sought. To this light of contemplation the mind of Mary had been raised, who expressed in words the sweetness of the heavenly fatherland which she ineffably comprehended. For when she declared that she magnified the Lord, she clearly manifested that she beheld with inner vision the venerable majesty of the eternal divinity for all; but when she asserted that she rejoiced in her savior, she showed that she had perceived the taste of inner sweetness.

Therefore she professed both: Lord and Savior, so that by the power with which she rules over all her creation, she might be shown as rightly feared; but by her goodness, because she mercifully saves some, she might be shown as worthy of love. Truth in the Lord, and mercy in the Savior. For truth pertains to the Lord, mercy to the Savior; in truth she maintains the tenor of justice. But because she also gathers certain wandering ones gratuitously to life and restores them to salvation, for that reason we magnify the Lord and rejoice in the Savior: because for those to whom the justice of the judge is to be revered, the mercy of the Savior is sweet. Therefore Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in my saving God." One and the same spirit is called spirit in relation to itself, and soul in relation to the body. The spirit had a natural spiritual admiration, the soul a bodily one: why the soul is called spirit, and vice versa. Therefore the human soul, because it both exists in the body and outside the body, is called soul and spirit. It is called soul insofar as it is the life of the body; but spirit, insofar as it is a spiritual substance. In that life the soul is lost, so that the spirit may be saved, when this life is despised, so that afterwards eternal life may be granted by God. But she named it in her saving God.

For the omnipotent God, by the power with which He rules over all His creation, is Lord of all; but by the goodness with which He restores only some, and not all, to life, He is not the Savior of all. For His dominion regards all equally; but His goodness regards only some. Therefore the blessed Virgin, seeing that she was singularly chosen because she had singularly received grace, as if confirmed by a certain privilege of divine election, confidently calls Him whom she had conceived as a son for the salvation of the world, her own Savior as well, with joy and exultation. Because He regarded the humility of His handmaid (Luke 1:48). This is the cause of her exultation, because He regarded the humility of His handmaid: as if to say, Because I exult from His grace, therefore it is from Him that I exult; and because I love His gifts for His own sake, therefore I exult in Him. The regard of God is customarily understood in three ways: namely, according to knowledge, according to grace, according to judgment. Concerning the first, the Apostle says, "All things are naked and open to His eyes" (Hebrews 4:13). But by grace God does not regard all: because, "The eyes of the Lord are upon the just" (Psalm 33:16), etc. Concerning the third, it will be said at the end, "I do not know you" (Matthew 7:25). The eyes of the Lord contemplate both the good and the bad. To see by knowledge for God is to be ignorant of nothing that exists; to see by grace is to bestow the gift of mercy; to see by judgment is to destine each one according to his works either to glory or to punishment.

To look back upon is more than to see. To look back upon through grace is to visit those previously cast down and abandoned. When, placated by goodness, it restores what was taken away through mercy, it turns itself again through the regard of grace toward him. Well, therefore, does Mary testify that she alone looked back upon the Lord in her humility, because the propitiation of the divinity, which human nature lost in the first parents through pride, was recovered in Mary through humility. For because in her the Word of the Father assumed the substance of a body which He would unite to Himself, He looked back through mercy, as it were, to elevate that nature which He had previously cast off. Because she thought of herself as the handmaid of humility, she therefore merited to be the mother of sublimity, which she was not: because she showed the humility of servitude. Servitude is varied in four ways. According to condition, servitude is that by which all things ought to be subject to divine service: because every work owes this to its maker by its condition, that it obey His arrangement and follow His institutions; so that, just as it was made by Him, it proceeds only from Him and according to Him. According to necessity, perverse wills are said to serve God, which, although they strive to oppose His commands, are yet constrained by His ineffable disposition so that they can bring nothing to effect without His nod: they serve His disposition unwillingly, who are not subject to His precept willingly.

Servitude with fear is when we fulfill divine precepts not out of love, but out of dread. The fourth servitude is when we voluntarily obey His commands because we love the one who commands, and we seek no other advantage in our servitude, apart from Him, than that, by walking according to Him, we may be able to reach Him. Our first parents in paradise refused to show servitude according to their condition to the Creator when, puffed up with pride, they disdained to be under Him, to which they had been created, and perversely wished to be like Him in majesty, though they were not equal to Him in nature. Eve, through pride, not considering herself to be a creature of God and a work of God, wished to be made equal to God; but Mary, humbly subjecting herself to her maker, called herself a handmaid: and therefore the former was cast down, and the latter was raised up. He despised the proud one, and looked back upon the humble one: what the proud one lost, the humble one received. Therefore it says, "He looked back upon the humility of His handmaid." But the servants of God sometimes, even when they have humility, do not have humiliation; never, however, do they have humiliation without humility. They have humility without humiliation who, although they do not appear outwardly contemptible before men, nevertheless preserve inwardly the merit of humility inviolate before God.

Therefore Mary, who was humble before God and lowly among men for God's sake, testifies that she was regarded in both respects: because both her humility was acceptable to God, and her abasement among men was changed into glory. Hence it follows: "From this, all generations will call me blessed." Up to that point, she had borne among men the reproach of sterility, because she preferred the integrity of virginity to the marriage bed. But just as in the earlier, carnal generation she endured a sentence of almost a curse, so now from every mortal generation she has received praise as a blessing: because by every generation I am called blessed for the fruit of my fertility. "Because He who is mighty has done great things for me, and His name is holy" (Luke 1:49). It was a great thing that a virgin should conceive a son without male seed. It was a great thing that she should bear in her womb the Word of God the Father clothed in her own flesh. It was a great thing that, when she had confessed herself a handmaid, she should become the mother of her own Creator. "He who is mighty." Because His power can be believed, she confessed Him as mighty; but how great or of what kind it is cannot be comprehended. She confessed His power, she did not presume to examine it; because it is not fitting to know how great it is, since it is infinite. Everything He foresaw He would do, He does; nor is there anything He did not foresee that is doubtful to happen, but it must happen. Mary does not say "in herself," or "in me," or "through me He did great things"; but she says, "for me.

For what was done in her for the salvation of all, this by the privilege of love was singularly ordained for her glory. And therefore she said, "great": because the mystery of the incarnation of the Word is known to be beyond all things ineffable. For nothing more wondrous was ever done than that God should become man, and that the incomprehensible nature should so unite to itself the substance of a body, that it was neither less in it because it was immense in itself, nor was it less in itself because it was created in that one. These, therefore, are great. And therefore her name is holy. What is her name? Her fame. Her name, her renown: faith, her name. This name is holy among the holy; among the holy it glories, by the holy it is blessed, by the perverse it is blasphemed: because while the Word is born in the flesh, the glory of God is declared to men through the Word. And his mercy from generation to generation for those fearing him (Ibid., 50). Mary, I say, did this, yet not singularly, but to one excellently: yet truly to all who fear. No one is excluded from grace. He wrought power in his arm, he scattered the proud of the mind of his heart (Ibid., 51). This is that mercy which God showed to those fearing him: because he sent his Word through assumed flesh into this world, so that through him he might vanquish the aerial powers with mighty strength, and redeem the human race from their power.

For they themselves are the proud whom God scattered, casting them out from the hearts of men, and seizing their spoils through that virtue which previously held sway among men, he dissipated; and this in his arm; that is, through the humility of the Son he conquered the devil. His arm is his Son. That very weakness was power: because through it the devil was conquered: and this by the mind of his heart; that is, by his deep counsel he scattered them. It was a deep counsel that for man God should become man, and that the innocent one should suffer, so that the guilty one might be redeemed: and in these things there was counsel, nor could the devil foresee it; but he was caught by the hook of Leviathan. Or by the proud we can understand the Jews, who proudly despised the humble coming of Christ, whom he cast off. Whence it follows: He has put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble (Luke 1:52). The mighty, because he cast off the sons of the kingdom who seemed to be such, and assumed the gentiles through humble confession into the fellowship of the kingdom and into the adoption of sons, and cast out the evil spirits from the hearts of men: and the humble, that is, humbled men, he exalted. The mind of the heart of God is the living and permanent disposition of eternal and hidden predestination. It is the book of life. Therefore the mind is the same as the book. Someone is written in the book in three ways: according to prescience, according to cause, and according to operation.

As for the first, they are predestined as written: they are never erased, although for a time someone who is about to perish, as it were, may be permitted to stray from the path of truth. According to the second cause, those who, having begun on the path of truth, depart by turning aside into errors are written. Such persons are sometimes those who would have been worthy of salvation, if they had remained such until the end. According to operation, those whose works, according to human judgment, appear such that they seem worthy to be written in the book of life, yet who abandon the good things they seemed to do. Those according to foreknowledge were never in the book of life. He deposed, etc. First he cast down the proud angel from heaven, and the proud man from paradise; and afterwards he restored the humbled man through penitence to glory. But also daily he deposes and humbles any proud persons by withdrawing his grace; and afterwards he exalts the same humbled ones, restoring their former grace. Concerning which is that which follows, "He filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1)? He calls "hungry" those who recognize that they lack true good; he intends "rich" to be understood as those who are proud, and who think themselves to abound in gifts of grace beyond others. Therefore, just as the humble, by thinking little of themselves, deserve to receive greater grace, so the proud, by presuming about themselves, lose even what they have received.

He took up Israel, his little old servant, remembering his mercy (Ibid., 54). He took up, as a physician takes up a sick man, his little servant Israel: that is, he took up the humble and innocent one, to heal the sick and redeem the captive; to justify the impious and save the just. He took up Israel, not the Israel he found, but to make Israel: he remembered his mercy, which he had once promised but long deferred: As he spoke to our fathers (or, to our fathers), Abraham and his seed forever (Ibid., 55). Merciful in promising; truthful in delivering: because he promised without debt, and delivered without deceit. As he spoke to our fathers, Abraham and his seed forever. Note on that passage, My spirit exulted in my saving God: some exult neither from God nor in God. For those who exult in the pleasures of the flesh, or who exult when they have done evil (Prov. ii), these exult neither in God nor from God, and the source of their exultation is evil. And because they exult from evil to evil, and place their joy in malice; therefore they do not exult in God at all. There are others who abuse the gifts of grace they have received, and turn what was given for the salvation of the soul to the use of the flesh and the joys of the world: for they rejoice in the gifts they have received, because they love what they have received from God neither in God nor for the sake of God.

But those who, having received grace, turn the very thing they received from God toward the love of God—these are certainly proven to rejoice from God and in God. Therefore, to show that her joy was solid, she declared that it arose neither from vanity nor turned toward vanity, but that she loved the gifts of God and rejoiced in God and on account of the grace with which she had been anticipated in the Savior, saying: "My spirit has exulted in God, my Savior.