Mary, image of God’s tenderness in the Magnificat

Mary, image of God’s tenderness: the Magnificat as a Marian mirror

Mary, image of God’s tenderness is revealed in a singular way in the Magnificat. To understand Mary, image of tenderness, in the Marian canticle is to discover how divine mercy becomes flesh in history, exalting the humble and making Mary the living image of God’s tenderness for the Church.

To understand the depth of God’s tenderness, we must begin with the revealed Word, Scripture. Yet when we attempt to make a translation, we are facing an almost hopeless task, inevitably destined to partial failure. A truly culturally transposed version seems to be an impossible undertaking. Every language presupposes the living and vital context in which it arose, with its own peculiar circumstances, its history and its development up to the present moment. To transfer the ripe fruit of that vital process into another context, however kindred yet not identical, always means making the original experience conventional in some way. This becomes more acute when the distance in space, time and culture is considerable, as happens when translating classical texts and, in our case, biblical literature, so far removed from our Western history and sensibility.

We ought to seek to rediscover and bring back to life the historical, socio-economic and cultural context of the language we intend to “understand” or, more precisely, by which we wish to “be understood” — that is, to involve ourselves and to let ourselves be involved. Rather than dominating and manipulating the texts, we must listen to them and serve them. We must certainly follow the philological and semantic line of the various biblical terms and expressions that form the basis of what we call, in a synthetic and reductive way, “mercy.”

Nevertheless, a simple philological and lexical investigation is not enough: the depth of the term “mercy” must be documented from life, on the basis of a specific text, which for us will be the Magnificat. Biblical literature, especially that of the Old Testament, rests not so much on abstract concepts as on events and actions. Preference is therefore given to verbs, which describe action and behavior, over nouns, which are more static and rarer, though favored by Greek and Western culture, attentive to conceptual reflection on reality more than to the event itself.

In the Magnificat, Mary sings of God’s mercy not with statements of principle or abstract propositions, but by recounting the history of His saving interventions. On the basis of those actions she sings of God’s eternal mercy: the term used by the Magnificat to qualify God’s merciful action toward the Handmaid of the Lord, the Virgin, and then toward Israel, His servant.

The biblical density of mercy

As for “éleos,” there is no simple and adequate translation, nor can its many senses be grasped without an analysis of the Hebrew “ḥesed,” of which it is generally the translation. It is impossible to describe the semantic field of ḥesed exactly with a single word: it is not “grace,” nor is the frequently proposed term “favor” sufficient. The term ḥesed is something that becomes experienceable in concrete situations, yet transcends the individual manifestation and contains a reference to the agent himself. In a religious context, God’s ḥesed increasingly denotes His merciful help, and that sense is expressed in translation as éleos.

The Greek éleos is very frequent in the translation of the Seventy, especially with reference to God: it is used 236 times to denote divine mercy and 60 times for human mercy. In the New Testament it appears 20 times in relation to divine goodness and 7 times in relation to human goodness. From this proportion, or rather disproportion, the theological weight of the term becomes clear. Most uses of this word present God as the subject: He is great in love, tenderness and goodness; this is one of the most significant ways of describing God’s action and of qualifying His face.

The New Testament expresses the richness of the Hebrew lexicon and of the LXX, especially in the Lucan canticles, which preserve with greater fidelity the styles, structure and content of Old Testament poetry and tradition. As a translation of “ḥesed,” which is primarily an act, a proof of a fidelity that comes to the rescue, and not a state of mind, “éleos” does not indicate a quality of God, but His conduct, His benevolent and faithful action for salvation.

God’s merciful goodness is manifested in His actions, in the history of the people of the covenant, especially at the decisive moments: in the exodus from Egypt, in the return from the Babylonian exile and later in the eschatological intervention of deliverance, which is accomplished in the paschal event of Christ and in His final coming. There is a special bond between God’s ḥesed and His wonders.

This is emblematically clear in the great Hallel (Ps 136) of the paschal liturgy, in which God’s great works for the salvation of His people are proclaimed, punctuated by the litanic refrain: For His “ḥesed” endures forever! The return from exile is presented as an act of God’s merciful goodness, as the prophetic texts and Deuteronomy show. The book of Isaiah, in its second part, offers a kind of epic of the future return to Zion and takes up this motif insistently: The Lord will have mercy (eleései) and will again choose Israel, and will settle them in their own land. In later biblical and Jewish literature, éleos takes on different meanings and becomes, like the opposite term orgē (wrath), an eschatological term.

The divine intervention in the last times is seen not only as a day of wrath, but also as a day of consolation and of God’s ḥesed. In the New Testament the term occurs frequently, as already mentioned, in the Lucan canticles (Lk 1:50; Lk 1:54; Lk 1:72; Lk 1:78). In these psalms éleos displays its original meaning, that of a fidelity which, being divine, is naturally a benign fidelity. Beneath the ancient vocabulary and motifs, however, lies the newness of the fullness of time and of the promises fulfilled.

Note that the future verb forms of Old Testament and Jewish literature have given way to verbs in the past tense, or even in the aorist, the historical tense par excellence, in order to celebrate an event that is decisive and irreversibly accomplished. The days of the divine ḥesed, according to the Magnificat and the Benedictus, are those in which the promises made to the fathers have been fulfilled. The today of salvation has burst irreversibly into the history of the world.

Mary, transparency of God’s tenderness

In this sense Mary is the image and transparency of God’s tenderness, for her canticle and her life are singular witnesses to it. She sings of God’s mercy because she experienced its efficacy concretely and in an extraordinary way. She could not sing without a powerful experience. Mary is the object of God’s mercy, of His grace.

The first greeting addressed to her is “kecharitôméne.” This title in some way reveals her new identity: it is the new name the Lord granted her, together with the mission of being the mother of the Davidic Messiah, the Son of God. Although it is difficult to find an adequate and universally accepted translation, there is no doubt that “kecharitôméne” is not only the first title addressed to the Virgin of Nazareth, but also a title of fundamental importance.

We are before a perfect passive participle, a verb form that suggests some important observations about the person to whom this title is addressed. First of all, it must be noted that “charitóo” belongs to the series of Greek verbs ending in “óo,” called “causative,” since they indicate an action that in some way transforms the object. Now, given that the root of this verb is “cháris,” which means grace, it follows that the person to whom it refers has been affected, that is, has been transformed by the grace of God. This verb occurs only twice in the New Testament: here and in an illuminating context such as Eph 1:6, where it says that God has transformed us with His grace.

In the case of Mary, who was the first and the only one to experience in a unique way the power of God’s grace, the title “kecharitôméne” highlights her transformation by divine grace. The humble Virgin of Nazareth was, so to speak, “molded and made a new creature” by the grace of God, which prepared her for her extraordinary mission. This clearly justifies the invitation to joy contained in the “chaíre” with which the angel’s message begins.

The second observation is that the perfect tense has as its characteristic the presentation of an action that occurred in the past but whose efficacy continues in the present. In this context the title “kecharitôméne” indicates a transformation that has already taken place but that in some way remains present. Mary is the person renewed by the grace of God and remains an unchanging sign of the power of God’s love. Moreover, “kecharitomene” is a participle, a verb form that presents both the force and dynamism of the verb and the personal note of the verbal adjective, making the title a characteristic that qualifies the subject. Since it is a passive form, the whole action of the verb and the “merit” of the quality attributed to the person do not come from her, but exclusively from God’s initiative and from the work of His Spirit.

Mary, therefore, is “kecharitôméne,” transformed by the grace of God to be the mother of the Messiah, the Son of God, begotten by the Spirit. God’s action in Mary, though mysterious in the account of the Annunciation, is proclaimed clearly and under inspiration by Elizabeth in the scene of the Visitation. In response to Elizabeth’s words and on the basis of the great things the Almighty had done in her, Mary intones her canticle, which is a solemn proclamation of God’s saving actions and of His mercy.

The Magnificat, canticle of God’s mercy

In this way we draw near to the Magnificat: Mary’s canticle is a reaction and a response to Elizabeth’s words, but even more it is a reaction to the events, to the great things the Almighty had done in her. Only those who have lived and accepted these experiences in faith are able to sing. Think of the many Psalms and hymns of the Old Testament: all of them have a concrete human and spiritual experience as their basis.

If we wish to be rigorous, we must say that prayer and, by extension, song cannot be commanded. A song cannot be imposed. If a person has not lived it, if he has not been involved in an event, he cannot sing, nor even pray. Conversely, however, song cannot be prevented: those who have lived through a particular situation, who have been spectators of or protagonists in experiences that deeply marked their lives, cannot keep silent, cannot help crying out with joy for salvation or with pain for misfortune. The whole prayer of the Psalms comes down to two fundamental attitudes, “groaning” and “praising.” One cannot lament without an experience of pain, nor can one praise without a joyful event.

Mary, image and transparency of God’s tenderness, precisely because she was reached and transformed by divine mercy, celebrates the Lord, her Savior. She, like the apostles in their day, cannot keep silent about what she has seen and heard (Acts 4:20), about what the Lord accomplished in her life: the Magnificat is her beautiful testimony. The events of which Mary is a witness concern not only her own person, but the whole people. God’s salvation, even when it is personal, always involves in some way the community to which the one who prays belongs. In the case of the Magnificat, the communal dimension is evident, to the point that the Virgin presents herself as the spokeswoman of her people: her experience is interwoven and merges with that of Israel and with that of the New Testament community, finding in it their meeting point.

The Magnificat is a communal canticle

Mary intones it, as Miriam did on the night of the liberation and as Judith did after the victory, so that all may repeat it with her. The Virgin of Nazareth celebrates the Lord, recalling His great works of salvation and exalting His eternal mercy. Mary’s personal experience is paradigmatic for the whole community. Indeed, her experience, seen retrospectively, is nothing other than the reaffirmation and the fulfillment of the saving interventions that marked the life of Israel, continually relived in faith and in the liturgy. Outside this context the Magnificat, composed almost entirely of allusions, echoes and accents of the Old Testament, would not be intelligible at all. In a prospective perspective, the Magnificat celebrates God’s victory in Christ, His eschatological intervention that inaugurates definitive salvation. Mary’s canticle celebrates the great works accomplished by the Lord in the paschal exodus of Christ and the eternal mercy He showed to Abraham and his descendants through that intervention.

In the Magnificat, therefore, we find the memory of the ancient salvation, the proclamation of the new events accomplished in Christ and the prophecy of the future “recapitulation.” Since this canticle is formed almost entirely of Old Testament material, however, we shall focus on its connections with the history and the expectations of Israel, at last fulfilled. The humility and the condition of littleness, poverty and suffering of Mary of Nazareth must be read in the light of the history of Israel, especially of the third chapter of Exodus, where very similar expressions occur: “I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, I have heard their cry on account of their oppressors. I know their sufferings. I have come down to deliver them” (Ex 3:7-8).

Mary’s tapeínôsis

Mary’s tapeínôsis echoes the condition of poverty and oppression of her whole people. The great things accomplished in her are the actions the Lord performed on behalf of the entire community of the covenant, of which she is a privileged expression. Mary’s canticle, when we examine it closely, is a tapestry of biblical texts, an anthology of passages so numerous and so significant that they in some way constitute a synthesis of the whole history of salvation. Like the ancient Miriam, she intones the song of the passage through the sea, in which the people, definitively freed from Pharaoh’s oppression, reach the shores of freedom. Like Deborah, Mary celebrates the great victory over the forces of powerful enemies. Above all, like Judith, “the Jewish woman,” she obtains the salvation of the whole people of God and becomes the object of unending praise from the community, set free thanks to her faith and her action. Mary, therefore, stands at the head of the list of famous and humble women who marked the history of the liberation of the people of God and became exceptional witnesses. Some of them, especially Miriam, the sister of Moses, and Judith, became spokeswomen and leaders of the whole people. Indeed, they do not sing alone, but introduce and lead songs and dances of victory that involve women, men and the whole community in celebrating the great works accomplished by the God of Israel (cf. Ex 15:20-21; Jdt 16:12-17, 20).

It is in this context and in this light, as Luke himself indicates (cf. Lk 1:39-56), that we are to understand the figure and the canticle of the Virgin. The fact that the evangelist read the episode of the Visitation and the canticle of the Magnificat in the light of the welcome given to Judith, the Jewish woman, of the praises addressed to her and of the choral song she intoned makes us understand that, for Luke, Mary of Nazareth is a synthetic figure who embodies different characters and the whole community of the covenant. For Luke, however, Mary is also an image of the New Testament believer, of the disciple of the Lord and of the community, of which she is spokeswoman and representative.

Mary, bridge between Israel and the Church

The Mother of Jesus stands at the summit of Israel, of which she is the culminating point, and at the beginning of the New Testament community, the Church, of which she is the figure and the ideal principle. Historically and theologically, she serves as a bridge, a link between Israel and the Church. The Virgin’s canticle, despite the Old Testament materials and traditions of which it is composed, presents itself as a new song: it is not a Jewish canticle, but a Christian one. We should first note that in the Magnificat all the verbs, except the first two (verses 46b-47), which form the heading and the introduction, and the rare future of verse 48b, are in the past aorist, an unequivocal witness to a salvation already accomplished. Indeed, in His paschal mystery Christ fulfilled all the expectations of salvation of His people. And with salvation now present, the feast of the messianic community at last set free has burst forth.

The difference from the anguished laments and the fervent supplications of the psalms contemporary with biblical-Jewish literature and, especially, of Qumran, with verbs directed toward a future awaited as something radically different that God would finally establish, is very evident. It is true that, with the coming of Christ and with His salvation, violence, pain and death still persist in the world, during the period of the “already, but not yet,” but the forces of evil are now irrevocably defeated, their future is settled, they no longer have the last word, which has already been spoken by the Lord in a definitive way.

The past tense of the verbs in the Magnificat, as often in Scripture, is a prophecy of the future: while these verbs proclaim things that have happened, they also announce the definitive liberation that will be accomplished in the future. Thanks to the events already accomplished, the future is pledged as salvation, and this justifies joy and song despite the tribulations of the present time. In the past, the Magnificat has been divided in various ways. Today, despite differences on individual points, authors generally agree on a division into two parts: the first part comprises verses 46-50 and ends with the words: “And His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear Him.” The second part ends with a similar and parallel expression: “Remembering His eternal mercy, to Abraham and to his descendants.”

Mercy, therefore, is the center and the highest point of the Magnificat: indeed, the point toward which both the first and the second part tend. The Magnificat reveals the true face of God, marked by an eternal mercy, as the whole history of salvation testifies, a mercy that in Christ reached absolute fullness and perfection. The Virgin’s canticle offers no definitions of God, but reveals His works, His ceaseless action of liberation. She magnifies the Lord, and her whole being rejoices in God because of the salvation that takes concrete form in manifold acts of mercy.

From God’s actions we are invited to recognize His face, His identity. Mary does not proceed by way of abstract statements: she is neither a theologian nor a philosopher, but the recipient and the witness of the great works of God. She saw, heard and experienced, and she cannot help speaking of what she experienced, which in the last analysis is the experience of her whole people. The Magnificat follows the logic whereby, from the experience of an infinite mercy, an unending song to God arises. Thanksgiving to the Lord in Scripture is often expressed through the memory of His works: in singing of divine mercy, Mary revisits the entire history of her people, interpreting it in the light of the event of Christ, in which God’s mercy reached its fullness and perfection.

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On Mary as the image of God’s tenderness revealed in the Magnificat, see the Encyclical Redemptoris Mater of Pope John Paul II.

In summary, Mary, image of God’s tenderness, remains the hermeneutical key of the Magnificat: the Virgin is a mirror of the Father’s goodness. To deepen Mary, image of tenderness, is to learn from Mary to look at the world with the eyes of mercy. Read more about Marian Theology in Redemptoris Mater.

Learn to pray the Rosary in our guide: How to Pray the Rosary, Step by Step.