Mary Magnificat by Laura James
A reflection for Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 13 Jan 2026
The Magnificat which we have just heard, Mary’s great song of praise, is set in the lectionary in place of a psalm for this Tuesday. I’m not sure why, but it does give us us the opprtunity to reflect on who Mary really was.
The background to the Magnificat is this. Mary, pregnant with Jesus, has travelled to a hill town to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is 6 months pregnant with John the Baptist. ‘When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb … For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord”’.
And Mary responds with the Magnificat.
Most of us, I suppose, have grown up with a rather mawkish image of Mary as meek and mild, a demure teenager who couldn’t say boo to a goose. This has been reinforced in art, and in many of our favourite hymns and carols. ‘Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head’, we sing in one hymn. ‘Mary was that mother mild’, we sing in another. Gentle Mary – mild, meek, the handmaid of the Lord, head bowed in reverence. Can’t you see her there in so many paintings, stained glass windows, and Christmas cards?
But this is not the real Mary that we meet in her own words. The Magnificat is no sweet lullaby - it is a battle cry, bold and defiant. Secure in her faith in God as her Saviour, she cries out, ‘From this day all generations will call me blessed; the Almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name’. She is certain that God cares for the poor, the powerless, the hungry, those with least in society, just as he cares for her: ‘The Lord has shown strength with his arm and scattered the proud in their conceit, casting down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty’.
We short-change Mary when we idealise her as meek and mild. The real Mary was a fighter. Fierce to protect her first born son, Jesus, when she fled as a refugee with him and Joseph from the wrath of Herod. Fierce for God’s justice and righteousness to flow down upon ordinary people such as her.
This is how we should remember her. This is why we should revere her. And for this reason she is an example to us in these troubled times, when the powerful behave as if might is right and trample on the lowly.
