Isn't it Magnificent?

I want to share with you a reflection on the Magnificat that a good friend recently shared with me. Ted and Elaine are the two people I hope to imitate my marriage after one day. They are a couple that has been married for 50 years and went on the pilgrimage I was on to the Holy Land in May, and we have been good friends since. I could write a whole post on them, but what Ted shared with me was too cool not to write about!

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” This is how the prayer starts out. It is taken directly from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel right after Elizabeth greets Mary after her long journey in the hill country and is one of the few times we ever hear Mary speak. For me, this account took on a whole new meaning when I visited the Church of the Visitation in Ein Kerem near Jerusalem. It gave me chills when the Gospel was read and the words were slightly changed to read, “Mary set out and traveled to this hill country in haste…” Because we were actually in the hill country where Mary set out, the Gospel emphasized that this is the place!

Some of the plaques with the Magnificat in many languages .

Anyways, Ted had a great epiphany while standing in the courtyard of the church, which was surrounded by hundreds of beautiful ceramic plaques in all different languages of the Magnificat. He saw the English version and then the Latin near by and noticed an interesting comparison. The original Latin text reads, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum” which directly translates into, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” I told him I had noticed this difference before in the Italian version but never gave it much thought.

The word magnify apparently has a couple of different meanings. It can mean making things seem larger than they are, to exaggerate or intensify. But, how can we make God appear bigger than he is? Even if we could, it would be impossible because it implies that God is smaller than us and we can make him seem bigger. That obviously is not true because God doesn’t need us. He doesn’t need us to make Him feel better or make Him complete, but he made us out of His love. So what does it mean to magnify the Lord?

The archaic meaning of magnify is to extol or praise, such as it is doing in scripture. For our soul to praise the Lord is once again, easier said than done, and even seems impossible. Through ardent prayer and God’s grace, it is possible. But still, it’s not easy. In fact, continuing with Ted’s reflection, the next line that Mary says is, “and my spirit rejoices…” We must completely and fully give ourselves to God joyfully in order to imitate Mary. To magnify the Lord joyfully is such as big task and it seems that we have to do something “magnificent” in order to do so. How can we do that in the simple everyday happenings of our lives?

God will probably not ask any of us to carry His child like He did to Mary. This was a huge thing! It was a huge thing that carried a whole lot of burden and hardship with it too. It was never easy for Mary, especially towards the end of her Son’s life, to be the Mother of God. But she did it joyfully. Friday was the Memorial of the Exultation of the Cross, and it’s a good time to think of the burdens we have, no matter how small, and take them on joyfully.

This, as Ted said, is our life goal; to magnify the Lord joyfully as Mary did. The last email he sent me actually had the opening words of the Magnificat at the bottom of his signature. I know Ted is making this his new goal in life, and it challenges me to pick up my cross and carry it joyfully.


My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for He as looked with favor on His lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His name.

Church of the Visitation, Ein Kerem, Israel

He has mercy on those who fear Him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of His arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly. 
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty. 

He has come to the help of His servent Israel
for He has remembered His promise of mercy,
the promise He made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever. 

Novus Ordo

As we start a new school year, it’s always a good idea to keep living order in mind. What is living order you might ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like. Having order to your life. But that’s way easier said than done!

Even though I moved into my new apartment a few weeks ago, I spent this past Labor Day weekend cleaning. It didn’t really need it, but it gives me peace of mind that when I wake up in the morning, I have a clean shower to shower in, clean clothes to put on, a clean stove to cook my eggs on, and I don’t have to worry about stepping on anything on my floor when I get out of bed. Everything in my apartment finally has a place. It was crazy busy the first week of school with outreaching to the new freshmen and students on campus and I kept pushing back organizing my desk and putting away the last few things left in my boxes. We don’t need all that crap in our way. It’s hard enough to go throughout the day without all the other crap that is thrown at us. Keeping a clean house is the one thing we can control.

But living order is not just being neat and clean. It’s about order in our lives. Making a set bedtime and a time to wake up is essential. It’s so easy as college students to watch the time slip away late at night as we press refresh on Facebook over and over again. Or suddenly realize it’s 1:30 in the morning and you’re halfway though season 5 of Lost. Making sure you are getting the proper amount of sleep at night is critical for your living order the next day.

Not only did I clean my apartment this weekend, but I also filled out my iCalendar with my schedule. Getting into that routine every week is hard, but if you organize your time right, you’ll find you have a lot more free time than you think. Of course, you have to be flexible. You never know when your iPhone decides to set your alarm off at 7pm instead of 7am.  

The most important part of the day is scheduling in that ever-important prayer time. We’ll talk about prayer in another post, but having that relationship with God and talking with Him everyday, will make you feel more filled and help your day go so much easier. Just starting your day with a quick prayer can make all the difference! 

So, why do we need to be so ordered? Well, look at the way God created the universe. Everyday, he had a plan to create something specific and he followed through with it. It seemed to work for Him didn’t it? As random as the world seems, it has order. We model this order in the Mass as well. In fact, if we look at the Roman Missal, the words for the Mass are called the Order of the Mass. We have order to when we sit, when we stand, when we kneel, when we bow, when we say certain things at certain times, and no matter where you go in the world, the Order of the Mass is the same.  There is an order to what we do. Nothing is random. God has a plan for everything and we need to as well. And when we live this order, we can live our lives to the fullest. As St. Catherine of Siena said, “if you are who you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!” 

You can go now...

All right! This is the first post so I guess I have some explaining to do. Why did I choose to describe myself as a “student missionary”? That’s simple. We are all missionaries. One of my favorite parts of the Mass is actually the end. But not because Mass is boring or I have a lot to do when I get home. After we have been nourished and renewed in receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, the priest or deacon literally tells us to go away! Okay, so maybe not in those harsh terms, but one of the most beautiful parts of this new translation is a dismissal written by Pope Benedict XVI himself in which the priest or deacon says, “The Mass is ended. Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life!”

In the Latin Mass, the priest would say, “Ite, missa est,” literally, “Go, it is ended.” The word “Mass” is derived from missio, which means, “to be sent.” This is also where we get the words “mission” and “missionary.” (I know there are a bunch of disputes over the exact meaning, but just go with it). During Mass, we receive Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity, and are sent out on a mission, into the world to glorify God in the way we live our lives! In our actions, in our words and in even the most mundane tasks during the day, we have been commanded to go out into the world as missionaries of Jesus Christ. Man, do I love etymology!

The priest isn’t just telling us it's time to go! He’s telling us to go share with others what we have received! We are extremely blessed to be able to receive Jesus, and not just figuratively, but literally! We literally consume Jesus and He becomes a part of us! We become walking tabernacles as that little Host makes its way down our digestive tract. I once heard a story that this woman would go to Mass every week and leave right after receiving Communion. The priest noticed this and one day, he told the altar servers that after she had received Communion, to take the candles and follow the woman all the way out to her car. The point is she isn’t the same person as she was before she received. She is carrying Jesus around inside of her and besides; Judas left the first Mass early, right?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that, “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life’” (CCC 1324). As a wise priest once said in a Homily, we come to the altar with nothing, but we leave with everything. How true is that? If we leave with everything after receiving Jesus, how much better can our day get? Of course it’s the summit of the day! It is now our job, our mission, to give that everything, to everyone.

So yeah, I’m a student and a missionary. Make more sense now?