A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. This every morning now, we're this is a continuation of the infantile narratives of our about our blessed Lord. Mary said, this is in reply she's she's you know, she would know, you had the annunciation up at Nazareth, that's a little west of the lake. Then Mary is told she's going to be the mother be a mother, and then that her cousin Elizabeth is six months pregnant. Elizabeth's way down near Jerusalem.
So Mary goes down, and yesterday we had her meeting with her cousin Elizabeth. And this follows that. In reply to Elizabeth's statement, how John, who was to be known as the Baptist, leapt in her womb when Mary came in. Remember Mary is now pregnant. In reply, Mary said, of course, this is a magnificent.
I listen to this translation. My being proclaims the greatness of the lord. My spirit finds joy in god my savior. For he has looked upon his servant in her lowliness. All ages to come shall call me blessed.
God who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is from age to age on those who fear him. He has shown might with his arm. He has confused the proud in their inmost thoughts. He has deposed the mighty from their thrones, and he has raised up the lowly to high places.
The hungry, he has given every good thing, while the rich, he has sent away empty. He has upheld Israel, his servant, ever mindful of his mercy, even as he promised our fathers, promised Abraham and his descendants forever. That, of course, is the magnificat of Our Lady. Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months. That would be about the time John would be born after nine months.
And then returned home. This is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. This may sound a little bit almost blasphemous to you.
But when it says here that Mary stayed three months, you know what right away came to my mind. She wanted to be sure that there was a real baby there. Because as you know, Mary, Queen of England following Henry the eighth, she I mean this is just one instance of a very notable and notorious instance of a supposed pregnancy. But I don't know how it was since I wasn't there. Now, you see, this Magnificat, if you've been over there and visited this alleged place where this took place, they have a portico, and all around it they have the Magnificat.
Now, are these the very words Our Lady used? I don't believe that for one minute. Not for a minute. I don't have to. But you see, the fact because you have to take it in keep in mind how people wrote history in those days, and even up to relatively recent times.
We have speeches of Caesar, we have speeches various notable men. Well, they didn't have any dictaphones or any recording machines or anything of that sort. These are speeches which the writer creates and puts in their mouth, which you can say with a certain amount of confidence, definitely reflected the views of the speaker. Now there's one little point I want to bring home with a few minutes because you have to go out into this horrible weather. Notice when you say the Latin of the Magnificat, notice that first word.
Now you don't have to know any Latin to get what I'm going to say. The first word in English translation is my being. Little old me, my being. Whereas in the Latin and the Greek, the first word is magnificat, the verb. And the the least part of that verb is the pronoun my.
That's just a tiny little indication, I think. Of course, I know this is trivial. But the point is, it it does in a way signify that the attitude we have towards God. I was just reading some of some of Thomas Merton who is not a favorite of mine, let me tell you that right off. And he in this little passage that I was reading and which I remember at this moment, he says that we must see go in we go within ourselves to find God.
That's not how that's not how it is. You can go within yourself and find all kinds of things depending on what you had for breakfast. We go outside of ourselves to find God. I know I can't know anything without my mind working. I'm aware of all that kind of stuff.
But the point is this, God is an objective reality. When Joseph goes into the wherever this baby was born, when he goes in there, he doesn't look for Jesus in himself. He's looking at a a some kind of a hunk a bunch of straw, we call it a manger, where a baby is lying. It's there. It's not in here, it's out there.
We discover Jesus Christ. We don't create him. We don't project him from our consciousness. And this looking within ourselves now I know know Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila and all this. But the point is this, none of those people looked for God in themselves in the sense in which they didn't discover him as an objective reality.
Because as I say, when we take upon looking within this thing called introspection, you can find anything your little heart desires if you put your mind to it, and anybody knows it. And think of what people who used to live over in St. Elizabeth found in themselves. You see the point where Christianity is so different from many other religions, just as a matter of comparison, it's the it's it's objectivity. Of course, the sixteenth century, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, see, they're the ones who turned this around.
Now we all know that honest to God religion is the elevation of the mind and the heart to God Almighty, and you can't get away from it. And that's a personal thing. You can't really do that for me. I can't do it for you. You can help me.
I can help you. But you can't do it for me. There's no collective mind, there's no collective will. Only in a sense in which you have a collection of bricks. What counts therefore is this attitude, that Christianity from the very beginning has God transcendent to man.
And I don't find him just looking within me, I look out and I see his world. I see his world. And that's where I like to begin. I know that's out there. What's in me, I do not know.
And what I think I find in there, I don't know how much of it I didn't put in there. But when I look out there and see the world, things that I can see and touch and hear and smell and taste, I'm beginning with reality as far as I know any definition of reality. Now we talk about the wise men coming. Notice, they didn't sit down under some little tent out in the desert and go into a lot of metaphysical meditation. They got on their camels and and followed a star, followed a star.
Notice how objective that is. A star is up there, I'm following it. It's either up there or I'm awfully deluded, but I think it's up. In other words, my intention is to follow not something I think is within my mind, but something I can see up there. They followed a star, and they came to where the baby lay, and they fell down and adored him.
You'll pardon me for using that male pronoun. How how we're gonna get around all this, don't know. But the point is they adored Jesus Christ, the son of God who was a male baby. This is that little word, every time I sit and I say, I know this is just a trick of language and I'm not making making a big thing. But there it is significant that in the Latin you say, you can just almost shout it.
Praise the Lord with all your being. The English, just listen to the tameness of it. My being, who in the world knows what your being is? Would you tell me what your being is? I mean, that really thrills you, doesn't it?
My being proclaims the greatness of the Lord. And of course, the the Greek and the Latin the word in Latin and Greek the original is tsuke which means soul. I know and I know that that word tsuke now in the Greek means the totality of myself. So what the this translation is trying to say is that the totality of my whole self proclaims the greatness of the Lord. The latin Notice, the third word is my.
In the English, the first word is my. Let's put God first. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.