Vigils Reading – Visitation of BVM

SHE MAGNIFIES THE LORD

From the letters of Adam of Perseigne4 ◊◊◊

She, now saluted by the angel, now made fruitful by the Holy Spirit, now raised to the height of all the virtues, honored by the leaping of the yet unborn <John>, commended by the prophetic words of Elizabeth, cries out and says: ‘my soul magnifies the Lord’…

The soul of Mary magnifies the Lord because she herself is magnified by the Lord. For unless she were first magnified by the Lord, Mary’s soul could not magnify the Lord… Many magnify him with their tongue but blaspheme him with their deeds and become persecutors through the arrogance of their hearts. Of them it is written: ‘They confess that they know God but deny him by their deeds’. They do not magnify him, but as much as in them lies they belittle the name of the Lord. These are they to whom the apostle says: ‘Through you my good name is blasphemed among the nations.’… But in Mary her tongue, her life, her soul, all magnify the Lord…

How do you magnify him? Do you make greater him whose magnificence has no end?… How then do you magnify one whom you cannot from small make great nor from great greater? But you magnify because you praise, you magnify because amid the darkness of the world, being brighter than the sun, lovelier than the moon, more fragrant than the rose, whiter than snow, you spread abroad the splendor of the knowledge of God. You magnify him therefore not by increasing his surpassing greatness but by bringing the unknown radiance of the true deity to the world’s darkness. For the Lord whom you magnify, since he is eternal,

knows no failure and, since he is perfect, knows no increase. He is eternal for he has neither beginning nor end. He is perfect for his fulness nothing is lacking. But him you magnify when you so far raise yourself by your surpassing merits that you receive the fulness of grace [and] merit the coming upon you of the Holy Spirit, [and] that, being made the Mother of God, remaining still a pure virgin, you bring forth for the perishing world a Saviour.

But for what reason? Because the Lord is with you and he has made your merits his gift. Therefore the more you are magnified in him and by him, the more you are said to magnify him… You are drenched with all the dew of the Holy Spirit, you are inundated wholly with heavenly unction… For you are Moses’ basket, you are the vessel containing the Word, you are the storehouse of the new wine by which the soberness of believers becomes inebriated. You are the Mother of God, the limit set to sin, by whom men rise from the depths of vice and reach the delights of angels…

Draw me after you that I may be strong enough to run in the odor of your perfumes, breathe in the examples of your virtues, be aided by the winds of your discourses, so that at your petition, my soul may first learn by fearing God to withdraw from evil and afterwards, with you, by loving and doing justice may learn to magnify the Lord, to whom is honour and glory and might and power for ever and ever