THE
MAGNIFICAT: A CALL TO BECOME MOTHERS OF GOD
George Zachariah
Mary of Nazareth is one of those biblical characters who has been
mythologized and sanitized far beyond any historical likeness. Our dominant
Mariology is both patriarchal and hegemonic, and it continues to legitimize
male domination in church and society through compelling women to internalize
patriarchal values. For the Church, Mary is the ultimate ideal of true
womanhood, something similar to the Sita of the Hindu scriptures, the epitome of
the ideal Indian womanhood. Our Mariology continues to devalue women by
valorizing obedience, humility, passivity, and submission as the virtues of
women.
When it comes to Marian devotion, we have at least two models of
Mary. The Mary of the institutionalized church is a docile virgin who was
obedient to the divine will. She is portrayed as standing on a crescent moon,
wearing a crown, with rings on her fingers. She has a blue robe embroidered
with gold. On the other hand, the Mary of popular piety is an organic deity
rooted in the everyday struggles of the people. Our Lady of Vailankanni is
known as Arokkiya Annai, the Holy
Mother of Good Health, who brings healing in the community. Mariology for the Catholics
in Central and Latin America is connected with Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose
image shares the features of the people of Mexico. She is considered to be a
benefactor of the oppressed. For the common people the Lady of Guadalupe is the
maternal and feminine image of the divine who heals them and liberates them. We
see a similar Marian devotion during the first week of September in the streets
of Bangalore when subaltern communities celebrate the feast of St. Mary at St.
Mary’s Basilica, in Shivaji Nagar. What we find in all these Marian devotions
is the appropriation of Mother Mary by the grassroots communities, contesting
the Mariology of the domesticated Mary of the church.
The model of true
womanhood perpetuated through the dominant Mariology of the Church is
detrimental for the flourishing of women as it prevents the development of
their critical intellect, impairs their capacity for discernment and righteous
anger, and disables their moral agency. As Simone
de Beauvoir rightly observed, “the supreme victory of masculinity is
consummated in Mariolatry: it signifies the rehabilitation of woman through the
completeness of her defeat." The exaltation
of Mary in the traditional Marian devotion which places Mary on a high pedestal
has always been used to denigrate women. Mary’s motherhood
has “legitimated domesticity as the primary vocation for women.” Notions of the eternal
feminine, essential feminine nature and ideal woman that the dominant Mariology
propagates are toxic for women’s survival and development, and hence need to be
contested. It requires a new engagement with the Mary of Nazareth, and we need
to enable her to speak out.
As we all know, the New Testament does not give much importance to
Mary, either as a historical figure or as a theological symbol. Paul does not refer
to Mary by name at all. In the infancy narratives of Matthew, Joseph is the
main actor, and Mary plays her role passively. However, in Luke we see a
different Mary. She is the protagonist in the Lukan infancy narratives. The
angelic visit comes to her. She is consulted in advance and she gives her
consent. Her parents or future husband were not involved in her decisions. She
is autonomous, and an active agent in Luke’s narrative. She travels to visit
Elizabeth without taking permission from her future husband. For Luke, Mary is
more than a passive instrument of God; rather she is an independent agent with
autonomy, who participates in God’s redemptive mission in history.
The memory of Mary of Nazareth can subvert our Mariological
fantasies. Mary of Nazareth is not the modest and beautiful white lady of
artistic imagination, kneeling before her son, acknowledging her inferiority.
She is the pregnant and bold teenager, living in an occupied territory, who
envisions a world devoid of imperial occupation, economic exploitation, and
social exclusion. She was well aware of the consequences of an unwed young
girl becoming pregnant in her society. As we read in the gospel of Matthew,
Joseph was planning to cancel the wedding because he wanted to protect Mary
from public humiliation and social ostracism. According to Jewish law, as
an alleged adulteress, Mary could have been stoned to death.
So it is important
for us to revisit the story and listen to Mary to discern why she gave her
consent to becoming the mother of Jesus. In this search, the Magnificat, the
song of Mary, is the text for us. Our engagement with the Magnificat should
begin with questioning the dominant assumption that Mary, as the radiant woman and
the handmaid of God, composed the Magnificat peacefully. The Magnificat
belongs to the long Hebrew tradition of revolutionary songs that proclaimed
God’s commitment to bring about radical reversal in socio-economic relations. When
we discern Mary as a rural peasant girl who boldly sings her song of protest
and alternatives, envisioning her dreams of a world without domination, injustice,
marginalization, and abuse of power, Mary’s song becomes a radical resource for
us in the 21st century to live out our faith relevantly in our
context.
Let us reflect upon
two important questions that we normally try to avoid. First, why did God
choose Mary to be the mother of Jesus? Second, why did Mary decide to become
the mother of Jesus?
Why did God choose
Mary to be the mother of Jesus? Mary was humble, meek and mild, and obedient to
accepting God’s will, even though it would lead almost definitely to a shameful
fate. This is the canonized answer of the Church which we are familiar with. Through
this answer the Church has constructed the normative model of a true Christian
and we all have internalized it; obedient: passive, humble, and conformist. But
Luke does not seem to agree with this answer. When Mary says, “My soul
magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked
with favor on the lowliness of the servant,” she is not valorizing her humility
or humbleness. Rather Mary gives us clear indications about her social location
and the diverse manifestations of structural evil that she experiences because
of her identity as a poor, colonized, rural, peasant woman. The Greek word for “lowliness” is tapeinosis, and it does not refer to any
innate inner virtues or qualities such as humbleness or humility; rather it
represents humiliation or unjust affliction and torture by a sinful social
order. In other words, Mary here magnifies the Lord for the divine preferential
option of choosing the victims of the prevailing order as partners in God’s
salvific mission. So Mary does not sing the Magnificat as a saint or as the epitome of
true womanhood, but as a fierce young woman confronting the painful experiences
of exploitation and humiliation of her own concrete social location.
Yes, God has chosen
Mary to be the mother of Jesus because that is the politics of God: preferential
option for the victims of structural injustice and evil. Further, Luke invites
us to go beyond an essentialist position here. Of course Mary was a subaltern.
But she was intentional about her subaltern experiences and she used her
experiences to develop an alternative consciousness. Mary was convinced about
the purpose of her life and she did not bother to get permission from her
parents or rabbi to become pregnant. The angelic episode reveals Mary’s
autonomy over her body and her life and her courage to be the subject of her life
and destiny. God chooses people who are deeply intentional about their
experiences of imposed marginalization and are committed to transforming the
systems that continue to enslave and dehumanize them. Further we witness here the politics of God
which do not ratify dominant notions and practices. We see two pregnant women
in this story: an unwed teenage girl and a postmenopausal woman. The politics
of God, revealed in the Lukan infancy narratives, proclaims God’s favor on
those who are considered as illegitimate, infertile and incapable, and invites
them to become mothers to give birth to a new dispensation of divine justice
and love on earth.
Why did Mary decide
to become the mother of Jesus? As a young, Jewish girl Mary was familiar with
the Jewish anticipation of the Messiah who would bring about radical
transformation in the world. She was also familiar with the Jewish tradition of
songs of protest and alternatives which helped them to keep their hope alive in
the midst of imperial oppression and social and economic exploitation. Those songs proclaimed their confidence in the Divine
promise “to topple the powers that be, reverse the fortunes of an unjust world,
and lift up all those who have been oppressed.” The reversal that the Messiah would
bring about was the dream of Mary. The angelic visitation offered Mary the
possibility to play a decisive role in realizing their messianic expectation,
and she said yes to that call and vocation.
The Magnificat is the theological explanation that Mary
offers us to clarify the rationale for her decision to become the mother of
Jesus. Even though the church diluted the revolutionary message of Mary’s song,
it continues to destabilize and disrupt the prevailing order. We gather from
Luke’s narrative that even Jesus was deeply influenced by Mary’s vision, and
that is reflected in his inaugural sermon in Nazareth.
When
the Anglican missionary Henry Martyn came to Calcutta as chaplain to the East
India Company in 1805, he was shocked to know that the British authorities had
banned the chanting of the Magnificat at Evensong. Mary’s song was banned in
Argentina after the Mothers of the Disappeared placed
the words of the Magnificat on posters throughout the
capital plaza, calling for nonviolent resistance against the military
rule in mid-1970s’. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan
government discovered Mary’s song to be too dangerous and revolutionary because
it inspired the Guatemalan poor to
believe that socio-economic reversal was possible. The government had no
other option but to ban the public recital of the Magnificat. All these
historical narratives prove that Mary’s yes to God’s invitation to become the
mother of Jesus was inspired by her politics; the politics of the system-threatening
reign of God.
We have tried to
engage with two important questions, and our reflections on those questions
lead us to a third question. How do we ourselves qualify to sing the Magnificat
in our times? Or rather, what is our Magnificat for our times? Perhaps, the 14th
century German mystic Meister Eckhart can help us to respond to that question. “What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the
divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And,
what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and I am not also full of grace?
What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his son if I do not also
give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of
time: when the Son of God is begotten in us. We are all meant to be mothers of
God, for God is always needing to be born.”
We are familiar with the controversy over the title theotokos (mother of God). Our churches
are divided over it. Some churches consider Mary as the mother of God, while
for others she is only the mother of Christ. We are living in a context similar
to that of the context of the young Mary of Nazareth. God is in need to be born
in our context, and God wants us to become theotokos
to continue the divine mission of reversal in our times. But in order to become
mothers of God, we need to have the courage to become illegitimate to the
prevailing order. As Mary of Nazareth practiced through her life, we have to
become “out of control” of all powers and principalities to give birth to the
Divine reversal in our times.
Some of us might have heard the speech of Chief Editor Raj
Kamal Jha at the Indian Express award ceremony last month, in which Prime
Minister Narendra Modi was the chief guest. Reflecting upon the vocation of
journalists, Jha narrated an incident from the life of Ramnath Goenka, former
editor of Indian Express. Goenka sacked a journalist when he heard the Chief
Minister of a state telling him, “Apka
reporter bahot accha kaam kar raha hai.” Your reporter is doing a great
job. “Criticism from a government is wonderful news for journalism. Criticism
from a government is a badge of honor.” How do we translate Raj Kamal Jha’s
observation on the vocation of journalists to our own vocations and ministries?
If we get endorsements and applauses from the authorities, it is time for us to
examine ourselves and mend our ways. As
French philosopher Allan Badiou reminds us, “All resistance is a rupture with
what is. And every rupture begins through a rupture with oneself.”
Jonathan
Daniels was an Episcopal seminarian doing his Master of Divinity studies at the
Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, preparing himself
for ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. One evening he attended the
evensong at the seminary chapel, and heard the Magnificat in a new and
different way. When he walked out of the seminary chapel that night, he
decided to leave the Seminary and join the Civil Rights Movement and work along
with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr to realize the dream of reversal that the
Magnificat proclaims. He went to Alabama to assist with voter registration, and
finally he ended up being killed as he lived out Mary’s words.
We, as a called out community, are commissioned to bear
the hope of the world in our bodies. “We are called to be the containers for God
to sow the seeds of hope for the lowly, justice for the downtrodden and new
life for the world. It is an invitation
to rethink our call and to engage in the business of fomenting a great
reversal where the first will be last, and the last will be first. Can
we feel the stirring of new life within us? Of new hopes? Of the impossible
longing to become possible?” We
are all meant to be mothers of God. For God is always needing to be born.
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