Canticle of Our Lives

The beautiful prayer that we hear quoted in today’s gospel of Luke

as we celebrate the Assumption is called

the “Magnificat” or the “Canticle of Mary.”

Indeed it is such an important prayer

that the Church prays it every single day for evening prayer;

every priest and every religious will pray

that prayer every single night as they close their Evening Prayer.

If you are reading “Give Us This Day” book,

it is on the inside back cover.

To understand the significance of it,

we need to break it down and just understand its context.

Remember, this is part of the Visitation;

Mary has now gone to visit Elizabeth.

Remember what has happened to Mary.

Mary’s life has been turned upside down.

She is a 16-year-old who was betrothed to Joseph;

an angel appears to her and tells her that she is now pregnant by God;

and an angel tells her that she is to bear the Son of God.

She asks, “What did you say?”

You can image her reaction!

The invitation was repeated and

she gives a beautiful response of acceptance.

Bear in mind all that was happening.

Her whole life was turned upside down and yet her response was,

“Let it be done to me according to your will.”

In today’s passage she walked several miles to go to visit her cousin,

who is also pregnant by an extraordinary means.

We can only imagine the confusion for a 16-year-old

regardless of how chosen you might think she is by God.

It has got to be really hard and confusing.

And yet, in the middle of that, what does she do?

She has this prayer of thanksgiving and praise; and a prayer of joy.

Now what is really important out of this for us to understand

is that she had no answers.

She didn’t get a full explanation from God

as to why all this was going to happen and how it was happening.

But this was a pure act of faith.

And out of it, she is grateful and she is joyful.

There is a reason why we hold up Mary as the exemplar,

the best example of how to be a disciple

because we consider her the first disciple of Jesus;

because she not only bore Jesus

but she followed Jesus from the very first moment

of his first miracle to his last miracle

and was at the foot of the cross.

If we are ever looking for how to be a follower of Jesus;

a follower not just an admirer;

not just a friend

but a follower who follows where Jesus goes

then we always look to Mary

because that is what we want to do.

We want to follow where she went and

of course that is what we celebrate today, the Assumption;

and we want to follow that same path to eternal life.

Let’s break it open a little bit

because there is really something powerful here.

What is it that she does in this prayer

that we have to acknowledge?

First of all, she is very aware that she does not know,

she doesn’t pretend she knows, she accepts the truth.

What does she accept?

She accepts the invitation of the angel to do the Lord’s Will.

And she does ask some questions.

Don’t think asking questions is wrong; that is fine with the Lord.

She asked a question and then she still accepts the invitation.

Here we recognize her humility.

She recognizes her lowliness, her humility.

She accepts where she is,

she does not know

and that she is a lowly servant

but she is still going to follow Jesus.

She is going to follow the Lord’s commandment.

Also, as part of this, now she becomes grateful.

And she says the Lord has blessed me.

And out of that gratitude and recognition of God’s love for her,

she then becomes joyful.

And that is what this prayer is all about.

Now why do I bring that up?

Because that is a great model for all of us.

What if we wrote our own canticle?

The canticle of Brendan.

The canticle of Colleen.

The canticle of Joe.

The canticle of Jenn.

This is our canticle;

that we without fully understanding everything,

without having the answers to everything

and in the midst of our present moment

that we are willing to be a person of faith that says,

“Yes, I am grateful.

And I am willing to be full of joy.”

Now it is not so straight forward.

It requires of us to pause and to be centered

and to then also be humble and look at our lives;

and recognize how blessed we really are.

I am not saying for a moment that we do not have troubles.

I am sure we do.

I am sure we all have aches and pains.

We all have suffering of some sort.

Admittedly, some of us more than others;

some of us are really struggling with ill health.

And I understand that is hard.

Here is the part, even in the midst of that,

God is still with us.

God is with us no matter whether we are sick;

or whether we are well;

whether we are rich or whether we are poor;

whether we have all things going our way;

or whether it seems like everything is swimming against us.

God is with us all the time;

and that is what Mary got.

We get caught up in our world and we forget how blessed we are.

Like for a moment, right now,

right when we are in the middle of the Covid Delta variant

and I know that is deeply disturbing and frustrating

for many of us after so long but also let’s look at the blessings.

We have the vaccination.

Every one of us has access to this vaccination

that protects us from the worst component of it;

an incredible blessing;

a feat of humanity to have invented a vaccination

in such a short period of time.

What a blessing!

And that becomes our blessing.

That is what we hold onto.

And yes, do we still have to wear a face mask?

Do we still have some inconvenience?

Yes we do to protect others from it,

who are the youngest of them especially.

And I understand that we may have problems and suffering

but look at the goodness that is in our life.

Let me give you another example:

In my previous parish, we had a mission trip

that we used to take to Nicaragua every year

similarly to the way you take a mission trip to Tijuana here.

We would regularly send about 100 people

to Nicaragua during the summer.

Everyone would come back, without exception, transformed.

And you know what the most transformative part

was not the work we did or the money we gave

but the experiencing of the people we met.

The transformation was that when we entered into their world,

which was what the whole mission trip was about.

We realized they had so little.

They would have a dirt floor;

often times the walls were made of stones and mud and sticks;

and a galvanized roof.

If they were lucky, they might have a brick wall but often times not.

No running water.

They did have electricity for them.

But they had so little.

And here is what was always amazing:

The one common phrase we heard from people

who came back from the mission trip is that

they have so little but they are always so happy.

And when we come back here, the realization was,

“We have so much and we seem to be so unhappy. “

I do not believe that it is because we have so much per se

but because we do not look at what we actually do have,

what we actually are, blessed by so much in so many ways.

So here is what I ask you:

Could we write our own Magnificat?

Could we write our own Canticle?

And maybe you don’t have to write on a piece of paper

but if could, I think that would be a great exercise.

But can we write it down at least in our own mind.

What am I grateful for that is already here?

With the understanding that God has the last word

and we do not understand what is happening in our lives all the time.

Can we do what Mary does and be grateful

and to recognize God’s blessing in our life?

With all its problems.

With all its weirdness.

And all the stuff that goes on,

can we be grateful and be joy-filled for what God gives us today?

The Canticle of our own lives;

that is how we celebrate the Assumption today.