Translating a World on the Edge

The Magnificat

My soul magnifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His name;
And His mercy is from generation to generation
on those who fear Him.
He has shown might with His arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of His mercy
Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.

The Magnificat, taken from Luke’s Gospel (1:46-55), is the Blessed Virgin Mary’s hymn of praise to the Lord. The words are a proclamation of the Lord’s greatness with characteristic humility and grace. It is also known as the Canticle of Mary in the Liturgy of the Hours, a special collection of scripture readings, psalms, and hymns that constitute what is known as the prayer of the church. (Priests and other religious are required to pray sections from the Liturgy of the Hours each day.)

Although the Magnificat has had numerous musical settings from such composers as Palestrina, Bach and Mozart, it can be recited as well as sung. Its name comes from the first line of its text in Latin (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum”) translated in the first line of the prayer.

For a moment, put yourself in her position. When Mary was asked to be that vessel by a messenger from God, what would she have thought–“Am I going crazy? Do I really see an angel? Am I dreaming?” She was engaged to be married. How would Joseph react if she turned up pregnant? He had the right to have her stoned. But there was something in her, a grace given by God that allowed her to trust that the angel was His messenger. She didn’t ask for proof that she would become the mother of the Redeemer. Her only question was, “How?” Because she believed in God, and most importantly, she believed that He loved her, and she allowed Him to do so. She made the decision to surrender her life to Him.

DO WE ALLOW GOD TO LOVE US?

Surrender is the opening move for each one of us, but for most of us, it’s hard. No matter what our personality is, we each have an instilled desire to control our own life. Why is that? Why do we feel we have to be in complete charge of every aspect of our lives? Why are we so afraid to give up control and surrender ourselves and our problems totally to the will of God?

It may be that we don’t believe, as Mary did, that He loves us—-really and personally loves each one of us. And if we don’t first believe that He’s madly in love with us, then there’s no way we’ll surrender or trust Him.Stop a minute and think about it. The person I trust most in the world is the person who loves me, who wants only the best for me, and would lay down his life for me if he had to. If I believe that Almighty God loves me—-and he does–then why shouldn’t I trust Him enough to surrender my fears and worries, all my heart breaks, my illnesses, my lack of self confidence–in fact, everything that bothers or upsets me?

When we give up control of our life in favor of God’s plan–done His way, not ours–then we enter onto that road called Trust. And what does Trust in God prove? It proves His faithfulness. I can certainly say that I’ve seen His faithfulness in my own life. And if you look upon your circumstances, whatever they are, with spiritual eyes, I’m sure you can see it, too. Mary saw it and it caused her to make a decision. It caused her to say: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to thy will.”

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Sin enters the heart of every human being.

The stimuli of our five senses is taken in from our environment and sent to our brain which processes the information. To make it simple, we then have a spiritual ability to choose a response–a good response or a bad response. Sometimes we choose the bad response over the good–because every human being has the capability of sin within his heart.

And we sin frequently.

If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t have needed the Crucifixion, would we?

The question is: What do we do when our sinner’s heart wins out?

Well, let’s first talk about SIN, that human action we don’t want to recognize, the thing or things in our lives we want to keep secret, the things that we cover up so no one will see.

Some of these thought-to-be-hidden human actions are splattered all over the news today. A public hungry for sensationalism can’t get enough of them. Call them out! Show them up! Punish them with a debilitating crucifixion of their own! The Crowd Mentality.

But watch out for that mentality, for who among us is NOT a sinner?

Watch out for those who cast stones, for they may be next. It’s called Hypocrisy, and hypocrites are sinners, too. And they will never have the last laugh. Evil acts do not go forever unpunished.

There are certain moral laws—yes, laws of morality– that must be followed if we want peace and harmony in our world. Without those laws, sin abounds. An abundance of sinfulness is all around us. We see it– and if we are truthful, we see it in ourselves as well.

So, how do we treat a sinner? How do we treat members of our family, our friends? How do we treat someone like ourselves?

How did Jesus Christ treat them?

Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners. Mark 2:17

There is, of course, punishment for sin here on Earth. Our system of laws provides for that. When our country was formed and laws written in the Constitution by our Founders, those laws were based on Spiritual laws that dealt with morality. People break laws when they act immorally—ie. when they do not love their neighbor with  honesty and compassion, or when they do not love themselves as God loves them.

All of us have a sinner’s heart. But we also have a loving heart, set into us by God—a heart of mercy, kindness, and caring about others and our world.

The bottom line is that our human struggle on Earth will always be between the division of good and evil in in the soul of each one of us. Choosing power, or money, or sex, will not satisfy our hearts. Only genuine love–love akin to God’s love–can do that; so shouldn’t aim for it instead? It’s already within us, and stronger than our sinner’s heart. We only have to call out for Him, and follow His lead.

Because we are created as human beings with free will who live a world of infinite possibilities, people often disagree when addressing important moral and ethical issues. For some questions, there just doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong answer. And in some situations, there seems to be several right answers.

Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?–Ridley Scott

So what about the grey areas in our lives?

Well, I’m  a writer, so the grey areas are a favorite theme of mine, but those themes are always set against an absolute truth. Years ago, when I was an Art major at Spring Hill College, I considered the shadowing color Grey–not only as it appears in Art, but in life. Now, as a writer, I see it this way: In my characters–and  in life itself– there are always two extreme actions: Absolute Good, which comes from God, and Absolute Evil, which comes from a choice to turn away from God. To ignore this is to ignore Truth.

Think of two ends of a horizontal line. At one end is the bright white of absolute Good. At the other end is the darkness of absolute Evil. The farther we travel from either end, it becomes more difficult to see, or find our way back to the other. In between those ends are lighter and darker hues of the color of GREY. You might call these areas of relativism, the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. We can surely see that in today’s society!

The fact is most human beings travel daily along a line like this. They travel toward one end or the other, to the light of truth, or to the frequent darkness of a stubborn relativism. But in between the two ends is a lot of area in which to turn in an opposite direction—–either a fall, or an epiphany. This is true, multiple times, in every life, and core for a writer of Catholic Fiction—the possibility of spiritual epiphany with a turn to TRUTH is always present in the work, though it may not always be accomplished by a character. The difference between creating a story and real life is that the fiction writer is pretty much in control. But in our regular everyday lives, possibilities and the choices those possibilities present can be wrong ones.

Life has consequences for being wrong. Giving someone the wrong amount of a medication can kill them; making the wrong job choices, or investment decisions can impoverish a family; the wrong directions will take you where you do not intend to go; and immoral choices like lying, or being unfaithful in marriage, or killing a pre-born child, can result in the destruction of an entire family. This is why an informed conscience is necessary. And this is why we have to look for absolute truths, not relative truths, to guide us.

TRUTH MATTERS – especially when it concerns a whole country on the receiving end of slanderous lies meant to destroy. And those kinds of lies, when we accept them, WILL destroy us–personally and as a people. We see despicableness in some of today’s political leaders, and in the constant refrain of their lies spouted on what ought to be news platforms, but are now only concealers for those who call themselves ‘leaders,’ but who wear false masks while they ignore, and even attempt to tear down the foundation of a great America that has worked for two hundred and fifty years.

But nowhere is Truth more important than in the area of faith and religion, our very personal relationship with God who made us and created our world. It is God who is ultimately in charge, not those who push their own power on the less powerful. Here on Earth, we can’t afford to just accept or just ignore the lies of the greedy.

We need to be engaged. We do not need to be stuck in the middle of that grey line; we need to be headed for the bright light of Absolute Goodness, which is God. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. –Luke 8:17

Life goes by quickly and we will be called to account. We must form our conscience and the consciences of our children to perceive absolute truths that will guide us throughout our lives until the day of our death. Because Eternity is an awfully long time to be wrong.