Word of Life – August 2026
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“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”
(Lk 1:46)
In the first chapter of his Gospel, Luke offers us the only passage in the New Testament where the protagonists are two women: Mary and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth lived in a village near Jerusalem, about 90 miles from Nazareth. Immediately after receiving the angel’s announcement that she would become the mother of Jesus,¹ Mary set out on this long journey. We do not know the details of the route; we only know that she hurried toward the mountains. But why did she go?
She went because she wanted to share her joy with someone who, like her, had received from God the grace of expecting a child, and to be close to her and help her during the final months of her pregnancy. It is the story of two women, of two impossible pregnancies. Who better than Elizabeth could understand her and share this experience? As soon as they met, Mary burst forth with the song of the Magnificat.
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”
In his commentary on the Magnificat, Martin Luther wrote: “Her words are the expression of great love and vivid joy; this explains why her spirit and her life were lifted up in the Spirit. Mary does not say, ‘I magnify God,’ but ‘my soul’; as if to say: my whole life and my senses are upheld by God’s love.”²
The verb “to magnify,” which gives the name to her prayer, means to “make great” and reveals a sense of joy aroused by the discovery that God is greater than anything one could imagine. This joy is echoed by a profound humility and a deep sense of gratitude.
As Ermes Ronchi points out, “the Magnificat is Mary’s Gospel, her good news that reaches all generations. Ten times the girl from Nazareth repeats what ‘he has done’,”³ like a new Decalogue, a new Ten Commandments that overturn the logic of the world.
It is natural to ask ourselves whether we have preserved a sense of awe and wonder in our daily lives and in our prayer, in the face of what God has done and continues to do. Pope Francis said: “Without openness to what is new and, above all, openness to God’s surprises, without amazement, faith becomes a tiring litany that slowly dies out and becomes a habit, a social habit.”⁴
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”
Mary’s canticle is not merely an intimate prayer of praise, but a prophetic hymn of praise, characterized by a constant reference to passages from Scriptures,⁵ which point out the direction of history according to God’s heart. To praise him means to stand with the little ones, to believe that the world can and must change.
The words of this hymn invite us to understand God’s saving intervention in our personal and communal history, from our own personal experience to the universal one, from the present moment to “the new heavens and the new earth,” which the social revolution of the Gospel inaugurates.
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.”
These words also invite us to make our lives a living praise, to recognize the “great things” every day, to join our voice with Mary’s to proclaim that God is faithful, that his mercy extends from generation to generation, and that his kingdom of justice and love is already being realized among us.
Chiara Lubich had grasped this revolutionary dimension of Mary’s song when she wrote to some young people: “Read the Magnificat and you will find there the first and most powerful page of Christian social doctrine. Who, and when, will bring it to full realization?”⁶
The question remains open, and challenges us. God’s intervention should not remain confined to the intimacy of the heart, but has to manifest itself in relationships, in communal life, and in the fabric of the life of the generations that will come after us.
Prepared by Patrizia Mazzola and the Word of Life team
1. See Lk 1:26-38.
2. Martin Luther, Commentary on the Magnificat, 1520.
3. Fr. Ermes Ronchi, OSM: “Magnificat: A Window Open to the Future,” August 12, 2021.
4. Pope Francis, Angelus, St. Peter’s Square, Rome, July 4, 2021.
5. See Gérard Rossé, The Gospel of Luke, Città Nuova, 1992, p. 69 (Italian).
6. Chiara Lubich, It’s a Whole New Scene, New City Press, NY, 1970, pg 53.