Fr. FRANCESCO PIAZZOLLA Guest professor - Studium Biblicum Franciscanum My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. The Magnificat, the Virgin's song, resounds here in Ein Karem, the place identified by Byzantine tradition as the site of the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Luke's Gospel only tells us that Mary, after the angel's announcement, moves to a place in the mountains of Judea. This is sitti-mariam, or the Fountain of the Virgin, where, according to tradition, the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth took place. An encounter during which the two women, inspired by the Holy Spirit, sing prophetically of God's work in their lives. Mary is proclaimed blessed because she believed. She has the primacy of faith, just as Christ has the primacy of love. We're going up to the shrine of the Visitation, the Magnificat. On my right, you can see the mountains of Judea. In this shrine, Italian architect Barluzzi wanted to represent the moments in history when Mary's Glory was sung: "Henceforth all generations will call me blessed". We are now at the Shrine of the Magnificat, where Barluzzi has expressed the glories of Mary throughout history. Let's now comment briefly on the text of the Magnificat. Mary proclaims: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior". Her whole life is involved in singing and celebrating the Glory of God. She herself also motivates the reason for this song. God looked upon the humility of His servant, the tapeinosis, which we could translate as insignificance: because what seems insignificant to men is great in God's eyes, and because He builds His story, our story, on what seems insignificant to men. Mary's Spirit-inspired song, the Magnificat, celebrates God's actions as already accomplished: He has shown strength with His arm, He has scattered the proud, He has put down the mighty, He has exalted the lowly, He has filled, He has sent away. In the Greek language, all these verbs are conjugated in the aorist, in the past tense. So we'd like to ask Mary: where have you seen this reversal of situations, how can you sing as having taken place what has not yet taken place? Mary, like the prophets, sings of God's actions that have already entered history. God is at work, transforming all human situations for the better. And Mary experienced this in her own life: God looked upon the smallness and insignificance of His servant. Twice again, Mary mentions mercy in the Magnificat, declaring: "His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation". She remembers His mercy. This Rahamim of God, this visceral love of God, is not something that is celebrated in song as a kind of expectation, of waiting, but on the contrary something sung as already present. In the psalms, we often see the man of prayer asking God to remember His mercy. Mary, on the contrary, says that God has already remembered His mercy, that this mercy is active, present in history. Mary, brothers and sisters, invites us to sing God's glory with all our lives, and to recognize in our stories that God is at work, that He is carrying out His plan of salvation. May Mary, through her maternal intercession, give us a perspective of faith on our lives that goes beyond our human horizons and our earthly views.