Our own Magnificat

Yesterday we celebrated the Visitation. I chose this gospel for my First Vows ceremony, and 25 years on it is still a treasury, offering so many riches for prayer and reflection. At various times this meeting between Elizabeth and Mary has spoken to me of encounter, of joy, of outreach and support offered and received, of marvellous fecundity and of God's boundless giving. And as if that wasn't enough, we then have the Magnificat! - that sublime song of joy and exultation, and praise of a God who disturbs and overturns, nourishes and protects. 

And as yesterday's first reading from Zephaniah reminds us, Mary's joy - our joy - in God, is but a pale reflection of God's joy in us: a God who will exult with joy over you [us]... renew you by his love... dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival. Imagine how we would all be if we could truly, deeply believe in a God who so delights in us!

But yesterday morning, as I opened my missal to read these lovely readings, I noticed the entry antiphon, taken from Psalm 66: Come all of you who honour God, and hear the great things the Lord has done for me. 

And isn't that what our call, and our mission in life must be...? To proclaim our own Magnificat: to make our lives a joy-filled proclamation of the goodness and unlimited, unconditional, tender, loving kindness of our God, and the great things he has done in, through and for us. This can be our gift and our antidote for ourselves, and those around us, to all the grumbling, gloom and despondency we could otherwise so easily fall into!

Today is the 1st June, the first day of a month traditionally dedicated to the Heart of Jesus, the Source of all Love. What better way to live this month than by allowing God to renew us by his love? And what better way, too, than by making known, through our own lives given in love and spent with joy, the limitless depths and immensity of that love, which we discover and experience in so many ways? 

Come... and hear the great things the Lord has done for me...