“Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord. And Mary said, ‘He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent empty away’” (Luke 1:45, 51)
Many think of the Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary as a mild, meek woman patiently suffering with her anguish, if indeed they think of her at all. Those western Christians who have no place for saints feel her presence in the Church to be unwarranted and unnecessary. Yet we find in the first words following the glorious annunciation to her from God through the archangel to be revolutionary.
She was among the poor in the land, grateful for the means to survive, feeling that the social and political situation of the times favored the wealthy and privileged, leaving little for her people. She had been visiting her older relative Elizabeth, eager to share the good news that the long-awaited messiah would be sent by the Lord to fulfill the anticipation of all Jewish people. Her song, the famous Magnificat from the first words in Latin, has several inspiration themes: She would be ever honored and venerated by Christian believers; she gave all the glory to God as source of grace; and by the coming of the Messiah, God’s reign on earth would begin.
The delight of upsetting the structure of society comes through in her happiness. God has: scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. The proud of the earth who are followed by paparazzi, celebrated by the media and honored by the people who live through others are discovered to be not all that they believed they were. They shall be knocked from their pedestals and swept off their earthly thrones. God will feed the hungry and chase away the wealthy. And when will all this take place?
Well, we Americans are in the process of experiencing something like it. We learn of a renowned advertiser for various products, then become “sidekick” of an entertainer on a television show, having gone through two hundred million dollars in a lifetime, now with his home for sale, having been found to be $650 million in arrears. A former world champion boxer having his $10 million mansion up for sale, himself in court and possibly facing prison for having defaulted on a variety of obligations.
Every empire ends in this fashion, and rarely if ever does the population make needed radical changes in order to stave off the demise of their civilization. In America we have in over 200 years gone from thirteen colonies to a union banded to overthrow England’s authority, becoming a country asking just to be left alone, enticed into world wars that ended with the responsibility that comes with empire, and now the downside of that half century of obligations. And like empires before us, we have expanded our influence and entered into wars in various parts of the world for our own security, we say. We find ways to send troops mainly from the social ranks that the Theotokos’ folks would identify with as the “poor of the land,” while we get on as best we can by trying to ignore global interests. And we do it as it’s always been done. In Roman times pain et cirque (bread and circus) that translates in modern times to food in such abundance that we are fixated on eating and not gaining weight, enough grain to convert to ethanol, and of course entertainment for which we pay uncounted millions to singers, “artists” of music and athletes of all sorts, throwing money at them which not one of them could ever exhaust in a lifetime. Sic transit Gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.