Magnificat: For the Feast of the Visitation

Detail of Psalm 150 and the Magnificat, "The Psalter of King Henry VIII" (England, 16th c.)

My soul doth magnify the Lord,

    and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. 

For he hath regarded

    the lowliness of his handmaiden. 

For behold from henceforth

    all generations shall call me blessed. 

For he that is mighty hath magnified me,

    and holy is his Name. 

And his mercy is on them that fear him

    throughout all generations. 

On her visit with Elizabeth, Mary magnifies the Lord who has magnified her.  Joyfully she confesses, “Great is the Lord, and highly to be praised” (Ps. 48:1), turning to her Creator in love and praise as she was created to do, acting as the new Eve.  She magnifies the Lord who has magnified his mercy with her (Lk. 1:58), his servant, and with her his chosen people, and through his servant Israel the whole creation.  Bearing the Lord in her womb, all creation rejoices in her as she sings to the Most High who regards the lowly (Ps. 131:6).  “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together,” she sings (Ps. 34:3).

He hath showed strength with his arm;

    he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 

He hath put down the mighty from their seat,

    and hath exalted the humble and meek. 

He hath filled the hungry with good things,

    and the rich he hath sent empty away. 

Like Hannah, Mary praises “the Lord, mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), who “makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts” (1 Sam. 2:7).  She is ecstatic because “things shall not remain as they are,” for in her Son the God of Israel works to “exalt that which is low” and “abase that which is high” (Ezek. 21:26).  The Mighty One “bares his holy arm” (Isa. 52:10) to renew his creation, the devastation of which is evidenced insofar as “the wicked prowl on every side, and that which is worthless is highly prized by everyone. (Ps. 12:8)  “Things shall not remain as they are”—with the proud swollen in conceit, loving themselves to the point of hating their Creator—because the King of Heaven “is able to bring low those who walk in pride” (Dan. 4:37).  “Things shall not remain as they are”—with the ‘mighty’ on their thrones disregarding the Almighty, committing violence and oppressing the poor—because the Lord “pours contempt on princes…but he raises up the needy out of distress” (Ps. 107:40–41).  “Things shall not remain as they are”—with the rich stuffing themselves with what they think is their own, depriving of justice the poor who lie like Lazarus at their gates, covered with sores and licked by dogs (Lk. 16:19–21)—because the Truth will speak truly, “Blessed are you who are poor, but woe to you who are rich” (6:20, 24).  “Things shall not remain as they are,” because Mary’s Son, her Lord, is “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,

    as he promised to our forefathers,

    Abraham and his seed for ever.

Mary rejoices because in her the God of Israel has again shown forth his steadfast love, showing himself to be the faithful God who keeps covenant (Dt. 7:9).  She rejoices because the One who said to his servant Israel, “Do not fear, for I am with you” (Isa. 41:10), says to her through his messenger, “The Lord is with you” (Lk. 1:28).  She rejoices because her Son will be given “the throne of his ancestor David...and his kingdom will have no end” (1:32–33).  She rejoices because she bears in her womb “the root of Jesse” (Isa. 11:10), the mighty savior the Lord God of Israel has raised up to fulfill his promise to rescue his people from the hands of their enemies that “they might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness” (Lk. 1:68–75).

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;

   shout, O Israel!

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

   O daughter Jerusalem!

The Lord has taken away the judgements against you,

   he has turned away your enemies.

The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;

   you shall fear disaster no more. 

[…]

he will rejoice over you with gladness,

   he will renew you in his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing 

   as on a day of festival.  (Zeph. 3:14–15, 17)

Sing aloud, O Mary, for in you the Lord has drawn the creation to himself.  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, and let the whole creation sing together with you for joy

at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
     to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
     and the peoples with equity. (Ps. 98:7–9)

"The trinity which God is": Notes on Augustine on the Trinity

Beginning of Augustine's De Trinitate (12th c., England)

In his great De Trinitate, Augustine writes both to give reasons for the doctrine of the Trinity and to show why the purification of faith is necessary for the human mind to gaze upon the overwhelming light of the Triune Lord.  He begins that work by summarizing the church's teaching "on the trinity which God is."  Here is the passage in full:

“The purpose of all the Catholic commentators I have been able to read on the divine books of both testaments, who have written before me on the trinity which God is, have been to teach that according to the scriptures Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three gods but one God; although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself coequal to the Father and the Son, and belonging to the threefold unity.
     “It was not however these same three (their teaching continues) that was born of the virgin Mary, crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven, but the Son alone.  Nor was it this same three that came down upon Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism, or came down on the day of Pentecost after the Lord’s ascension, with a roaring sound from heaven as though a violent gust were rushing down, and in divided tongues as of fire, but the Holy Spirit alone.  Nor was it this same three that spoke from heaven, You are my Son, either at his baptism by John (Mk 1:11), or on the mountain when the three disciples were with him (Mt 17:5), nor when the resounding voice was heard, I will have both glorified it (my name) and will glorify if again (Jn 12:28), but it was the Father’s voice alone addressing the Son; although just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably.  This is also my faith inasmuch as it is the Catholic faith.” (Trin. 1.4.7, trans. Edmund Hill)

 At least three things are worth noting about this passage.  First, Augustine understands the doctrine of the Trinity to derive from biblical exegesis; the teaching he relates is "according to the scriptures."  Accordingly, he devotes nearly a quarter of the work to scriptural interpretation.

Second, Augustine's exposition of the faith of the church proceeds also by grammatical analysis of language about God.  In an important section of De Trinitate, he shows that such predications as "unbegotten", "begotten," and "procession" do not entail a difference of substance among the divine persons, but one of relation.  In so doing, he displays the logic of the teaching that while the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit,  the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

Third, Augustine insists on the unity of the external acts of the Trinity: "just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably."  In other words, Augustine is arguing that the scriptural language should not be taken to suggest that it is the Father who creates, the Son who redeems, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies; rather, the One Lord, who is trinity, works to create, redeem and sanctify his creatures.  I take Augustine's point in the second paragraph to be essentially that the ways in which scripture and creed appropriate particular actions to particular Persons (i.e., the Incarnation to the Son) are properly understood in this light.

Augustine largely fulfills his goal of giving reasons for the doctrine of the Trinity in Books V–VII, where he displays the grammar of the doctrine of the Trinity, after having established the scriptural authority for that doctrine in Books I–IV.  The purview of Books VIII–XV is to show why and how our minds must be purified in order to behold the Triune Lord.  Put too simply, he argues that faith in Christ the Mediator lifts our gaze to the Triune Lord, so that, by God's gift, the imago trinitatis (i.e., the mind's remembering, knowing and loving its Lord) might be renewed through growth in the love of God.  Augustine closes the De Trinitate with a prayer that aptly summarizes the work—"for Augustine does not so much as speak of God as he speaks to God"*—and draws it to its proper end:

“O Lord our God, we believe in you, Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  Truth would not have said, Go and baptize the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19), unless you were a triad [Trinitas].  Nor would you have commanded us to be baptized, Lord God, in the name of any who is not Lord God.  Nor would it have been said with divine authority, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (Dt 6:4), unless while being a triad [Trinitas] you were still one Lord God.  And if you, God and Father, were yourself also the Son your Word Jesus Christ, were yourself also your gift the Holy Spirit, we would not read in the documents of truth God sent his Son (Gal 4:4), nor would you, only-begotten one, have said of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name (Jn 14:26), and, whom I will send you from the Father (Jn 15:26).  Directing my attention to this rule of faith as best I could, as far as you enabled me to, I have sought you and desired to see intellectually what I have believed, and I have argued much and toiled much.  O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me lest out of weariness I should stop wanting to seek you, but let me see your face always, and with ardor.  Do you yourself give me the strength to seek, having caused yourself to be found and having given me the hope of finding you more and more.  Before you lies my strength and my weakness; preserve the one, heal the other.  Before you lies my knowledge and my ignorance; where you have opened to me, receive me as I come in; where you have shut to me, open to me as I knock.  Let me remember you, let me understand you, let me love you.  Increase these things in me until you refashion me entirely.” (Trin. 15.28.51, tr. Edmund Hill)

* Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self's Place:  The Approach of Saint Augustine, p. 9. 

Pentecostal Pensées

Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Rabbula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

Creator Spirit, Giver of Life, when you were poured out on the apostles, you came with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” (Acts 2:2).  You came on them in Jerusalem like the “wind from God” that hovered over the waters in the beginning (Gen. 1:2).  Greatest Comforter, the sound of your coming was like the wind that blew over the earth to end the Flood, like the wind that parted the Red Sea, like the wind that “went out from the Lord” and brought quails to your people in the wilderness (Gen. 8:1; Ex. 14:21; Nu. 11:31).  O Lord, whose way “is in the whirlwind and storm” (Nah. 1:3b), you rushed on them that day, that day when you came to “renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:31).

Fire of love, when you were poured out on the apostles, “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them” (Acts 2:3).  You appeared among them as you did “in a flame of fire out of a bush” on Mount Horeb (Ex. 3:2); you blazed on them, and they were not consumed.  Consuming fire, “in the last days” (Acts 2:17), you came on them like “a refiner’s fire” (Mal. 3:2).  You came on them in Jerusalem

With flame of incandescent terror*

as when you descended on Mount Sinai in fire, and “the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently” when you gave your commandments to Moses (Ex. 19:18, cf. 24:17).  Fire proceeding from Fire, when you came to lead them to the ends of the earth, it was as when “your provided a flaming pillar of fire as a guide for your people’s unknown journey” (Wis. 18:3).  

Gift of God most high, when you were poured out on the apostles, a tongue of fire “sat upon each of them” (Acts 2:3, KJV).  True Promise, when the Son was raised and exalted at the right hand of the Father, he received you from the Father and poured you out on his own (2:32–33).  When the Son sat down, he sent you down that you might sit upon, settle on, rest on, them, the members of his body.  The seated Son sent you to unite them to himself, to cry out in their hearts, “Abba! Father!” (Gal. 4:6).

Icon, Descent of the Holy Spirit (16th c., Russian)
(Here is an explanation of the old king and the empty chair.)

All-holy Spirit, when you were poured out on the apostles as tongues of fire, you gave them ability “to speak in tongues,” so that “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” heard them “speaking about God’s deeds of power” in their own tongues (Acts 2:4, 5, 11).  Giver of gifts, when the apostles received your power in Jerusalem, they became Christ’s witnesses to all nations.  Father of the poor, in coming to guide Christ’s own into the truth (Jn. 16:13), “you have revealed the fishermen as most wise” and “through them you drew the world into your net.”†  O Lord, when you “came down and confused the tongues, [you] divided the nations; but when [you] distributed the tongues of fire, [you] called all to unity.”‡

Spirit of Truth, when you empowered the apostles to truthfully proclaim Jesus as “both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36), you exposed the world by the light of your truth (Jn. 16:8).  You declared to Peter what you hear from the Son and the Father (Jn. 16:13–14), what he heard he declared, and those who heard his preaching “were cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37).  Through his words, you shone out and revealed to them their hatred of the one who dared to claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).  Light of eternal wisdom, you laid bare their love of darkness, their self-love to the point of hating you (cf. Jn. 3:19–21).  O most blessed Light, you overwhelmed them, and called them to repentance (Acts. 2:38).  And those who welcomed the message of your apostle were baptized (2:41); by your gift, they turned from love of self to the love of you, “beauty so ancient and so new.”§

Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte cœlitus
Lucis tuæ radium.

Come, Holy Spirit,

send forth the heavenly

radiance of your light.

Note: The titles for the Holy Spirit come from the Nicene Creed, the hymns Veni Creator Spiritus and Veni Sancte Spiritus, and from the Orthodox liturgy for Pentecost.

* T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” IV.

† From the Orthodox Troparia for Pentecost.

‡ From the Orthodox Kontakion for Pentecost.

§ Augustine, Conf. 10.27.38.

Paschal Meditation: "The love with which you have loved me"

"Church of Christ" icon. Russian.

“…So that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

— John 17:26

Before the Lord Jesus returned to his Father, he prays for all those who would believe in him through the apostolic witness.  He prays for every generation of the church; he prays for us.  Jesus prays that we would be one in him, united in love, in order that the world would believe that the Father sent the Son in love.  

When Jesus prays “that they may be one,” he asks that his church might share in the unity he has with the Father.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” he prays, “may they also be in us” (Jn. 17.21).  Where is it that we may be one?  We may be one with the Son in the Father, for the Mediator prays that those whom the Father has given him, “may be with me where I am” (v. 24), and where is the place of the Son, but in the Father?  And how are we joined to the Son, but by his gift of the Holy Spirit?  We may be one in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for, as Augustine puts it, “they are our place.”*

Why does Jesus pray that those who believe in him may be one?  He prays to the Father that we would be one, “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (v. 23).  He prays that we might be one so that our concrete love for each other might witness to God’s love for the world.  For “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him,” and “if we love one another, God’s love abides in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn. 4:9, 12).  Our love shows forth God’s love, because he first loved us (4:19).  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as the love with which the Father has loved the Son is in us.  Our love shows forth God’s love insofar as “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5).

What is the love we make known?  It is the love of God, who is trinity.  Our love makes it known that the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son (Jn. 17:23).  As Augustine perceptively comments, 

“That is to say, in the Son the Father loves us, because in him he has chosen us before the foundation of the world. […] The love, therefore, wherewith God loves, is incomprehensible and immutable. For it was not from the time that we were reconciled unto him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us; but he did so before the foundation of the world, that we also might be his sons along with his Only-begotten, before as yet we had any existence of our own.”**

God is love, always and already loving us in himself.  And the love with which the Father eternally loves the Son is in us, because by his Gift we are made part of the totus Christus, the whole Christ:

“But how else is the love wherewith the Father loved the Son in us also, but because we are his members and are loved in him, since he is loved in the totality of his person, as both Head and members?  Therefore he added, “and I in them;” as if saying, Since I am also in them.  For in one sense he is in us as in his temple; but in another, because we are also himself, seeing that, in accordance with his becoming man, that he might be our Head, we are his body.”***

Jesus prays that we may be one to show forth the love of God, who is love.  Therefore, let us love one another.

* Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 110.3.

** Ibid. 110.5–6, my emphasis.

*** Ibid. 111.6, my emphasis.

"He Ascended into Heaven"

The Ascension, Rabula Gospels (6th c., Syriac)

“God has gone up with a shout,

the LORD with the sound of the ram's-horn.”

— Psalm 47:5

Christ our God “has gone up with a shout” (Ps. 47:5).  He went up with a shout when “the Father of glory”—his Father and our Father, his God and our God (Jn. 20:17)—raised him in the power of the Spirit and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph. 1:17, 20–21).  Jesus the Messiah, the King of glory, lives and reigns over the nations.  Seated at the Father’s right hand, he is destroying “every ruler and every authority and every power,” subduing all his enemies until even death is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24–26).  His reign is not like that of the nations, for he reigns as the Lamb who was slain.    He reigns over the powers, because “all things have been created through him and for him” and because “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them,” triumphing over them in his cross (Col. 1:16; 2:15).  His weakness is mightier than the nations, who display only an empty simulacrum of strength.  He is “mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8), trampling down death by death.

Christ has gone up with a shout, that those who believe might know “the immeasurable greatness” of God’s power for us (Eph. 1:19).  He returned to the Father that he might pour out on his church the Gift, the promised Holy Spirit.  He fills his church, which is his body, with his Spirit, “the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people” (1:14).  He pours out his Spirit as the pledge that we are, with Christ, children of God and joint heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:16–17).  The Spirit bears witness that Christ, who “ascended in the flesh to the bodiless Father,” has lifted up all our humanity and brought it to his Father.*  Christ sends the Spirit “that we, his members, might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.”†

Christ has gone up with a shout, bearing our humanity in his body into the life of the Triune Lord, and giving the Spirit that his members might bear his life in their bodies.  Through the gift of the Spirit they share in his life.  He gives them to become a people capable of witnessing to his peaceful reign in the midst of the idolatrous and death-bound kingdoms of the world; they do not fear because he has won the victory.

* John of Damascus, Troparia, Canon for the Assumption.

† Missale Romanum, Preface of the Ascension I.