Tuesday 22nd Mass
Fr. Thomas introduced the community Mass and said the Gospel yesterday was the whole of the words of
The Footnote of the Jerusalem Bible Mary’s canticle is reminiscent of Hannah’s, 1S 2:1-10, and of many other OT passages.
Magnificat Missalette Tues 22nd selected another Cistercian writer is used; Adam of Perseigne
TUESDAY 22nd
MEDITATION OF THE DAY
Mary's Magnificat
by Adam of Perseigne
The soul of Mary magnifies the Lord because she herself is magnified by the Lord. For unless she were first magnified by the Lord, Mary's soul could not magnify the Lord. Therefore she magnifies him by whom she is magnified, magnifies him not only by the speech of her lips, not only by the holiness of her body, but by the unequaled quality of her love ...
How do you magnify him? Do you make greater him whose magnificence has no end? Great is the Lord, says the Psalmist, and greatly to be praised. Great he is, and so great that his greatness has neither comparison nor measure. How then do you magnify one whom you cannot from small make great nor from great greater? But you magnify because you praise, you magnify because amid the darkness of the world, being brighter than the sun, lovelier than the moon, more fragrant than the rose, whiter than snow, you spread abroad the splendor of the knowledge of God. You magnify him therefore not by increasing his surpassing greatness but by bringing the unknown radiance of the true deity to the world's darkness ...
What does your ‘soul magnifies the Lord’ says mean but this: that you are so magnified by him that you gain magnificently the fullness of grace and, by your virtues glorious and surpassing all others, you reach out to the magnificence of a unique glory. You reach out, I say, because you are drenched with all the dew of the Holy Spirit, you are inundated wholly with heavenly unction, so that after the fashion of a skin that is anointed your soul stretches so far through its longing for love that it reaches the very word of God.
For you are Moses' basket, you are the vessel containing the Word, you are the storehouse of the new wine by which the soberness of believers becomes inebriated. You are the Mother of God, the limit set to sin, by whom men rise from the depths of vice and reach the delights of angels. (The Letters of Adam of Perseigne, Letter II;13-15)
Adam of Perseigne (+ c. 1221) Abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Perseigne, Adam was a 'director of souls' in the late twelfth century. His final choice of the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny may have been guided in large part by his great personal devotion to the infant Jesus and to His Mother, the patroness of the Cistercian Order. Marian devotion had grown rapidly in the twelfth century and was echoed in secular life by the increasing chivalric regard for ladies which found its greatest expression at the court of Champagne. In several of his letters Adam speaks tenderly of the virtues and graces of Saint Mary, giving eloquent voice to the popular love and admiration which swept across western Europe in the twelfth century.
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