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Mary Prays the Magnificat The spirit of Advent is one of sensitivity to oppression and suffering, to hunger and need. Under the weight of such sorrows, Advent finds in the prophets of Israel a hope that gives voice to these evils and stirs up longing for redemption.
The New Testament presents the spirit of Advent perhaps most profoundly in the prayer of Mary in the first chapter of Luke. Mary prays like neither the Cosmic Mother of God nor the scared young teenager. Her aspirations are more appropriate for an Occupy Jerusalem protest: concrete, socio-political, grounded (one suspects) in her own encounters with evil. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52).
If we pray with Mary, at least in America, we ought to do so with fear and trembling. If God really answers such prayers . . .
Advent stirs up sensitivity, dissatisfaction, longing, hope — and then it plops us into Christmas. What has the baby Jesus, “tender and mild,” to do with Mary’s prayer to “the Mighty one, who has done great things for me?”
We hope for the end of evil, and we get an infant mired in it, a disappointing anticlimax. The adult Jesus’ life doesn’t make matters much better. After his death, his disciples confess, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21) — to say nothing of redemption for the world. A Jewish friend of mine tells me frankly, “I don’t know how you Christians can believe Jesus is the Messiah — clearly we are not living in the Messianic Age!” There are partial answers to that — resurrection, the Spirit, love, prolepsis — but every Advent the church confesses that it asks the same question, that it too longs for the Messianic Age to come because we are not yet living in it.
If you are with me so far, allow me to make a small recommendation for your Christmas celebrations this year: sing the third verse of Christmas carols! In the first two verses the poets set the stage we know so well, the tender nativity with its angels, shepherds, and farm animals. Usually we don’t sing past the first or second verse; or (particularly if our attention span has been shrunk by “worship songs”) we stop paying attention. But for whatever reason, our poets often wait until the third verse to give voice to the evils of this age, evils that throw us back from Christmas into Advent, from already to not-yet. So this Advent, sing the third verse!
I used to find It Came Upon the Midnight Clear dreadfully boring until I discovered its third verse:
3. Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.
How different it is to juxtapose the angel strain of “peace on earth” not with the manger, but with two thousand years of wrong, with man at war with man. Peace on earth is a mere platitude if it’s inadequate to what the world has suffered long. And the noise of Christmas, this carol suggests, is not the innocent hustle and bustle of the season, but the din of war and strife . . . and more strife. This is the noise that keeps us from hearing — indeed, from daring to believe — ‘peace on earth.’
The carol I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day seems at first to be a paean to Christendom: “The belfries of all Christendom/had rolled along the unbroken song/of peace on earth good will to men.” But Longfellow writes amidst the horrors of the Civil War which calls Christendom very much into question. In the third verse he finds he must set the angels’ song alongside what he sees:
3. And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
What is Advent if not the prayer that arises out of this despair?
Finally, we all love O Holy Night, which likewise spends two verses laying out an eloquent nativity. But again, in the third verse it turns to the reality of oppression:
3. Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.
Here we are taken from the innocent baby Jesus to the hard-nosed adult, whose Gospel is peace, yes, but not without His law of love. The carol takes us from prayer to action: to loving one another, to breaking chains, to ending all oppression in His Name. The anticipation of Advent does not turn us away from the present, but turns us back to it, clear-eyed and hopeful, praying for peace and acting in love.
That is my Advent wish for us all.
Mark~ it’s amazing to see the way you are (in your own words) turning to the present,clear-eyed and hopeful, praying for peace and acting in love. I’ve been exploring my spirituality and was really happy to read your post. I hope that people start paying attention to what we all share, rather than how to make ourselves different. I’m not saying we are not unique, because we so obviously are~ which is why I am so very thankful to know YOU.
Thanks old friend. 🙂 I’m delighted that my post can be some tiny part of your spiritual explorations!
What is it with all these awesome posts about troubling the cheer, and dare I say, triumphalism, of winter holidays? I love it!
While I’m certainly not unsympathetic to the desire to set aside some time NOT to think about suffering, strife, and oppression, I truly don’t believe that religion is the place to do that. It seems that religion, where we try to relate to the Divine, ought to be the place where we’re called to see, feel, and act with extraordinary intensity, not to descend into Holly-Jolly anaesthesia. (The latter purpose is why God created Ben and Jerry’s.)
I should point out that this tendency to cut off the third verse also extends to secular hymns, as it were. My favorite example has got to be “America the Beautiful,” in which the last two verses are routinely omitted contain some very sharp words about the corruption and inequality of the Gilded Age:
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man’s avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
That’s fantastic! I’ve never heard that verse before.
And I’m definitely with you on your broader point: what’s the point of religion that’s not troubling??
Of course, Advent is liturgically troubling: perhaps I’ll come up with something cheery to say during the 12 days of Christmas! 😉
This reminded me of the scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany when Owen gets in an argument with the Christmas pageant director about whether or not the kids should end at verse 3 of We Three Kings:
Myrrh I bring, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom
Suff’ring, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in a stone cold tomb.
I’d never heard that verse before. But it really adds meaning to the hymn’s minor key and makes the fourth verse so much better.