Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
Today we hear Hannah's story in 1 Samuel (1:1-8), a tale of anguish as she is taunted for her barrenness. She fears that the Lord has rejected her. But the Lord works in his own time. Eventually she is gifted with a son, Samuel, the last of the judges and the first of the prophets in Israel.
Overwhelmed with gratitude, ultimately Hannah will sing her canticle (1 Samuel 2:1-10). It became the model for Mary’s Magnificat and was clearly in the mind of Luke when he composed Mary’s version. Here are some reflections on Mary’s rendition of Hannah’s canticle:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor martyred by the Nazis, declared that the Magnificat,
“is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in painting. This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.”
Pope John Paul II noted that these canticles are songs of the anawim (the remnant faithful poor of Yahweh), offering “glorious praise of God … thanksgiving for the great things done by the Mighty One, the battle against the forces of evil, solidarity with the poor and fidelity to the God of covenant promise.”
Theologian Sister Elizabeth Johnson sums it up well, “The Magnificat is a revolutionary song of salvation whose political, economic, and social dimensions cannot be blunted. People in need hear a blessing in this canticle: the battered woman, the single parent without resources, those without food on the table or without even a table, the homeless family, the young abandoned to their own devices, the old who are discarded: all are encompassed in hope.”
Why not pray Hannah’s canticle (1 Samuel 2:1-10), clearly in the mind of Luke, sometime throughout the day? And pray that in spirit we might be numbered among the anawim, the poor of Yahweh.
—Timothy J. Cronin