When Mary proclaims the Lord’s help toward his servant Israel, it’s easy to reduce her prayer to yet another platitude about mercy from our perspective, elevating Israel in human terms. We like to do this because—let’s face it—we identify with Israel. Oddly enough, in Scripture, we should identify with them, but not how you think.  

As we’ve said many times over the years on this program, there are no good guys in the Bible save God himself. There are only bad guys who sometimes act correctly because of the fear of God’s commandments. The Magnificat is Mary’s sad news that Israel is just another one of those bad guys. If you can accept this, please, go ahead and identify with Israel, and hope that God remembers his mercy, namely, the instruction he gave to your fathers that made it possible for a few bad guys to sometimes act correctly.

Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Luke 1:54-56
Episode 445; Luke 1: 54-56

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Star Dreams Loop by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9631-star-dreams-loop
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://cemmusicproject.wixsite.com/musiclibraryfiles