A song for our time
Recently I watched the “One World: Together At Home” benefit for the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 response. The two-hour extravaganza featured performances and inspiring messages from stars and thought leaders of every generation and all corners of the globe, from Alicia Keys to Zucchero, including the Rolling Stones, Michelle Obama, Lady Gaga, and all your favorite late-night hosts. Each offered words and songs of hope and solidarity. The concert raised $128 million. As I watched, I wondered (admittedly idly): where is the word from the Church? What Christian dignitary might add a voice of hope and inspiration to this event? What would they say? What song would they sing?
If the church were to speak a word to the world, the word must be a word of hope to the poor, a song of hope for the downcast, to the broken-hearted and the grieving, to the houseless, the hungry, the sick and uninsured. If there were to be a word from the Church to the world, in my mind there is only one text, written millennia ago and son or said every day by millions of Christians around the world: The Magnificat. The Song of Mary.
The Song of Mary is close to my heart literally as well as spiritually. In 2018 I got a tattoo on my right shoulder, based on an icon of the Visitation of Mary of Nazareth to her cousin Elizabeth. Young Mary, newly pregnant, makes the four-day journey on a donkey to visit her much older cousin who has found herself, against all odds, six months’ pregnant with the wild child who will be known as John the Baptizer. Mary lived in a scary and difficult time characterized by military rule and gross economic disparity between the ruling classes and everyone else. But the two women were so excited to see each other that Elizabeth felt her baby dance in her womb, and Mary burst into song. Mary sang about the work of God that she somehow knew her baby would embody.
As a border around the icon I had inked the essence of the song:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
Who casts down the mighty, and lifts the lowly.
The hungry are filled; the rich are sent away empty.
These are words of hope, not for the next life but for this one.
The Magnificat reveals a God who sees the poorest among us, and who imagines a world where the poor are raised up, a world where all are welcome and all are fed.
Recently someone asked where I have experienced tension between hope and despair. I feel that tension most when I listen to the Song of Mary and look around at the world. To say that the promises of the Magnificat do not seem to be coming true is an understatement. A friend recently said “this really is a Magnificat moment we’re in.” During this pandemic season, the poor are becoming poorer at a faster rate than usual. African Americans are dying from the coronavirus in greater numbers than white people. Most white collar workers are able to continue working from home; most blue collar workers are not. Some of the worst outbreaks of the virus have happened at meat-processing plants and in lower-income communities. 1 * In Oregon, Latinx people are twice as likely to test positive for the virus as the general population.
The most vulnerable among us, living in the most fragile of conditions, are getting the worst treatment. If someone were to write a dystopian fantasy about the pandemic, our national response could be cast as a convenient way to solve the “homeless problem” in America.
This is a Magnificat moment, not just because it parallels the brutality of the world in which Mary lived, but also because the Magnificat is a song that exposes in no uncertain terms what must be done, for God’s sake, just as our current crisis loudly exposes what must be done, for God’s sake.
God says the world belongs to the meek and to the vulnerable. This is the most important word the Church can offer the world. Let us reaffirm our faith, with our deeds, that God hears the cry of the poor. Let us hear that cry, and let our word be “Yes, we hear the cry of the poor. We don’t have much, but let us feed you, clothe you, sing to you, pray for you.” The Song of Mary sings to all of us, rich and poor, hungry and fed. We who are rich are invited; we who are hungry will be fed. Wherever we are and whoever we are, God is going to rock our world.
New York Times, April 29, 2020