Mary is central to our celebration of Christmas because she is a peerless model for faith and joy. In her famous Magnificat she says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

            The Christmas story emphasizes Mary’s humility before God. We should avoid thinking of this as passivity. Mary’s faith is characterized by her total responsiveness to God, her active obedience to God’s will. When she says that her soul magnifies the Lord, one thinks of a magnifying glass, or of a perfect mirror held up to God. The image of God comes alive in us to the degree that we each cleanse the mirror of our own soul to perfectly reflect God’s image. Mary is able to efface her own will, her own ego, in order to perfectly mirror God’s will and thereby participate in God’s consciousness. She has become an icon. And what then flows into her emptiness? Joy. Her spirit rejoices. God has joy in her and she has joy in God. It is one joy.

           But then, she continues to say some truly remarkable things. She talks about how God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts; has brought the mighty down from their thrones and lifted the lowly to their feet; has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. What are we to make of this? On the face of it, these are the words of a fierce revolutionary. Mary is telling us that our God is one who will continue to turn the world upside down. The powerful and mighty are being brought low in a very literal as well as spiritual way. Who are they? You may fill in the blanks yourself – but needless to say, they are those whose attitudes and behavior are the exact opposite of Mary. They are those filled with themselves, driven by their own egos, those whose very thinking has become corrupted by their grandeur. They are being brought low, and people like Mary are being uplifted.

            How hard it is not to feel anger when we observe how the mighty at this very moment make the lives of the poor and powerless of our world miserable: the woman in Darfur, raped and murdered; an unemployed Iraqi man blown-up while waiting in line for a job in Baghdad; the displaced and forgotten of New Orleans, whose rent money has been cut off. It is easy to succumb to feelings of rage and helplessness. Somehow it is the anger of the prophets of ancient Israel that makes us want to shout with rage at the arrogance of those who oppress the needy and get away with it.