- Aaron Lam
- May 10, 2020
- 1 min read
In honor of Mother's Day, I share with you Mary's prayer in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, rejoicing at her pregnancy and her child to be. Not only is it a beautiful and fierce prayer, but it has also become a liturgy, a hymn for many churches, especially within the Lutheran, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern/Oriental Orthodox traditions. I'll be using David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation; the prayer of Theotokos (lit. "God-bearer," more commonly translated in English as "Mother of God"):
And Mary said,
"My soul proclaims the Lord's greatness,
And my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
Because he looked upon the low estate of his slave.
For see: Henceforth all generations will bless me;
Because the Mighty One has done great things to me.
And holy is his name,
And his mercy is for generations and generations to those who fear him.
He has worked power with his arm,
he has scattered those who are arrogant in the thoughts of their hearts;
He has pulled dynasts down from thrones
and exalted the humble,
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
He has given aid to Israel his servant,
remembering his mercy,
Just as he promised to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his seed,
throughout the age."
Amen, amen.
Hart, D. B. (2017). The New Testament: A Translation. New Haven & London: Yale University Press: 105-6.