The Magnificat and Memorial Day: Archbishop George Niederauer's homily
- May 31, 2010
We gather here at Holy Cross Cemetery on Memorial Day, 2010, to remember and pray for all those buried here and elsewhere who have gone before us in the Lord, and especially to remember and celebrate those men and women in the armed services who have given their lives for their country. This year Memorial Day, May 31st, is also the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who said “Yes” to God with her entire life—“be it done to me according to your Word”--and became the mother of his Son, Jesus Christ.
This event in the life of Mary—her visit to her cousin Elizabeth who will soon give birth to a son, John the Baptist--is the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. That visit was an act of loving generosity; Mary, already pregnant with our Savior, came to assist her much older cousin in the final months before her son’s birth. What connection is there between this feast and Memorial Day? Certainly there is the hope that Mary inspires in all of us for eternal life with her Son, Jesus.
A spiritual writer has pointed out the connection between Mary and us in that regard: he said, “What Mary was, we are now; what Mary is now, we hope to be.” Mary faced many difficulties and sorrows as well as joys in her life: she was the subject of whispering in her village; she fled to Egypt with Joseph and her child, threatened by Herod’s soldiers; she watched her son die on the Cross. Later she shared in the Resurrection and Ascension of her son, becoming Queen of Heaven. Now she prays for us as we meet the challenges of our own following of Jesus. In each Hail Mary that we pray, we say to Mary “pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”
However, I believe there is another strong connection between this feast and Memorial Day, and the clues are to be found in our Gospel reading from Luke, which contains Mary’s wonderful prayer of praise and confidence and gratitude to God, the Magnificat. The world around us so often touts the value of selfishness, self-centeredness, individualism and consumerism, but both the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the dedicated lives of our service men and women enshrine values very different from those. One Scripture scholar has gone so far as to say that this prayer of Mary is “the most revolutionary document in the world.”
Why would Doctor William Barclay say that? Just listen to Mary’s words: “God has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit.” Right there is a moral revolution: it is the humble, not the arrogant, who will follow Christ and recognize and serve him in their neighbors. They will look at life through a window or an open door; the proud will look at life in a mirror.
Again, listen to Mary’s prayer: “God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.” Jesus showed the example for this when he paid special attention to the poor, the needy, and outcasts like the Samaritans. That is the example he gave us to follow. There’s a story from medieval times about a poor wandering scholar named Muretus. One day during his travels in an unfamiliar region he became sick and was taken to a hospital for the poor. He heard the doctors speaking in Latin. They were discussing his case, and saying that, since he was a worthless stranger, they could use him for medical experiments. Muretus astonished the doctors by saying, in Latin, “Call no one worthless for whom Christ died.”
Finally, in her prayer Mary says: “God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” There is the economic revolution: God does not value us according to our possessions. After all, he gave them to us! Rather, he evaluates us on how we use and share those possessions. St. Paul quotes Jesus as saying that it is more blessed to give than to receive, because it is in giving that we open ourselves to share in the life of Christ, now and forever.
Be sure to notice how the values Mary embraces in the Magnificat look ahead to the values her son will teach us during the Sermon on the Mount, the values called the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the sorrowing, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers. Like mother, like son. See how these Gospel values are so topsy-turvy; they turn upside down the values of the world around us. Gilbert Keith Chesterton once remarked, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
Mary and Jesus her son teach us the central importance of loving self-sacrifice for meaning and value in life. Our service men and women understand that value, and they live it, day by day, and sometimes they die in faithfulness to that value. I want to conclude with a second prayer, much more recent than Mary’s Magnificat. It is a soldier’s prayer found on the body of Lieutenant Andre Zirnfeld. Before the Second World War he was a professor of philosophy in college. He died in Libya during the war. This is Lieutenant Zirnfeld’s prayer:
I bring this prayer to You, Lord,
For You alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.
Give me, Lord, what You have left over,
Give me what no one ever asks You for.
I don’t ask you for rest,
Or quiet,
Whether of soul or body;
I don’t ask You for wealth
Nor for success, nor even health perhaps.
That sort of thing You get asked for so much
That You can’t have any of it left.
Give me, Lord, what You have left over,
Give me what no one wants from You.
I want insecurity, strife,
And I want You to give me these
Once and for all,
So that I can be sure of having them always,
Since I shall not always have the courage
To ask You for them.
Give me, Lord, what you have left over,
Give me what others want nothing to do with.
But give me courage too,
And strength and faith;
For You alone can give
What one cannot demand from oneself.
It’s hard to say and mean and live that prayer, but Lieutenant Zirnfeld did, and we can pray that, day by day, we will come closer to saying and meaning and living it, too.
Archbishop Niederauer delivered this homily on May 31, 2010, at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma. The date also marked the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
