A reading from the first book of Samuel (1:24-28)
When Hannah had weaned Samuel, she took him up with her, as well as a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and took him into the temple of the Lord at Shiloh; the child was very young. They sacrificed the bull and led the child to Eli. She said, ‘If you please, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood beside you here, praying to the Lord. This is the child for which I was praying, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. Now I make him over to the Lord. For the whole of his life he is made over to the Lord.’ Then they worshipped the Lord there.
In the time of the Judges, before the taking of Jerusalem by David, and the establishment of the temple in that city, Hannah brings her son Samuel, who will be the last of the Judges of Israel, to the temple in Shiloh, the site of an annual pilgrimage feast. Hannah had long been unable to conceive, and had been ridiculed by Peninah, the other wife of their husband Elkanah. Her prayer in the temple had been witnessed by the priest Eli. After the child has been weaned, she comes to present him in the temple, for her prayer has been answered. She ‘makes him over to the Lord’. He will stay at Shiloh and serve Eli. In return for her sacrifice, she will be blessed with three more sons and two daughters (1 Samuel 2:21).
1 Samuel 2 The canticle of Hannah contains the words: ‘the barren woman bears sevenfold, but the mother of many is left desolate’.
O king of the nations,
desire of all people,
corner-stone making the two into one,
come and save man,
whom you made from clay.
Jeremiah 10:7 heralds the Lord as ‘king of the nations’. ‘Desire of all peoples’ is a phrase found in the Latin Vulgate of Haggai 2:8. Isaiah speaks of a ‘precious corner-stone’ (28:16), and Psalm 118:22 of ‘a stone rejected which becomes the corner stone’. Making ‘the two into one’ is the role of the Messiah in Ephesians 2:14. And ‘moulded from clay’ takes us back to the origins of human beings according to Genesis 2:7.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke (1:46-56)
And Mary said:
‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour;
since he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
For see, from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name,
and his mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear him.
He has exerted the power of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart.
He has taken down princes from thrones and raised up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
of his mercy to Abraham and his descendants for ever.’
Mary stayed with Elizabeth some three months and then went back home.
This prayer of praise and thanksgiving placed on the lips of Mary by the evangelist is the prayer of the church every evening at Evening Prayer. The personal thanksgiving in the opening verses for the ‘great things’ the Lord has done ‘for me’ is transformed into an extended eulogy of the ‘mercy’ (eleos) of God shown ‘to those who fear him’ over the generations. God’s intervention in favour of the lowly and the hungry contrasts with his rejection of the proud, the princes and the rich. The final focus is on God’s deeds for Israel ‘his servant’, according to the promise made of ‘mercy’ (eleos) to Abraham and his descendants. The concluding statement that Mary remained with Elizabeth ‘some three months’ hints that she remained until the birth of John.
How central is mercy to the message of the gospel?
The Magnificat is modelled on the prayer of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2.