Feast of the Assumption: Bringing new hope
For the Feast of the Assumption, Caroline Stanton from our Theology team reflects on how Mary’s Magnificat can help inspire us to work for a better world.
Sometimes hope can be hard. Whether it’s personal challenges, or the scale of problems like the world food crisis, climate change or racism and inequality, progress can feel elusive or even impossible.
This summer I’ve spent some time listening to CAFOD’s new playlist. It’s a beautiful collection of songs curated by Nirma from Venezuela. These songs, along with Nirma’s words, have reminded me that the call to hope is not glib, rather it is essential to continue to dream and work for a better world, a different way to live.
Find out more about Nirma’s top ten tracks
Mary’s song
As we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption, there is another song that we can turn to for inspiration – Mary’s great song of revolutionary love, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).
Mary sings of a world that has been, is being and will yet be, turned upside down by God’s liberating justice and compassion. In the longest passage spoken by a woman in the New Testament, her great song of social justice is a hymn of hope for the poor, disenfranchised and marginalised.
Use our family prayer resources for the Assumption to reflect on the message of the Magnificat.
Words that resonate today
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour…
Luke 1:46,52-53
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
Mary first spoke these words in her own troubled time of occupation and conflict, but they could have been written today. We too live in a world of violence and inequality, a world where too many go hungry. Families here at home, and across the world, are finding it harder than ever to put food on the table. In Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan, up to 20 million people are acutely food insecure.
Find out more about the world food crisis and how you can help.
An unmistakable challenge
There is no mistaking that Mary’s Magnificat is a challenging, and perhaps unsettling text. It has been considered so subversive that, on a number of occasions, different authorities have even banned it from being publicly sung or recited.
The words challenge us to make space to hear the voices of those marginalised and excluded today. They call us to speak out against all that goes against God’s purposes in our world, to be agents of change for a better world.
Join us in campaigning to fix the food system.
Inspiration for us
We are still in need of the jubilant, bold and faithful words of the Magnificat.
As we listen to Mary’s song may we be inspired to participate in the reordering of the world that it speaks of.
May we trust that the Mighty One who did great things for Mary will continue to do great things, through us, in our world today.
And may we remember that Mary, assumed into heaven, is still present with us today and interceding for our world.
Pray the luminous mysteries of the rosary for an end to world hunger.