December 22, 2022

Luke 1:46-56

Mary’s Magnificat

 

SETTING
Inside a chapel there is a statue of Mary. She is standing, arms extended, looking down, smiling.  A teenage girl kneels in front of the statue and looks up to Mary’s face.

 

THE GIRL SPEAKS
O Virgin Mother, my soul magnifies you. Bow your face to me in pity. Like you, when you visited your cousin Elizabeth, I am fifteen, of lowly status, unmarried, and with child. Have mercy on me and the many who share my circumstances. Fortunately, like you, I have the support of my family. And like you, the father of my baby and I will marry. When our child is born, we will dedicate her to the task you have given all your son’s followers: to scatter the proud in their thoughts, to make the powerful compassionate, to lift up the lowly, to make the rich generous, and to fill the hungry with good things. 

FOLLOWUP
This short play is parallel to a similar scene in Goethe’s Faust (1808). Faust seduces a peasant girl named Gretchen. He seems to love her but abandons her. When she discovers she is pregnant, she speaks to a statue of the Virgin Mary, the Mater Dolorosa, Mother of Sorrow: “O Virgin Mother, thou who art full of sorrows, bow thy face in mercy to my anguish now! . . . . Who else can know the pain that so burns in my bones like fire from hell? . . . . Help! Save me from shame and death!” Mary, Gretchen, and my teenager are the same person. They stand-in for the countless women throughout history who have found themselves  in similar circumstances. The words my teenager speaks echo the Magnificat, especially toward the end, the justice part of Mary’s speech.

 

Attached is a YouTube video of Bach’s Magnificat (1723), a musical setting of the Magnificat. Feel free to watch the whole thing! But Part 6 seems most appropriate to the “Dolorosa” aspect of my play. The words are as follows:

Et misericordia a progenie in progenies timentibus eum.
And his mercy continues from generation to generation for those who fear him.

Kelley Griffith