“The cross is what keeps Christian joy sober,” writes Raniero Cantalamessa.

Knowing something of Mary’s circumstances might do this just as well. No matter how intoxicating the news of whose her child is, it is difficult to imagine her forgetting the entirety of who and what she was. Mary is pregnant but not wed. She’s just a kid. And, in a world that didn’t treat women with much respect, she’s a she. But here she is, joyful. This should go a long way toward our participating in her song. 

We know of Mary, and we know the trials her child would face. Neither of their stories are flat. Both are born into trouble. And, even while they embrace the divine, they are knocked down by humanity. 

Because of this, instead of saying “How nice for Mary,” we can each find good news in this for us, too. For, in the Holy Spirit, we each bear something of God in us. 

It’s often said Mary sings in spite of her trouble; much like the way we go looking for “bright side” perspectives in the midst of our own challenges. Yet Mary’s joy doesn’t come as a foil to her circumstances. 

Her joy — and the Christian’s joy — is a different substance than her pain. The joy of the Magnificat, as Rainiero puts it, comes from a different place: “like an alpine lake that is formed and fed by a spring that gushes up from its own depth and not by a river that flows into it from outside.”

In this way, Mary’s joy isn’t like an antidote to the things that ail us; it’s not a substance injected to overcome something contracted. Joy is a gift of the Spirit that lives in us. It is our spiritual body’s defense against the worst the world can throw at it. Joy is at the ready to kick start our holy longings, to embody in us what the world refuses to see about us: that we are loved in the uttermost.

—Pastor Matthew Johnson