The prayer is Mary's response to Elizabeth's greeting. After experiencing her baby leap within her at hearing the sound of Mary's voice, it says that Elizabeth became "filled with the Holy Spirit" and she praised Mary, saying:
“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”2
Although Mary's words are the ones recited every day as a part of the LoH, Elizabeth's are the ones which will be familiar to most Catholics because they are the prime source for the Hail Mary. So if Elizabeth is praying the first-ever Hail Mary, the Magnificat can be rightly seen as Mary's response to that prayer. The key to interpreting her response lies right in the first line; however I didn't realize this right away because most translations -- in my opinion -- do not do justice to the poetry of Mary's expression. 3
Here is how the standard translation in the LoH reads:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviorfor he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear himin every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
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.
He has come to the help of his servant Israelfor he has remembered his promise of mercy,the promise he made to our fathers,to Abraham and his children forever.
I always considered "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord" to mean that Mary was simply rather passionate about lauding God. This changed when a priest called my attention to this alternate translation:
My soul magnifies the Lord...
We see words constantly but we rarely give any thought whatsoever to their etymology. We take their origin for granted. Despite the number of times I had seen the title of the prayer, it had not occurred to me that Magnificat looks remarkably like magnifies. As "Magnificat" is a latin word it takes no great genius to see why they are so alike.
"My dear Saint Jerome!" you say, ever so indignant, "Whatever do you mean by putting such a strange word into the vulgate? Mary cannot magnify God! To magnify something is to make something greater, and if God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, how could he possible be made any more magnificent? You, sir, despite your sainthood, are in mortal heresy!"
Or, alternatively,
"At last! Here we find proof that Mary is, in fact, greater than God, giving us due license to worship her as much as we please without Protestant criticism!"4
My dear, misguided fool, let us rewind a bit and make some important distinctions, and you will find this ancient Catholic, biblical prayer is unprecedentedly profound, and not at all heretical.
What does a magnifying glass do?
1.) A magnifying glass makes things appear larger.
Magnification does not, as you suggested, increase the size of something. It merely increases our perception of the magnitude of something. Just as the David magnifies Michelangelo, Mary's soul magnifies the Lord.
2.) A magnifying glass helps us to discover truths indiscernible with our fallen vision.
God is everything brought to its perfection, but sometimes perfection incarnate and stretched throughout eternity is difficult to emulate in our own lives. We see Christ, but, despite his full humanity, we sometimes our blinded by his divinity. "Of course he resisted temptation, of course he never sinned, he's God!" In Mary, God isolates the perfect human soul from divinity so that we can see it more clearly.
3.) A magnifying glass can focus light to start a fire.
God in his super-abundant love and mercy is showering light upon us all the time, but sometimes we're stubborn, clumsy little boogers. We hide under leaves or trip into puddles and it becomes awfully difficult to set us on fire. We may know that he is God, and that he is big and large and magnificent, but our love is often diffused everywhere and difficult to focus anywhere, let alone on an infinite, invisible God. Mary shows us to love Christ as she loved him, and puts us in his hands.
So, in this light, in what light does this put her response to Elizabeth's greeting?
“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”2Elizabeth's greeting is Mary centric. It is all about her greeting, her voice, her womb, and her response to God. Mary does not condemn this, but she redirects it. She changes all of the you to He. It is not about what she has done for God, it is about what God has done for her, and for everyone else.
"...the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name."
What I like about the image of magnification rather than proclamation is that, while proclamation is more active, magnification is a passive thing. When a magnifying glass is placed in front of something else, it cannot help but to magnify it.
Oh, and did you catch the second line of the Magnificat?
"my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."Mary magnifying God for us through her free cooperation with his Divine Will. Now that's what I call radical joy. If done properly, any life lived with radical joy will magnify the Lord.
____
1 Rough estimate. Actual numbers unknown.
2 Source: New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) Luke 1: 42-45.
3 Or, at the least, they make it less obvious to dullards like myself. I'm not sure if the translation I like is actually a more accurate one or if it's emphasis is just better for my favorite exegesis of the passage. Fun fact though: a new translation of the liturgy of the hours is currently in the works.
4 Disclaimer: Neither of the above statements represents sound Catholic teaching.
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