The best Advent prayer you can find is right there in the first book of Luke. The young Mary has been told by the angel that she is going to bear a son who “will be called holy, the Son of God.”
No wonder she is “troubled,” as the King James Version of the Bible puts it. Wouldn’t you be? What an honor and what a huge, incalculable challenge. How could a young woman take it all in? I remember a preacher saying that her response is a good model for all of us when we feel called by God to do something that seems impossible. We gulp, we tremble, we pray, and then we move forward, knowing that somehow we will be given the tools that we need when we need them. Courage, after all, is fear that has said its prayers.
Mary’s prayer is magnificent poetry, a summing up of all God has done and all that God can do. I remember it being recited in church once years ago by a 12-year-old girl, dressed in costume, walking slowly from one end of the sanctuary to the other. Hearing her young voice, trembling at first in the fear of getting all those words right and then saying them with boldness and faith from memory, seemed just right. Wow, I thought, and still think it:
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
for he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed:
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm,
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away.
He has helped his servant Israel
in remembrance of his mercy
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.” (Luke 1:46-56)
