Today while still at Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house, we listen to the "Magnificat", this great hymn coming from the lips, better said, from the Heart of Mary, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. "My soul magnifies —"magnificat"— the Lord"; all her life programme is stated here: She doesn’t want to be a leading figure but give all the space to God. Mary is great just because she didn’t want to make herself great. She knows that only when God is great is man great too.

"Magnificat" is entirely original, but at the same it is a "cloth" embroidered with "threads" from the Old Testament, made by the Word of God. We realize then that Maria was "at home": She lived from the Word of God and was impregnated by it. The divine wise light penetrated her and this is why she was so gracious, so kind, so gleaming with love.

—"For henceforth all generations will call me blessed": Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!

Today Mary wants God to be great in the world. She was not afraid that God with His greatness might encroach on our freedom. She knew that if God is great, we too are great. The fact that our first parents thought the contrary was the core of original sin.

They feared that if God were too great, He would take something away from their life. They thought that they could set God aside to make room for themselves. This was also the great temptation of the modern age, of the past three or four centuries. But when God disappears, men and women do not become greater; indeed, they lose the divine dignity, their faces lose God's splendour. In the end, they turn out to be merely products of a blind evolution and, as such, can be used and abused. This is precisely what the experience of our epoch has confirmed for us.

—Let us apply this to our own lives. It is important that God be great among us, in public and in private life.