Ancient Anglican

Mary’s hymn is not a wholly original composition but draws heavily on then-existing scriptures, and particularly the Song of Hanna and various Psalms.

How does your soul magnify the Lord? How does your spirit rejoice in God our Saviour?  In what ways does God cast down the mighty and lift up the lowly in your life?

Mary is mentioned by name more times in the Quran than in the Bible and she is the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran. 

Fr. Gabriel brought out two points concerning the role of Mary. First, Mary always points to Jesus. The second point is to see Mary as the personification of the Church.

Irenaeus says that Mary is the new Eve. Just as Eve caused sin to enter the world, so Mary caused the salvation of humankind to enter the world. 

Mary is the “Theotokos” or the “god-bearer” and thus necessarily draws our attention to the full nature of Jesus as fully God and fully human united in a single person.

Mark’s Gospel ends with command “to go to Galilee.” This command is not so much an ending, as a beginning, and it is directed not only at the characters in the story but, more specifically, to us the readers of the story.

Mark’s presentation of the Last Supper brings to fruition the eschatology of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Mark 13 is known as the “Little Apocalypse.” In this section , Mark draws heavily on the language and image from the Book of Daniel.

Throughout the readings for this week, Mark relies heavily on the Psalms to tell us who Jesus is.

The section ends with the healing of blind Bartemaeus who refers to Jesus as both “Son of David” and “Highest Master.” With these two titles, Jesus prepars to enter Jerusalem.

Within these readings, Jesus will twice use the example of a child to instruct his disciples in the humility and utter dependence that he expects of them and us.