The Cross of Christ means Life

Luke 1:46 " My soul magnifies God, the Lord.", by Dr. Martin Luther

"No one can praise God without first loving him. No one can love Him unless He (God) makes Himself known to him in the most loveable and intimate fashion. And He can make Himself known only through those works of His which he reveals in us, and which we feel and experience within ourselves. But where there is this experience, namely, that He is a God who looks into the depths and helps only the poor, despised, afflicted, miserable, forsaken, and those who are nothing, there a hearty love for Him is born. The heart overflows with gladness and goes leaping and dancing for the great pleasure it has found in God. There the Holy Spirit is present and has taught us in a moment such exceeding great knowledge and gladness through this experience."

"These words (Of Mary: Luke 1:46 "My soul magnifies God, the Lord.") express the strong ardor and exuberant joy with which all her mind and life are inwardly exalted in the Spirit. Therefore she does not say, "I will exalt the Lord," but "My soul doth exalt Him." It is as if she said: "My life and all my senses float in the love and praise of God and in lofty pleasures, so that I am no longer mistress of myself; I am exalted, more than I exalt myself, to praise the Lord."

"This is the experience of all those who are saturated with the divine sweetness and Spirit: they cannot find words to utter what they feel. For to praise the Lord with gladness is not a work of man; it is rather a joyful suffering and the work of God alone. It cannot be taught in words, but must be learned in one's own experience. Even David says in Psalm 34:8 "Oh taste and see the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man that trusts in Him." He puts tasting before seeing, because this sweetness cannot be known unless one has experienced and felt it for himself; and no one can attain to such experience unless he is in the depths and in sore straits. Therefore David makes haste to add, "Blessed is the man that trusteth in God." Such a person will experience the work of God within himself and will thus attain to His sensible sweetness and through it to all knowledge and understanding."

Martin Luther
March 10, 1521
LW, AE, Vol 21; pp 300, 302-303

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Posted December 6, 1996