Two women read this. The Spanish version is spoken in the background continually, repeating if necessary. The other voice breaks in with each stanza in a laboured, heavy sort of presentation. Slow, heavy music is played in the background (aka Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah). Play the music during the introduction too.
This week we heard about the death of Augusto Pinochet of Chile, one of many Latin American D
dictators who found the worlds of Mary too pointed, too direct, to frightening, and banned them. But that never stopped the women of Chile, whose husbands had been disappeared, to speak them openly in the squares, directing Mary’s words to those in power as they spoke them. You’ll hear the Magnificant in Spanish, the language of those mothers and wives with English words spoken alongside not to interpret them, but to give them meaning, to speak for them when these others had been silenced. And to affirm what Mary did, in choosing to become God’s handmaid.
Voice 1 (read continually)
Proclama mi alma la grandeza del Señor,
se alegra mi espíritu en Dios mi Salvador,
porque ha mirado la humillación de su esclava.
Desde ahora me felicitarán todas las generaciones,
porque el Poderoso ha hecho obras grandes por mi;
su Nombre es santo.
Su misericordia llega a sus fieles,
de generación en generacion.
El hace proezas con su brazo;
dispersa a los soberbios de corazón.
Derriba del trono a los poderosos,
y enaltece a los humildes.
A los hambrientos los colma de bienes,
y a los ricos despide vacíos.
Auxilia a Israel, su siervo,
acordándose de la misericordia,
Como lo había prometido a nuestros padres,
en favor de Abrahán y su descendencia para siempre.
Voice 2
My soul glorifies God.
Hear, O my sisters, who labour under the weight of womanhood,
my brothers who cling on to decency scraped out from the fragile earth.
My soul glorifies God.
Hear, O my sisters, whose husbands have been disappeared
and whose sons have no language for the fear they are left with.
My soul glorifies God.
Hear all you who are weighed with broken hallelujahs,
whose world is trapped in a deception
of abuse and prejudice.
My soul glorifies God.
Hear all you caught up with your enemy,
who have struggled with the reason for war too long,
and found it absurd.
My soul glorifies God.
God has at last chosen a handmaid in me,
and has a craving to birth hope within me,
ravenous to elevate freedom,
set free liberation,
and pronounce justice for the poor,
thirsty to bring from my womb
life to all our longings.
God as appointed the time and the place,
the woman and the womb.
Hear O my sisters.
Hear O my brothers.
And tell yourselves,
tell the world,
tell God,
I say,
yes!
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