Magnificat

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!

In the opening lines of Mary's "Magnificat," we have a wonderful secret:  that is, when the soul "magnifies" the Lord, the spirit "rejoices."

I don't know how many people have ever made a distinction between the soul and the spirit, or considered the relationship between the two.  But it is clear that what the soul does has a huge impact upon the spirit.  Deuteronomy 6:5 commands us to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  If we consider that our "humanness" or "personness" is made up of body, soul, and spirit, we see a correspondence to the command.

Whenever the Bible refers to the heart, it is referring to the inner core, the spirit.  In fact, the two words are used interchangeably throughout the Old Testament.  Many people consider that the spirit and the soul are interchangeable terms, but they are not. Our "soul" consists of our will, our emotions, and our mind, or intellect.  The soul is the intermediary between the body and the spirit.  If our minds are affected by Altzheimer's or dementia, our will and our emotions are diminished also, but we are still the same "person," or "spirit."

The spirit is the part of us where God indwells, the part of us that is most in communion with the Spirit of the Lord.  It does not depend on our holy thoughts, or on our emotions, which may be all over the place, or even totally shut down.  We often choose the wrong things in life, but our spirits can still be the dwelling place of the Most High.  This is a hard concept, but an example from the Old Testament can make it more clear:  David's "soul" went astray in a disastrous way at one point in his life.  He directed his "soul" toward the wrong things:  his mind dwelt on the forbidden wife of Uriah; his will made horrible choices, because of his wayward emotions.  As a result, his spirit-- the part of him most connected to God -- was cast down in grief.  He was separated from fellowship, or communion, with the Most High.  In a sense, he was separated from the part of himself that was most himself, his inner core -- the part of him that was the image and likeness of God.

And yet, even in his sin, God said of David, "I have found a man after my own heart -- that is, after my own spirit.

It helps to picture these distinctions if we can imagine ourselves as a composite of three concentric circles.  The innermost, or smallest, circle represents the spirit, or core, or our personality.  The second circle represents our "soul," and the outermost circle represents the body.  Obviously, the whole personality works together and one "part" of us is deeply connected to and affects the other "parts."

I love the Magnificat because it so illustrates how the parts affect one another.  Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord!"  If we take that apart and reflect on its meaning, we see that Mary's mind, will, and emotions "magnify" the Lord.  We would call that prayer, to begin with:  her mind is focused on what God has done not only for her, but for His people, according to His promise.  She is familiar with the promise of God, the history of her people.  She has been thinking about what God has promised.  For the Jews, study was a form of prayer, and every synagogue had study rooms, where one could go to study the Scriptures.

When we read Scripture, we are directing our minds to the promises of God, to how He has fulfilled His promises throughout history.  And the result of directing our minds to the works of God is that our emotions are also directed to Him in faith, hope, and love, that He will continue to work in our history as He has worked in the past.  And so our wills are strengthened to choose the work of God over the work of Satan and the work of the world.

I learned a long time ago, that, although we all seek "joy," we cannot give ourselves joy, any more than we can give ourselves love, peace, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit.  These are called "fruits" because they are the result of the Spirit dwelling in us and imparting to us the inner life of the Most Holy Trinity.  Joy resides in our spirit, not in our minds, emotions, or wills.  It is the result, or the overflow, of directing our "souls" in prayer to consider what God has done for us.

My soul doth magnify the Lord -- we turn our magnifying glasses (souls) upon the works of God -- and my spirit rejoices in what He has done for me, for us, for mankind.

If we want to dance with the world, that is where our souls will turn to "magnify" the sounds of the world. But no matter how frantically we spin, our spirits will never rejoice, and we cannot make them do so.  If we want to dance with God in our spirits, we must first turn our souls to magnify His Name!