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Why Magnifying the Lord is Our Mission as Christians

By Gabe Garnica

 

 

St_Augustine's_Church,_Edgbaston_-_Divine_Service_with_sunbeams

 

One of my favorite prayers in Scripture is Mary’s beautiful Magnificat, which begins with the phrase, “ My soul magnifies the Lord”(Luke 1:46)  Curious about the use of “magnify” in Scripture, I discovered that it is used well over 100 times.   If you think about it, is there a better way to describe our purpose as followers of Christ?

See the Lord in Proper Place and Perspective

To begin, we must realize that magnifying The Lord does not mean that we are making Him more since that would be absurd.  How can we, imperfect creatures of God, make our perfect Creator more?  A magnifying glass does not make its target image bigger. Rather, it makes that target bigger for us to see better.  There is no imperfection or limitation in the object but, rather, in ourselves that we need help in seeing that object more clearly.

Although God is perfection and all good, we often need reminders that He can seem small to us if we forget His Presence in our lives.  First, we need to magnify that Presence in ourselves through our worship, praise, humility, and good works.  Second, we need to magnify that Presence in others through those same good works, our example, and our proclamation of God’s Word.

Remove Our Splinters and Thread Our Needles

We have all had the unpleasant experience of having a splinter in our hand.  Everyone knows that such a task often requires the use of a magnifying glass to help us remove this obstruction. This brings the mind Christ’s powerful reminder that we first remove our defects before presuming to point out those of other people ( Matthew 7:5).  It is easy to judge others in our drive to drive to be holier-than-thou, but Christ tells us to be humble.  Regardless of the size of our defects, we often see them, if we do at all, as mere splinters.  How often do we downplay our faults while magnifying the faults of others?  We need to see our sins more clearly if we are to truly avoid continuing them.

Another famous passage reminds us that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to find eternal salvation ( Luke 18:25). We understand this to mean that we cannot save ourselves unless we release our obsession with the temporary, temporal, and superficial things of this world.  Self-reflection will enlarge the eye of our moral needle allowing us to navigate this delicate balance between our present and eternal needs.

 Start a Fire

A final use of a magnifying glass is to start a fire by focusing  heat and energy on a given point.  We do this by concentrating diffuse light into a powerful beam.  While our lives bear their share of darkness and light, even our light can often be diffused.  We need passion, dedication, commitment, and constancy to focus that light into one important purpose.

Christ’s mission and His apostles sought to  light a fire under others and motivate them to spread the flame of Our Lord’s love message.  We need to inspire others and we do that by magnifying the power of God’s love and the example of Christ’s teaching unto hearts and minds that still lack  such a blessing.

Conclusion

Magnifying glasses do many great things that make our lives better.  However, we have the same capacity to prioritize, self-reflect, and ignite and spread dedication to Our  Lord.  Biblical magnification is not about ourselves but about magnifying God (Psalm 35:26-27).

Let us each be a magnifying glass for The Lord, for that in essence is what being His follower is really about.

2016 Gabriel Garnica

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Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Catechism, Culture, Evangelization, Scripture, Spiritual Warfare, Vocations Tagged With: Luke 1:46, Luke 18:25, Magnificat, Matthew 7:5, Psalm 35:26-27.

About Gabe Garnica

Gabriel Garnica is crazy enough to believe that we can all be saints, and he refuses to buy the lie that we cannot. He is a college professor with degrees in law and mental health counseling. He was born in Colombia and came to the U.S. as a young child. While Gabe continues to enjoy teaching law, his greatest fulfillment as an educator has come from his ten years as a catechist at two local parishes. Gabe is passionate about sharing his faith through writing and speaking; and he has enjoyed giving numerous talks to children on such topics as Divine Mercy, David and Goliath, The Ten Commandments, and prioritizing one’s faith. While he enjoys talking to children, it is in writing and speaking to adults that Gabe truly feels he has found his calling. His goal is to continue developing his Catholic speaking and write several books on his topics of interest, which include meditations on the Ten Commandments, Divine Mercy, the saints, parable stories, general Scripture, Pro-Life, and The Virgin Mary. He enjoys writing for his blog Deus solus https://wordpress.com/posts/deussolus9.wordpress.com and as a columnist at Catholic Stand ww.catholicstand.com/author/gabriel-garnica/

Gabe’s favorite saints are Tarcisius, Therese “The Little Flower”, and Alphonsus de Liguori, whom he describes as giving us a powerful glimpse of the loving challenge which God has given each of us. As mentioned above, Gabe believes that we are all called to be saints, but we spend more time convincing ourselves why we cannot become one than trying to fulfill our true purpose in becoming precisely that. Gabe also speaks about Catholic marriage as being the true “Love Triangle”, with each partner and God.

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