"My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
"In this canticle Mary first acknowledges the gifts specially conferred on herself, and then enumerates the general benefits which God never ceases to bestow upon the human race.
"A soul magnifies the Lord which dedicates to the praise and service of God all its affections, and proves its sense of the Divine Majesty by the observance of God's precepts. A spirit exults in God its Saviour which takes no thought of earthly pleasures, and is neither softened by prosperity nor crushed by adversity, but which delights only in the remembrance of its Creator, from whom it looks for eternal salvation. But though these words are adapted to all the perfect, yet they could be uttered by none so fitly as by the Blessed Mother of God, who, by a special privilege, was both inflamed by a spiritual love of God, and rejoiced in having conceived Him corporeally. Above all other Saints she possessed the right to rejoice in her Jesus, that is in her Saviour, since she knew that He would derive His temporal birth from her—He who was to be the Eternal Saviour of the world, and who in one and the same Person was her Son and her Lord.