Magnificat

Today being a red-letter feast day, that of the Annunciation, I pop by to check up on y’all before resuming my Lenten silence.

And, as I’m here, let me remind you that, although we are to pray daily for our various heads of government, that does not mean we pray that their policies, aims, ambitions, plans, platforms, personal profits, or parties succeed, but that they be granted ‘wisdom and strength to know and to do [God’s] will’ in place of the follies they are pursuing, and that they be ‘fill[ed] … with the love of truth and righteousness; and [made] ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in [God’s] fear’. As Jack Lewis said, when we ask that God do what is best for ourselves or for anyone else, that may in extremity mean even His calling us or them immediately, not by any human agency, to our or their judgement by the severe mercy of death; or mean our or their removal from the power to do damage and harm others; or mean our or their imprisonment in which to repent.

Malice, incompetence, and then lying about it, may be temporary personal successes for a politician false to his oath, but they are bad for what remains of a politician’s soul, and we not only not required to pray for their success in wrongdoing: we are called to pray for their correction, judgement, and removal in such cases. For the Collect, in asking that heads of government and those in authority be aided in knowing and doing right, predicates that intercession upon this petition: ‘we commend this nation to thy merciful care, that being guided by thy Providence, we may dwell secure in thy peace’.

An apt reminder on the Feast of the Annunciation, whereupon the Blessed Virgin accepted the Divine Will by saying, ‘Behold the handmaid of the LORD; be it unto me according to thy word’: that is, that things befall in accordance with God’s word, not the words of a party platform or a party leader.

Here endeth the Lesson.