He Has Done Great Things for Me
Magnanimity, besides being difficult to pronounce, is not a virtue mentioned too often, much less understood. As for myself, I’d always heard about it in conjunction with Our Lady, as a heightened sort of generosity. Recently, however, a lecturer mentioned that magnanimity is actually about greatness. Unfortunately, he did not go into any further detail, and so I set off to do my own research with the help of every Dominican’s best friend, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.
The magnanimous person is indeed one who is “minded to do some great act.” In other words, he will do that which is deserving of great honors, not to seek fame or wealth, but because he recognizes his worthiness of great things.
Now, hold on. This sounds an awful lot like it would be directly opposed to humility, the virtue which we know from Scripture as absolutely necessary in order to enter God’s Kingdom. But we need to consider a very important factor of magnanimity which makes it, not in conflict with, but the complement of humility.
In order to be truly magnanimous, the person recognizes in himself something great which is purely a gratuitous gift from God. It is this recognition, which leads him to the tendency toward greatness. On the other hand, the truly humble sees in himself deficiencies, sins, and faults, the results of Original Sin, and so does not exalt himself. Magnanimity and humility balance each other and work in tandem to allow us to see ourselves as we really are: creatures of a loving God who are both fallen and redeemed.
So why did I always associate magnanimity with generosity? Are they even related at all? In an old dictionary we keep in the Novitiate, I looked up generosity and found that the first definition is “of noble-mind, free from meanness, gracious, and magnanimous.” You can imagine my surprise! I do think there is honor and greatness in generosity. Certainly, the generous person is highly esteemed, and we know that giving, especially to the poor, is a necessary part of our faith.
When we are generous, we give something of ourselves. But giving of ourselves necessarily means giving something great, because God created us and gives us everything we have. It is precisely in this recognition of having a great thing and wanting to share it with others that we act magnanimously.
Mary, we know, is the most virtuous person God created, and so we can say with certainty that she is the most magnanimous. We see this especially in the Annunciation, which the Church celebrates today. It is in this wonderful event that Mary receives the greatest honor ever given, to become the Mother of God. Mary’s great act which exemplifies her magnanimity is her fiat, in which she perfectly submits her life to God’s plan for the salvation of mankind.
Then, at the Visitation, Mary sings the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…For He has looked upon His handmaid in her lowliness…from this day forward all generations will call me blessed.” When God asks Mary to bear His Son, she can say yes because she recognizes the greatness in herself as a woman created and saved by God. But also, in her humility, she knows that this honor is not something earned or achieved on her own, but a gift given to her by God’s power and goodness.
Mary is our model of Christian life. We should imitate her in all things, and today let us especially strive for magnanimity like hers. We believe that we are God’s children, co-heirs with Christ, not because of anything we have done, but purely by the grace and mercy of God. By keeping this always in mind and acting accordingly, we can say yes, as Mary did, to all the great things God wants to do through us and for us.
