December
9

My Soul Magnifies the Lord.

And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord; and my spirit has been glad in God my Saviour; for He has looked upon the lowliness of His maidservant; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He who is powerful has done for me great things, and Holy is His name. (Luke 1:46-49)

Interior confession [of the Lord’s Divine Human] is of the heart and comes forth in humility, and at the same time in the affection of good; (Arcana Coelestia 2329)

Real confession of the heart, being from celestial love, is in the genuine sense confession. The man who is in this confession acknowledges that all good is from the Lord, and that all evil is from himself; and when he is in this acknowledgment, he is in a state of humiliation, for he then acknowledges that the Lord is everything in him, and that he himself is relatively nothing; and when confession is made from this state, it is made from celestial love. (Arcana Coelestia 3880:7)

That angels have nothing of wisdom and intelligence from themselves, they themselves openly confess; indeed, they are indignant if anyone ascribes to them anything of wisdom and intelligence, for they know and perceive that this would be to take away from the Divine that which is Divine, and to claim for themselves that which is not theirs, and thus to incur the crime of spiritual theft. (Arcana Coelestia 4295)

Let it be known that all true worship consists in adoration of the Lord, adoration of the Lord in humiliation, and humiliation in one’s acknowledgment that in himself there is nothing living, and nothing good, but that all within him is dead, even, cadaverous; and in the acknowledgment that everything living and everything good is from the Lord. The more a man acknowledges these things, not with the mouth, but with the heart, the more he is in humiliation; and consequently the more he is in adoration, that is, in true worship, and the more he is in love and charity, and the more in happiness. (Arcana Coelestia 1153:2)

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