The Magnificat: Mary's Divine Song When Our Voices Falter
How Our Lady's Canticle Supplements Our Insufficient Prayers According to Don Dolindo
Imagine you're applying for your dream position, and you desperately need the perfect personal statement. In your moment of need, a wise friend offers to guide you, providing insights that transform your words into something truly remarkable. Or picture yourself lost in unfamiliar territory, when a local resident not only gives you directions but walks alongside you, ensuring you reach your destination. This is precisely what happens in our spiritual journey when we encounter the Magnificat. When our own prayers fall short—limited by our human frailty, distraction, and sin—Mary's perfect song of praise supplements our deficiencies, lending us her immaculate voice and filling the gaps of our imperfect devotion. In the rhythmic heartbeat of the Church's liturgical life, this prayer resounds each evening during Vespers as a sublime hymn of praise. Mary's canticle has echoed through centuries, yet its profound depths remain ever fresh and new to exploring hearts. In the writings of the Servant of God Don Dolindo Ruotolo (1882-1970), we find extraordinary insights into why Mary's song forms such a vital part of our daily prayer.
The Magnificat, Mary's sublime canticle recorded in Luke's Gospel, has captivated the Church's heart for centuries. St. Louis de Montfort taught that every time we pray the Hail Mary, Our Lady responds to God with her Magnificat. In this beautiful spiritual exchange, our simple greetings to Mary are transformed into her perfect praise of God. This insight beautifully complements the profound understanding revealed through Don Dolindo Ruotolo's writings.
Don Dolindo was blessed with many inner locutions from Our Lord, Our Lady, and various saints. Out of humble obedience to Church authority, he instructed his spiritual children that they could regard these communications simply as edifying spiritual readings rather than presuming divine inspiration before ecclesiastical approval.
In his autobiography, Don Dolindo records a beautiful message he received from Our Lady herself about the significance of her canticle. “It is I, Mary Immaculate, full of grace, monument of God's glory,” she begins in this spiritual communication. “I, too, advance into the world at this moment, and I advance to fulfill my highest mission of motherhood that Jesus entrusted to me over every creature.”
Don Dolindo understood the Magnificat not merely as words Mary once spoke, but as the essence of her very being—a living reality that continues to shape the Church's prayer. Through her locutions to him, Our Lady explained: “I am a living canticle: Magnificat anima mea Dominum. I gather the universal applause, and pouring it back into God I confess in the name of creatures that God alone is.”
This understanding reveals why the Magnificat holds such a central place in the Church's liturgy. In these inner communications, Mary told Don Dolindo: “My response to humanity's prayer is solemn praise to God, it is His exaltation above all things, it is the strong voice that replaces the poor sinful voices, it is the order of the creature's heart that rises to infinite Love, solemnly praising Him: Magnificat anima mea Dominum.”
The humility expressed in Mary's canticle particularly captivated Don Dolindo. Drawing from her spiritual communications, he writes: “The Lord looked upon my humility, found me pure in spirit, exalted me and made me blessed before all peoples.” He explains that true humility is not self-deprecation but an honest recognition of one's relationship with God: “When the soul knows herself in her smallness, and appreciates God in this knowledge, she attracts to herself the eternal love of God.”
In one of the most profound insights shared through Don Dolindo, Our Lady reveals how she supplements our imperfect prayers with her perfect praise: “For twenty centuries, humanity has prayed to me, repeating: 'Pray for us sinners.' Well, how can I pray for you if not by supplementing your actions? Does God perhaps need a supplicating voice to be moved, He who is infinite justice and order? He needs praise that supplements the poor hearts of sinners, praise that restores balance where their life is made entirely of miseries and degradation, of selfishness and death.”
Don Dolindo often emphasized the practical implications of the Magnificat for our spiritual lives. From his own reflections, he teaches: “Glorify God in the moment of your fervor, that is, when you glimpse His greatness, and say: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.’ Glorify God when you are cheerful, when everything goes well for you, attributing everything to God and exclaiming: ‘My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, in God who has shown me mercy.’”
Even our struggles and weaknesses become occasions for praise in the spirit of the Magnificat. Don Dolindo counsels: “Glorify God when you feel poor and inert, and empty, and cold, saying to the Lord: ‘Here I am reduced to nothing, look O my God at my poverty, at the spirit that humbles itself before you.’’’ And in another passage: “Exult in your holy humility when you recognize yourself as poor and glorify God. Exult in your weakness and in your insufficiency, recognizing that it will demonstrate all the more the power of omnipotent God.”
In times of trial, the Magnificat becomes a powerful spiritual weapon. Don Dolindo encourages us with these stirring words: “In ruin, sing to God exulting: Magnificat anima mea Dominum! Sing because that ruin is the beginning of God's triumph!” Through Mary's inner communications, he received this insight: “This is the hour in which the powerful are deposed from their seats, this is the hour in which the proud are dispersed, this is the hour of God's triumph!”
Mary's revelations to Don Dolindo particularly highlight the Magnificat's role in our troubled age. She describes humanity as “oppressed by confusion” and suffering “the oppression of the proud.” Through Don Dolindo, she offers her Magnificat as the remedy: “My soul glorifies God in His solemn triumphs, and I therefore exclaim: He has shown strength with His arm, He has scattered the proud in their conceit and from their hearts, He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the humble; He has filled the hungry and needy and left empty those who thought themselves rich.”
What is particularly moving in Don Dolindo's transmission of Mary's revelations is her explanation of how she represents us before God: “I am your voice, I am your exultation, I am your representative in my humility, I am your heartbeat, I represent for you the reaction against pride through humility, against overpowering force through dedication to God, against selfish wealth through mercy that continuously gives of herself.”
Don Dolindo points out a profound paradox that makes the Magnificat such an appropriate prayer for the Church: “The Virgin found herself in a state of annihilation through her great virtue; humanity finds itself in a state of annihilation through its great miseries.” Mary activated God's mercy through her immaculate purity; we attract it by presenting our misery to God and having it covered by her virtues.
Perhaps most practically, Don Dolindo shares Mary's guidance for making the Magnificat our own daily prayer: “When finding some misery in yourselves, you must repeat my same words in an act of profound humility... ‘I am wretched’ (you must say), ‘and this is why He welcomes me: He has deposed the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble. I am weak, and this is why He exalts me in His grace. He left the rich empty of goods and filled the hungry with good things. My very nothingness makes me desire Him alone, and this is why He comes to me and satisfies me.’”
Ultimately, Don Dolindo reveals that our lives should become a living Magnificat: “Look well to your life, it rises on new foundations and you must represent in the world the practical glorification of God, the living Magnificat.” Through Mary's spiritual communications, he understood that each of us can embody a verse of her canticle through our unique vocation: “Just as a mother sees herself reproduced in her children, and each of them reproduces her features, her character, her habits, her virtues, so I see myself and must see myself as reproduced in you.”
Don Dolindo concludes that devotion to Our Lady “must be renewed in the world, where it has become so weakened,” as “one of the conditions for drawing mercy from the Heart of Jesus.” Each time we pray the Magnificat, particularly in the evening prayer of the Church, we allow Mary to “supplement” our deficient praise with her perfect song. We join her eternal symphony of love, preparing ourselves for what Don Dolindo calls “the new hour that rises for the world”—the outpouring of Christ's life into a humanity that desperately needs His grace.
Through Don Dolindo's spiritual insights and Mary's communications to him, we discover the Magnificat as far more than historical words—it is a living reality, a school of prayer, and a pathway to authentically praising God in all circumstances of our lives. As Mary herself told Don Dolindo: “Sing therefore to God alone, my children, [join me in prayer], so that I, the Advocate of sinners, may present you before God.”
Let us pray the Magnificat with renewed understanding, allowing Mary to be, as she promised, “your voice, your exultation, your representative in humility, your heartbeat.” For in her words, “without me humanity cannot find that wonderful life that Jesus comes to bring them.”
Reference:
Ruotolo, D. (2020). Fui chiamato dolindo che significa dolore. Pagine di autobiografia. Casa Mariana Editrice. Apostolato Stampa. Chapter 49.
Ruotolo, D. (2012). Magnificat. Commenti e spunti spirituali. Casa Mariana Editrice.
Author’s Note: If you would like to read more about Don Dolindo’s spirituality, check out those books: Don Dolindo’s Books.
Thank you for these edifying posts.
Impresionante don Dolindo. Deseo conocerlo más.