social divisions will cease to matter. The first will be last, and the last first. 1:54 He has helped his servant Israel. The spirituality of the Magnificat and of the Benedictus remains firmly within the tradition of Old Testament religion. It is only with the Nunc Dimittis that Luke’s canticles will begin explicitly to look beyond the Messiah’s primary role to envisage also “revelation to the Gentiles.” Subsequent Christian history, with its increasingly universal scope, has made it inevitable