Sunday December13th.to Saturday December 19th.
Sunday December13th.to Saturday December 19th. Reflections on the Readings at Daily Mass.
Sunday December 13th. Third Sunday
in Advent in Year Two. ‘Gaudete
Sunday’.
It is difficult to find any authoritative
explanation of how this Sunday came to be celebrated, to a certain extent, like
Mid-Lent or ‘Laetare’ Sunday. Mid-Lent
Sunday was, traditionally, the time for a relaxation in the Lenten Fast and
penance and so it came to be known in England as Refreshment Sunday. But to
equate Advent with Lent is a mistake because it is, as was said at the
beginning of Advent, a very different sort of season.
Lent was, above all and originally, a time of
preparation for those who were to be baptised at the celebration of Easter
night. In time, the whole Church came to share in these forty days which became
a season of fasting and penance.
Advent is the season during which we prepare to
celebrate the coming of Christ into the world and, as such, is not in any sense
a penitential time but rather a joyful one.
On Mid-Lent Sunday the Pope would send a golden
rose which he had blessed, to some distinguished person or community, as a mark
of special favour for their particularly outstanding Christian witness. From
this custom sprang the use of wearing rose-coloured (not pink!) vestments on
that Sunday.
This custom was, at some point, adopted for
mid-Advent Sunday which is today and it seemed to fit in well with the
character of today’s worship. The name ‘Gaudete Sunday’ is derived from the
first words of Entrance chant or Introit of the old Mass as was the case for
many Sundays. The text is from Saint Paul and is from the reading that used to
be read on this Sunday from the Letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, ‘Gaudete
in Domino semper, iterum dico, gaudete’, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, again I
say, rejoice’.
It may be worth noting that the custom of using
a pink candle on the Advent wreath has crept in over the last couple of decades
or more, probably from the United States! The original Advent wreath was imported
from mainland Europe during the last century and became very popular amongst
Anglicans, especially of a moderately Catholic tradition. It consisted of a
wreath of holly and ivy with four red candles on it, one of which would be lit
each Sunday of Advent until all four were lit and the white candle in the
middle would be lit on Christmas day. At some point after the Second Vatican
Council the Advent Wreath became popular in Roman Catholic churches also.
Sadly, however, ecclesiastical furnishers, probably under American influence,
introduced the horrid violet candles and then more recently a pink candle for
this Sunday. The original wreath was beautiful in its simplicity but this later
development is somewhat ‘tacky’!
Readings
Isaiah 61/1-2, 10-11 :
Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians 5/16-24 :
John 1/6-8, 19-28
Again today it is John the Baptist who
dominates the readings. Although this is the year when we are reading Mark’s
Gospel on Sundays, today is an exception and we read from John’s Gospel. In
John’s Gospel, after the Prologue to the Gospel from which we have a short
extract about John, we read of the first day in the Gospel writer’s story of
Jesus which he will follow up with a second, third and even fourth day.
On this first day Jesus does not appear. He is
foretold by the Baptist who is, as the Prologue says, his ‘witness’ ‘to speak
of the light’. The reading then moves on to verse 19 where the main characters
in John’s account begin to appear. ‘The Jews’ that is the Jewish authorities
send the ‘priests and Levites’ to ask John exactly who he is. John introduces
the idea of the Messiah or the Christ by affirming that it is not him. The men
sent by the Jewish authorities ask John his reason for doing what he is doing,
namely, baptising people. They ask him if he is Elijah since it was believed
that Elijah would come to herald the arrival of the Messiah and he says ‘No’.
Is he a prophet they ask and again he says ‘No’. The men press him for an
answer as to his identity and then John speaks of the One who is to come. He
reminds those who are questioning him that he is performing a rite of
conversion, symbolised by washing with water. John was inviting people to
repent of their sins and to change their way of life. Now, he proclaims that
the Messiah, who is already among them, but whom they have failed to recognise,
is so much greater than he, that he, John, is not worthy to undo the straps of
his sandals, the task of a slave.
That is where the Gospel reading ends. We must now
return to the first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah. This extract
is taken from the third part of the book and addresses the Israelites who have
now returned from their exile and are in their own land. The author of this
latter part of the book sees new visions for the future. In today’s extract the
prophet proclaims that he has been anointed with the Spirit, an expression
often used to indicate how the Spirit has been poured out, as it were, upon
someone. This anointing is so that the prophet may ’bring good news to the
poor…’ all words that we will hear Jesus repeat at the beginning of his
ministry in the Synagogue at Nazareth saying that these words are being
fulfilled in him. The final words of the reading express the prophet’s joy as
he proclaims that God will make both ‘integrity and praise spring up in the
sight of the nations’.
The writer of the First Letter to the
Thessalonians tells that community that they must ‘be happy’ and ‘for all
things give thanks to God’. He goes no to exhort them not to ‘suppress the
Spirit’ or ‘treat the gift of prophecy with contempt’ to ‘hold on to what is
good’ and ‘to avoid every form of evil’. How does this relate to the other two
readings?
First of all, we must remember that to prophesy
is to foretell the future but to speak on behalf of another. So we read that
Aaron was Moses’ ‘prophet’ (Exodus 7/1) since Moses seems to have had some
impediment to his speech or, at least, was not a good speaker. John the Baptist
is then Jesus’ prophet, not that he foretells what Jesus is going to say but
that he speaks on his behalf.
What does that mean for us? When we are
baptised we are anointed with the oil of Chrism (of course, in the case of
those who old enough to understand, this is what is usually delayed for infants
and known as Confirmation) and prayer is said over us that we may share in the
role of Christ in the world as prophet, priest and king. This means that the
Holy Spirit will enable us to be prophets, to speak out on behalf of Christ. We
are anointed with the Spirit at our Baptism and the writer of the Letter says
that the Spirit ought not to be suppressed. This is very relevant for us,
especially at this time because, as Jesus’ followers who form what we call the Church,
we are all endowed with the Holy Spirit. We have a duty to speak out and to say
what we believe to be right and true. But there are no facilities in our church
for this to happen. The second Vatican Council over fifty years ago envisaged
that there would be ways in which every member of the Church could be
represented and have a voice. This would be through Diocesan and Parish
Pastoral Councils and ultimately Synods and Councils at the highest level.
After their initial implementation following the Council, these structures have
gradually disappeared and the clergy have taken back control of everything, The
whole Church suffers as a result because no one is listening to anyone else and
though the Spirit may be speaking, the Spirit is also being suppressed by those in power in the Church, bishops and
clergy. This is a very serious situation and one which must be remedied if our
church is to survive, especially now in the present critical times.
The Baptist prepared the way for the Lord and
that is also our role as the Church. By our life together, our own individual
lives and our concern for all those whom the prophet mentions, the poor, the broken-hearted,
those in prison and so many others we ought to be revealing the face of Christ
to the world in which we live.
We must not let the Spirit in us be suppressed
and if those in authority will not hear us or are unwilling to create ways and
means for us to be heard, then we must find other ways of bearing witness to
Christ and being his love and compassion for the world, joining with all those
of every faith and none who are, often without realising it, doing this very
thing.
Monday December 14th. Memory of John
of the Cross (1542-1591). Third Monday in Advent.
Born in 1542 of a noble but impoverished family
in Toledo, Juan de Yepes was brought up by his widowed mother, went to a poor
school at Medina del Campo and was apprenticed to a silk weaver. He showed no aptitude for this trade and then
went to a Jesuit college, joined the Carmelite Friars in 1563, studied theology
at Salamanca and was made a priest in 1567.
Juan was not happy with the way of life of the
Carmelites and thought of becoming a Carthusian hermit but he was persuaded by
the great Teresa of Avila to join her in her reform of the Order. Juan or John of the Cross as he had become,
shared in the reform with Teresa and became rector of the study house for the
friars who had accepted the reform as well as confessor to the sisters at Avila
where Teresa had established the mother house of the reform.
In 1575 the friars who had not accepted
Teresa’s reform refused to give independence to those friars who had and
imprisoned John in Toledo. It was here that he wrote some of his greatest
poetry. He managed to escape after nine months and a little later the two
branches of the Carmelites were officially separated and John became
successively, rector of the college at Baeza which he had founded, Prior of the
house at Granada from 1582 and Prior at Segovia from 1588.
Sadly, the end of John’s life was marked by
more suffering at the hands of the Vicar General of the Reformed Carmelites and
he was banished and died in exile at Ubeda in Andalusia in 1591.John suffered
as a victim of jealousy and power politics but he was a man of great warmth and
passion and both a poet and a mystic. He had been rigorously trained in the
philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas and his spiritual works which are
commentaries on his poems are a reflection of that and stress the need for
asceticism, of pure faith and the love of God. John’s works are greatly
admired, not only among the Carmelites but throughout the Western Church and
among those who do not belong to it also.
Today, very much in keeping with the spirit of
Advent, we can pray for deeper commitment to prayer and a stronger faith and
trust in the God who, as in John’s case, is often a hidden God.
Readings
Numbers 24/2-7, 15-17 :
Matthew 21/23-27
Balaam is a somewhat mythical character, not
unknown to other Near Eastern traditions and the stories about him form a
separate unit in the Book of Numbers. In today’s reading, he is portrayed as a
seer upon whom the Spirit of God came so that he was able to prophesy. He is
able to see what God sees and to reveal it in his own words. Once again the
vision is of a new idyllic state but the words that are of most interest are
that ‘a hero arises from their stock, he reigns over countless peoples’ and
further on ‘I see him-but not in the present. I behold him-but not close at
hand, a star from Jacob takes leadership, a sceptre arises from Israel’.
Obviously Christians have always seen these
words as referring to Jesus, the ‘star from Jacob’ being descended from him and
he is of the same stock as all of us, he is truly human.
In the Gospel reading Jesus is once again in
dispute with the Scribes and the Pharisees and again he gets them into a corner
so that they have to admit defeat. Jesus will not tell his questioners by what
authority he does his good works and teaches the people unless they tell him
whether they believe John the Baptist to have been under God’s guidance or not.
The chief priests and the elders of the people are cornered. If they say that
they believe John to have been guided by God, then Jesus will reproach them for
not having believed in him but if they deny John’s ministry the people will be
in uproar because they believed in John. Those who did believe in John are
those who his questioners would reject as sinners and yet it is they who
believed.
It is difficult to see any connection between
these readings until we realise that Balaam was not a Jew and yet he was
inspired by God to prophesy just as those who accepted John’s call to
repentance were not the devout Chief Priests and the Elders of the people but
sinners.
So today is a reminder yet again of how the
Lord comes to us, not so much in the ways we expect him to come but in the
unlikely people, those outside the Church, even those who the authorities of
the Church would label as sinners. Jesus, the ‘star from Jacob’ the ‘sceptre
arising from Israel’ comes to us, the Word made flesh in the flesh of countless
others but most especially in the poor and the needy.
Today we can think perhaps of those in whom the
Lord comes to us both in those who show us love and care, most of whom know
nothing of Jesus or the Church and in those who need our love and care and who
are Jesus for us. John of the Cross reminds us that, if we are to be truly on
the alert and able to find and see the Lord, then we must give time to prayer
and waiting on him in the silence and in the moments, as John found, when he
seems to so far away and hidden from us.
There are proper readings for John of the Cross
though, almost certainly, those of the day will be used. Those for John are :
The first letter of Paul to the Corinthians
2/1-10
which reminds us of John’s simplicity, even
though he was both philosopher and theologian and how he learnt to rely only on
Jesus and the power of God.
Luke 14/25-33
which speaks to us of John’s total giving of
himself to Christ and how it brought him suffering even from among his own
brethren.
Tuesday December 15th. Third Tuesday
in Advent.
Readings
Zephaniah 3/1-2, 9-13 :
Matthew 21/28-32
The prophet Zephaniah was active between the
years 640 and 609 .B.C.E. and he is speaking at a time of turmoil. He is
addressing the city of Jerusalem itself and reproaching its people for the way
in which they failed to trust God and have refused to learn their lesson. He
prophesies, however, that all will be forgiven and peoples from afar will come
to worship God. Those who are left in Jerusalem, he says, will be the humble
and lowly who will lead honest lives, free from all wrong doing. They will
enjoy peace and prosperity, the prophet says.
Christians have, obviously, seen these words as
relating to the Lord’s coming and calling together a holy people, his followers who will not come
from among the rich, the powerful and the arrogant but will be lowly and humble
and lead honest lives. Because of this, others will be attracted to join them
from all over the earth and they will be a proclamation of the Kingdom by what
they are..
The Gospel reading has Jesus telling a story.
The son who says ‘No’ but then thinks better of it represents the poor and
lowly people who have not been highly observant, if at all, of the Jewish Law, the
sinners and the prostitutes, even those who are not Jewish. They have begun to
listen to his teaching, Jesus says, to change their way of life and to follow
him.
On the other hand, those who are represented by
the son who says ‘yes’ are those who profess to be faithful to the Law, the
chief priests and the Elders. They have said, as it were, ‘Yes’ but they have
failed to live what the Law is all about, love of God and love of neighbour.
Jesus reminds them how they have failed to
listen to John the Baptist when those who they condemned as sinners, the
tax-collectors and prostitutes did listen and changed their way of life. Even
seeing that did not make the Elders and chief priests repent.
As we prepare for Christmas Jesus reminds us
again that however much we may have failed in the past it is always possible
for us to change our ways and follow him more faithfully. As the prophet
Zephaniah said, it is the poor and the lowly, sinners like ourselves that Jesus
calls to be his friends. The only mistake we can make is that of the chief
priests and the Pharisees, to begin to think of ourselves arrogantly and to
forget our own nothingness.
As Jesus says, when all is said and done, we
are his lowly servants but what a privilege that is to be called to serve him
in those who need our love and our care. We have often said ‘No’ like
the son in the story but it is never too late
to say ‘Yes’ once again, even if we have to do it every day.
Wednesday Dcember16th. Third Wednesday in Advent.
Readings
Isaiah 45/6-8, 18, 21-26 :
Luke 7/19-23
The reading from the prophet Isaiah is made up
of verses related to the anointing of the pagan King of Babylon, Cyrus. He is
to be the one who will be the liberator of the Jewish people from their
bondage. The prophet extols God as the Lord of the universe and ends by
acclaiming him as the One to whom all the peoples of the world will come
eventually, even those who had revolted against him.
Linking this extract with today’s reading from
Matthew’s Gospel we see how different will be the liberation that Jesus brings
from what the people were awaiting.
Today’s reading shows John, possibly not yet in
prison but experiencing doubts about whether Jesus is the ‘one who is to come’.
Jesus sends the messengers back to John to tell him how the words of the
prophet Isaiah are being fulfilled and, above all, how the Good News is being
proclaimed to the poor.
Jesus is the One who is anointed with the Holy
Spirit and who comes to free the people, but not in a political way, the way
they had expected. Jesus brings a different kind of freedom and the healings
that he does are all associated with that freedom. He frees those who are
excluded from society by their diseases and restores them to fellowship with
others and to human society where , perhaps, people have believed their
afflictions to be sent by God as a punishment.
The Kingdom or Reign which Jesus proclaims is
very different from that awaited by his contemporaries and perhaps from that
for which we await and hope for. So often Christians confuse the Church with
the Kingdom or Reign of God and are saddened and confused when our numbers are
diminishing as they are right now and people show no interest in joining us.
Jesus says to us as he said to John ‘Happy are
those who do not lose faith in him’.
The confusion is that we see the Church as an
end in itself but we are a vehicle, like King Cyrus, for proclaiming the Reign
of God. We do this, or we ought to be doing this by our communities which
should reflect the values of the Kingdom, concern for the poorest and the most
needy, openness to all who come to us, and love and care for one another.
Meanwhile the Reign of God is being established all around us wherever people
are loving others and caring for them and working to make our world a better
place. This is the Kingdom of God which is among us, close to us and which
ought to be in us.
Today Jesus tells us that we must not lose hope
in him and that is extraordinarily important for us at this time. Our world
seems in chaos and the Church not much better and it is easy to lose hope but
in spite of all this, our true happiness is to be found in living out the
Gospel in our lives and trusting totally in the God who loves us and shows
himself to us in Jesus. During
Advent we must renew our hope in this good God day by day since the Lord whom
we
prepare to welcome is the cause of that hope.
He shows how the Kingdom of God is close to us and among us by reminding us of
all the good that is going on in our world. He calls us to take our part in building
that Kingdom with those of every faith and none and to care for him as he comes
to us by the generosity of our giving this Advent to those who are in need.
An introduction to the Readings from December
17th. until Christmas Eve.
During these last days of Advent, the days of
the great ‘O’s, we read from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke the various
accounts of the events leading up to Jesus’ birth and his childhood. We know
these stories so well but perhaps we have asked ourselves sometimes whether
these things really happened. So it may be helpful to give some sort of
introduction to these various accounts to help us think about them more
reasonably.
We must recognise firstly that, although these
stories are found at the beginning of the Gospels they are, in fact, additions
to the earliest preaching about Jesus which concentrated on his public life and
teaching. It is Mark’s Gospel that gives us this earliest account.
There were many stories circulating at the end
of the first century and the beginning of the second which, as it were,
attempted to fill in the gaps that existed in the Gospel accounts. These are
works of pious fiction though there may, of course, be snippets of truth in
them which had been passed on by word of mouth.
Are the accounts of Jesus’ birth and infancy in
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke just pious fiction then? If we examine them
closely we will find that they are much more serious than that and they do, in
fact, embody a whole theology. It is worth remembering too that there are other
places in the Gospels where there are accounts of events for which the writer
could not have had direct evidence such as Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness
or his agony in the garden. In other words, these stories are not meant to be
factual or biographical but theological. This does not mean they are less
valuable. On the contrary, they contain things which are deeply true about
Jesus because they are a reflection on the meaning of his life. It is to this
category that the Christmas stories belong.
There is plenty of evidence in the New
Testament that the first generations of Christians were somewhat bewildered by
the fact that Jesus’ life and ministry did not live up to the promises made in
the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament.
It is, therefore, the concern of the later
writers in the New Testament, like Saint John’s Gospel, the last Epistles of
Paul and the Christmas stories that we are looking at to suggest that these
expectations were a mistake. What they seek to point out is that the Kingdom or
Reign of God had really come in the death and resurrection of Jesus which,
rightly seen, was already the promised return in his resurrection. In fact, the
Kingdom had come already in his public life where sin and death were being
overcome.. Matthew and Luke want, in fact, to say that the Kingdom had already
come in Jesus’ first coming and the stories with which they surround this event
seek to make this plain. There had also grown up among the Jews, especially
during their Exile in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ a way of using
past events in Scripture to throw light on the present and this is what is
known as ‘Midrash’ The Christmas stories are all based on the Hebrew Scriptures
in something of the same way, using the past to throw light on the present and
often leaving the reader uncertain as to
how to distinguish historical facts from the background against which they are presented so that they
fall into the category of Midrash.
A truly Christian reading of the Hebrew
Scriptures and this is what the Christians of the first few centuries so
clearly understood, sees it not merely as a long preparation for Christ but as
a constant anticipation of him.
The first chapters of Matthew’s and Luke’s
Gospels should be seen as stories which embody a theology. The questions we
must ask then are not historical, the when, how and where, but theological,
what is their meaning.
A good example of this way of looking at things
are the accounts of creation at the beginning of Genesis. There the authors are
not concerned with telling us when or how the world was created but rather
‘What kind of world is it?’ and ‘What kind of people should we be?’
In the same way the stories at the beginning of
these two Gospels do not give us historical information but rather, theology.
They answer the question ‘Who is Jesus?’ and always come back with the same
answer. He is the One who was crucified and raised from the dead and lives on
to give life to all who believe in him. We so often fail to remember that the resurrection
is not just a bit more information tacked on to the end of the Gospels It is,
in fact, the only message that the Apostles have to proclaim. ‘He is risen!’ In
view of all this the only language that can be used to talk about Jesus’ birth
and infancy must be symbolic. It is the only language in which profound
theological realities can be expressed.
‘Symbols and images ….. cluster thickly in the
scenes of the Christmas story which in Matthew and Luke is a prelude to their
account of Jesus’ public career. Visits of angels, prophetic dreams, the
marvellous star in the East, the miraculous birth greeted with songs from the
heavenly choir, all the appealing incidents so familiar in the appropriate
setting of the Christmas carol or the Nativity play. That there is a basis of
fact somewhere behind it all need not be doubted, but it would be a bold man
who would presume to draw a firm line between fact and symbol. What our authors
are saying through all this structure of imagery is that the obscure birth of a
child to a carpenter’s wife was, in view of all that came out of it, a decisive
moment in history and the traffic of two worlds was initiated, to be traced by
the discerning eye all through the story that was to follow’ (C,H.Dodd, ‘The
founder of Christianity’ Collins, London, 1971 pages 30-31).
If the stories at the beginning of Matthew’s
and Luke’s Gospels are theology rather than history, it follows that the sort
of questions that we have to ask of them are not ‘When?’, ‘How?’ or ‘Where?’
but rather, what is the meaning of this or that passage?
A child - and a childlike- age will be content
to explore the meaning of a story without enquiring closely about its
historical character. An adult- and the history conscious age in which we live-
will want to distinguish between the historical and the non-historical. This is
our problem. We have to accept that to treat the stories as history is to miss
the point.
The kind of questions that we keep putting to
the Scriptures, both the Old and the New
Testaments are secondary. The first thing that
should be in our mind when we read any page of the Gospels is that this is a
profession of faith by someone who has been through the experience of Easter,
who has been taken over by the Spirit of Christ and can only speak of him in
the light of his resurrection. The further question about the actual event and
where and when and how comes in second place.
If this is true of the whole Gospel narrative
it is particularly true of the opening pages of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.
Here, above all, the Gospel writer is asserting his faith and not writing a
biography.
This does not mean that the Gospel stories have
no historical basis or that they have been made up out of the blue. A number of
facts control and give direction to both accounts and a comparison of of the
two stories of Matthew and Luke would suggest that those elements which are
common to the two accounts are historical facts. The person of Jesus, Mary and
Joseph, their descent from David, the home at Nazareth, the person of Herod are
all common to both and it is interesting to note that these are precisely the
historical details which occur in John’s Gospel and which we would, therefore,
have known even if the Christmas stories had never been written.
We must remember though that these facts are
pressed into service for a theological purpose and not for a biographical one.
The facts are used in the freest possible manner and re-thought in the light of
both the Old Testament and the resurrection of Jesus.
This also means that the accounts of Matthew
and Luke cannot be harmonised. These are not two biographies but two ways by
which the authors of the Gospels have tried to express their theology. It would
be as pointless to try to harmonise the two as to try to harmonise two
portraits by different artists of the same person. Each is a valid portrait in
its own right.
What are the questions we ought to be asking as
we read the accounts of Jesus’ birth and infancy in Matthew’s and Luke’s
Gospels?
Firstly Matthew, in order to show that Jesus is
the true Messiah, foretold by the prophets, makes constant reference to them.
In fact, in his account of Jesus’ birth and childhood he uses five clear
quotations, each of which begins with ‘This took place in order to fulfil…’. As
we noted earlier, none of these texts are, in fact, predictions about the birth
and childhood of Jesus. Matthew just makes use of them.
Because Matthew is writing for his
Jewish-Christian community, his whole purpose is to re-tell, as it were, the
whole of the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of the risen Christ.
Luke’s purpose is different and it is not for
nothing that he has often been portrayed as an artist. Luke may have been a
painter but it is in his skill with words that we see his true artistry. At the
very beginning of his Gospel he says that his aim is to write ‘an orderly
account’ about Jesus.
This is borne out in the way he begins his
Gospel. The balance and harmony betray an artist’s hand. Luke warns his readers
to appreciate the parallel that he makes between John the Baptist and Jesus in
order to understand how much Jesus towers over John. These first two chapters
of Luke’s Gospel are, in fact, an elaboration of the statement of John the
Baptist with which the main body of the Gospel begins. ‘One is coming after me
who is mightier than me’ (Luke 3/16).
Much more could be written but this may help us
to look at the Christmas stories in a different light. With each episode in the
story we have to ask ourselves ‘What is the Gospel writer trying to say in this
passage?’ and we come back always to the essential fact that he is saying that
in these ordinary everyday events of pregnancy, birth and family this child is
the One who is now risen and in him we have seen the very presence of God in
our own flesh and blood. Like the way in which the figures of Jesus and Mary
and the saints are portrayed with light around them and haloes, these stories
are the ornamentation around the essential facts to help us recognise with whom
the stories are really dealing.
As we enjoy again these beautiful stories let’s
not get bogged down in asking whether they really happened. Let us rejoice in
the fact that they reveal to us the faith of the Gospel writers, faith in the
Risen One whose birth we are preparing to celebrate.
Thursday December 17th. ‘O Sapientia’. Third Thursday of Advent.
Today is the first of the great days that lead
up to Christmas and for each of these days there are special readings at Mass
and they are marked by what are called the great ‘O’s. Each evening at Evening
Prayer we conclude by singing the hymn of Mary, the’ Magnificat’, ‘My soul
glorifies the Lord’ (Luke 1/46-55). It is the high point of Evening Prayer
when, with Mary, we praise God for all that Jesus proclaimed in the Good News.
We praise the God who turns the world’s values upside down and puts the poor,
the lowly and the outcast first, among whom Mary numbers herself. ‘He has put
down the mighty from their thrones’ Mary sings ‘and exalted the lowly and
meek’. This is the revolution that Jesus comes to set in motion!
Each day throughout the year and for centuries
it has been this song of Mary which brought to a climax the daily worship of
the Church in the West.
For this reason the Magnificat is preceded and
followed by what is called an antiphon which often takes up the theme of the
day or the feast.
Each day until December 23rd. there
is a special antiphon which begins with ‘O’ and calls upon the Lord to come, to
come to our world, to come today, to come in the flesh and to come at the very
end to gather all things to God. Each day the Lord is addressed by a different
title and in the first today he is called the ‘Wisdom proceeding from the mouth
of the Most High’. These antiphons were so well known even by ordinary folk
that the days were called after them and so today was known as ‘O Sapientia’.
Even after the reformed church of England had given up using the old Latin
services and Cranmer had produced his Book of Common Prayer which was based on
the old services but with a much simplified order of worship and where such complicated
things as antiphons had been done away with, this day was still called ‘O
Sapientia’ in the Calendar at the beginning of the book.
These are wonderful prayers composed of
quotations from the Old Testament all of which allude to the coming of the
Messiah. You may like to use them each day in your prayers and reflect upon
their content as we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Lord at Christmas
and his coming to us every day in every one and in every event.
Here is the antiphon which we sing this evening
at Evening Prayer with the Magnificat:
O WISDOM of the Most high,
you govern all creation
with your strong yet tender care.
COME
and teach us the way of truth.
Readings
Genesis 49/2, 8-10 :
Matthew 1/1-17
As these special days begin we are reminded of
Jesus’ human ancestry. He doesn’t come into the world out of nowhere as if by
magic or by a miracle. He comes from a whole line of Jewish ancestors which the
Gospel writers like to trace back through the great figures of Jewish history
even to Abraham, the father of their race.
In the short reading from the book Genesis,
Jacob calls together his sons before his death to tell them what will happen to
them in the days to come. He describes both their character and their
particular gifts and faults.
We read only the words that concern Judah since
it is from his family that Jesus’ ancestry will be traced. Judah will be like a
lion and he will receive honour and respect from his brothers. But, above all,
it is from Judah that the royal line will come through David and, eventually,
the One to whom all the peoples will render obedience will spring from him.
In the Gospel reading the Gospel writer traces
Jesus’ ancestry back through Solomon and David, through Judah and Jacob back to
Abraham. This is not an historical genealogy but a way of illustrating Jesus’
origins in the Chosen People. The most important Old Testament sources are 1
Chronicles, chapters 2 and 3 which gives the names from Abraham to the
Babylonian Exile and Ruth 4/18-22 which gives the names from Perez to David and
which gives us also the way in which the genealogy is written, As was the
father of B and so on. The origin of the names from Abiud to Joseph remains a
mystery.
The basic purpose of Matthew’s genealogy is
clear. It is to represent Jesus as the Son of David and of Abraham and to
situate his birth at an opportune time in Jewish history. The arrangement of
the names in three sets seems to have no purpose unless it is to emphasise the
number fourteen as a multiple of seven, a number of great significance in
Jewish thought. The inclusion of five women in Matthew’s genealogy is original
and breaks the pattern set in the book Ruth so that it must have some purpose.
If we look at these five women we may see a purpose.
Tamar (Genesis 38) disguised herself as a
prostitute and conceived sons by her father-in-law, Judah. Rahab (Joshua 2/6)
was the prostitute of Jericho whose life was spared because she helped Joshua’s
spies. Ruth was a Moabite woman who
joined herself to Israel through her husband’s family. Bathsheba, the wife of
Uriah, became David’s wife after he had made her pregnant and arranged for
Uriah’s death in battle (2 Samuel 11-12). Mary the mother of Jesus
was drawn into David’s line through her husband
Joseph, though her child was the legal rather than the natural son of Joseph as
the Gospel writer will explain later.
The purpose of including these women in the genealogy
would seem to be to emphasise that each of them was, in some way, a departure
from the normal and so it would prepare the way for and foreshadow the
irregularity of Jesus’ birth which the Gospel goes on to describe. They
prepared the reader or listener to expect the unexpected. Here, at the
beginning of the Gospel, they function as part of the theme that will run all
the way through it, the tension between tradition and what is new.
From a more modern point of view, the inclusion
of these women also emphasises how Jesus was totally at odds with the ideas
that were prevalent at the time. Each of these women is an outsider in some way
or other and reflects Jesus’ concern for the outsider, the little, the poor and
the rejected.
As we begin these last days of preparation for
Christmas, we are reminded that Jesus comes among us into a very real human
situation, into a totally human environment of family and society, into a world
of great injustice. Making himself one of us the Word made flesh proclaims a Gospel
which is good news most especially for the poor, the needy, the outcast and all
those who are second class members of society, as women were.
The readings today also remind us how totally
and utterly Jewish Jesus was and how this Gospel was written firstly for Jewish
people who had accepted his message and his teaching but who were remaining
faithful to their Jewish traditions and beliefs while trying to reconcile them
with all that was new in Jesus’ teaching.
Today we can give thanks for this wonderful
mystery of the Word of God, truly one of us, human in every way as we are and
showing us, in the only way we could understand, the goodness and compassion of
God, the God whom he calls Father.
Today we pray also for our Jewish sisters and
brothers and for a closer relationship with them and a better understanding of
their faith and all that we have in common with them.
Friday December 18th. ‘O Adonai’.
Third Friday in Advent.
‘O Adonai’ is the antiphon to the Magnificat
today and may need some explanation. In the story of Moses God speaks to him
out of a bush that is in flames. God tells him that he is the ‘God of Abraham,
Isaac and of Jacob’ but when God tells him that he is to go back to Egypt to tell Pharoah that he must release his
people from slavery, Moses protests that he does not know God’s name and so he
will not be able to say who sent him. The reply was to tell Pharoah that ‘I am who
I am’ sent him and that would be his name for ever. In many Bibles more
recently that name has been used in the text and written as ‘Yahweh’ but the
word is one of uncertain meaning and can best be translated as ‘the One who is’
and we are not certain of its pronunciation so that it is somewhat absurd to
write the word at all.
For Jews the name was so sacred that they would
never pronounce it and, even now, devout Jews will not even write the word
‘God’ but write ‘G-d’ as if to say it should not be actually pronounced.
Because of this great respect for the name of
God, whenever the word appeared in the Scriptures the Scribes would write
‘Adonai’ which means ‘Lord’ and is pronounced Ah-doh-nigh-ee. Originally, in
written Hebrew only the consonants were written which is why we don’t know the
pronunciation of the mysterious name given to Moses. The reader had to know the
vowels that went between the consonants to be able to read the words. In the
sixth to the tenth centuries a group of scholars called the Massoretes devised
a system of signs for the vowel sounds which were written underneath the
consonants so that the reader would know the pronunciation of the word. In the
case of the mysterious name of God they would write the vowel sounds for Adonai
so that the reader would use that word and not pronounce the sacred name of
God. In the post-Reformation period when people began to translate and read the
Bible in English the translators mistakenly thought that the vowel sounds of
Adonai and the consonants above them were an actual word which they thought
should be pronounced Jehovah. This is, of course, a totally meaningless word so
when we read the name Adonai it has quite a history.
Jesus’ followers began very soon to use the
word ‘Lord’ to describe him and we find it frequently in the New Testament. It
is, of course, an assertion that Jesus is God. He is ‘the Lord’, the Ruler of
heaven and earth and the One through whom all things were made and as such we
greet him in today’s ‘O’ antiphon but we are also reminded in using the title
that God comes to us in Jesus, not in power and might, like the fire of the
burning bush or the flashing of thunder and lightning as at Mount Sinai. In
Jesus God comes to us, humble and weak, a little child born in our image that he
may be reborn in us. Yet this is the One who appeared to Moses and gave the Law
on Mount Sinai and he is the One who comes to set us free. Here is the text of
today’s antiphon:
O ADONAI,
holy
Lord and leader of the house of Israel,
you spoke to Moses from the burning bush
and gave him the holy Law on Mount Sinai,
COME,
and stretch out your mighty hand
and set us free.
Readings
Jeremiah 25/5-8 :
Matthew 1/18-24
The prophet Jeremiah in today’s reading looks
forward to the coming of the Messiah. He will be of David’s family and he will
save the people both of the North and the South of the country, divided as they
had become, and bring them back to be one people. He will practice integrity
and honesty, be a true king and his name will be ‘The Lord is our
righteousness’ which is a better translation than ‘integrity’ and has the
meaning of ‘all God’s saving power’.
The prophet seems to be looking forward to an
ideal king who will govern the people who have been gathered together after
their exile.
Obviously we are meant to make the link between
the Gospel reading and Jeremiah because Joseph is named as a ‘son of David’ but
the quote from Isaiah reminds us of Matthew’s real purpose which is to show how
Jesus fulfils the ancient prophecies.
The Gospel writer shows that Jesus was conceived
in an unusual way and that Joseph was not his father. Nevertheless, by marrying
Mary, Joseph becomes the legal parent of Mary’s child. In that way the Gospel
writer neatly inserts Jesus into the long line of Joseph’s ancestors which
precedes the extract which we read today.
The stories about Jesus’ birth which we are
most familiar all come from Luke’s Gospel where Mary takes centre stage. In
Matthew’s Gospel it is Joseph who takes first place because this Gospel was
written for a Jewish-Christian community. Matthew’s intention is to show Jesus,
not only as Jewish but with an ancestry that links him with the prophecies made
about the Messiah in the Jewish Scriptures. Joseph was also a ‘man of honour’
which means that he was someone who observed the Jewish Law. Joseph was already
engaged to Mary, though not living with her when she became pregnant and the
Gospel writer explains her pregnancy as having come about ‘through the Holy
Spirit’. Although we think of this in terms of what we have come to understand
later as the third person in the Blessed Trinity, the writer is using the term
here more in the sense that the Spirit of God is spoken of in Creation (Genesis
1/1-2). There the Sprit swept over the face of the waters and brought order out
of chaos. In this way the Gospel writer gives us a clue as to the mystery of
Mary’s pregnancy to which Joseph has to face up.
The text also tells us that Joseph was eager to
spare Mary any ‘publicity’ but, in fact, he was sparing her public disgrace
and, even possibly, death. In Deuteronomy 22/23-27 we read that an engaged
woman found not to be a virgin was to be
returned to her father’s house and stoned to death by the men of the city on
account of the disgrace she had brought on her father’s house. Joseph’s intention was to spare Mary that
terrible ordeal and this shows his confidence in her and her honesty.
Today then we celebrate what might be called
‘the annunciation to Joseph’. The ‘angel of God’ is a way of speaking of a
divine communication and dreams were also often seen as vehicles of that same
communication. The angel tells Joseph that he must take Mary as his wife and
that she is pregnant by some divine intervention. So he was to complete the
marriage process and take Mary to his own home since she was already engaged to
him, his ‘betrothed’.
It is here that the purpose of the angelic
intervention becomes clear. It is so that Jesus may be established as ‘son of
God’ since he was conceived by the power of the Spirit of God and as ‘son of
David’ by Joseph’s ancestry. Joseph is also told to give the child born of Mary
the name ‘Jesus’. This is the Greek form of ‘Yeshua’ or ‘Yeshu’ which are
shortened versions of the name ‘Joshua’, a name which probably meant ‘God
helps’ and had come to mean, very simply, ‘God saves’. This connects Jesus name
with his mission to save the people from their sins and to lead them back to
the Promised Land. This refers back to Jeremiah who speaks of the people being
led back into their own land. Jesus then will be the new Joshua who will lead
the people into the Promised land of God’s reign of justice and of peace. He
will be the true Messiah of the House -
of David just as it had been foretold.
Saturday December 19th. ‘O Radix Jesse’. Third Saturday in Advent.
The great ‘O’ antiphon today is ‘O Radix
Jesse’, ‘O root of Jesse’ and this term is to be understood as referring to the
one who flowers from that root. Jesse was the father of King David from whom
Jesus is made to descend in the genealogies in both Matthew’s and Luke’s
Gospels. Jesus is then of David’s royal lineage. Jesus, though, will be a
different kind of monarch whose rule will be one of justice and peace. The
powerful and the mighty of this world will be silenced and all the world’s
peoples will reverence and bow down before this Ruler.
This is the idyllic picture that all the
prophets portray but, although we know that the Reign of God is coming among us
and is within us wherever love rules, nevertheless, we look forward to that
reign of love that we believe God will finally establish.
These are wonderful words of hope and trust in
God’s ability to bring this about but always remembering that we have our part
to play in all of this.
O ROOT OF
JESSE
raised up to be a sign for all the peoples.
In your presence the powerful fall silent
and all the nations bow down to worship you.
Make haste and
COME
and set us free.
Readings
Judges 13/2-7, 24-25 :
Luke 1/5-28
As we draw closer to Christmas the readings
today tell of John the Baptist who was to prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry.
Luke places John at the very beginning of his Gospel to prepare, as it were,
the way for what he has to say later. He also uses this as an opportunity to
situate his story in a particular moment of history, in the days of King Herod.
All of the characters with which Luke surrounds
the story of Jesus’ infancy are characterised by a simple piety which is
associated with the ‘lowly and humble people’ of whom we read in the prophet
Zephaniah (Zephaniah 3/12-13). It is their faith that makes it possible for
them to be open to God’s revealing himself. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth were
of the priestly class and Zachariah is depicted as being about his priestly duties when the incident
related in today’s Gospel reading takes place. Elizabeth is childless, a
classical Biblical motif which enables the birth of John to take place through
divine intervention The great example of someone who was infertile was Hannah,
the mother of the great prophet Samuel (Genesis chapters 16-21) and often in
the Hebrew Scriptures, the birth of important personages is through God’s
making
a barren woman able to bear a child. Added to
that both parents were advanced in age. In other words, these are all devices
to make the reader aware that this person is going to be someone important.
While Zachariah is in the Temple, performing
his priestly duties, the whole congregation is waiting outside and praying. In
them we can see the whole Jewish people awaiting God’s visitation. The angelic
visitor who will later identify himself as Gabriel, is typical of Jewish
apocalyptic literature of the time that Luke was writing. He comes from God as
one sent to speak with Zachariah. The angel tells Zachariah that his prayers
(for a child) have been heard and, again, this is a theme that runs through
Luke’s Gospel, that the prayers of the humble are heard by God. The angel then
tells the old man that his wife will bear a child who will be great and the
name he must give the child is John. The child is to be set apart for God as a Nazarite,
someone specially dedicated to God, which is why he must abstain from alchohol
as set out in Numbers 6/3 and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from
his mother’s womb, the essential mark of the prophet in Luke’s Gospel.
The angel then outlines John’s ministry in a
dramatic way and, although Luke does not identify John directly with Elijah,
the angel says that he will take on the role and spirit of Elijah to prepare a
people fit for the coming Messiah. Zachariah professes, not surprisingly,
disbelief in the angels’ message in view of his age and that of his wife. In
response the angel reproaches Zachariah for not believing the Good News and
tells him that he will be dumb until the child is born as a chastisement for
his disbelief. The people waiting outside realise that something has happened
and Zachariah when he emerges can only make signs to them. On his return home,
Elizabeth does, against all odds, become pregnant but Zachariah has to wait the
fulfilment of the prophecy before his speech returns.
This whole episode is set at the beginning of
Luke’s Gospel to emphasise that Jesus comes into the world after a long period
of preparation, during which it was the humble and the lowly folk who kept
faith in the coming of a Messiah. John is the culmination of that long
preparation and, having been set aside and filled with the Spirit, it is he who
will bring that preparation to a climax.
The story from Judges is about the birth of
another great Jewish hero, Samson. We can see in the way in which Luke tells
his story of the birth of John that it mirrors that of Samson and in this way
Luke makes it very clear to those who read or hear his Gospel that John is to
be a great man and a prophet.
This story, like so many others, reminds us
that God does not choose the great and the mighty but the poor and the lowly and
this tells us too that we ought to be looking for the presence and the action
of God where people are poor and simple more than among the rich and the
powerful. All through Advent we are
reminded constantly of how God turns things upside down and, perhaps, we can
apply this to our own lives and the life of the Church. Have we got things the
right way up, our priorities and our values or are they still those of the
world around us? We must pray that God would turn us upside down and make our
way of thinking his way and not the way of the world in which we live with its
false values and selfish ways.
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