God’s Long Preparation to give us our Christmas Gift, December 24, 2013

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Mass for December 24
December 24, 2013
2 Sam 7:1-5.8-12.14.16, Ps 89, Lk 1:67-69

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• December 24 is the day on which, as the joke goes, many men begin thinking about the gifts they’re going to give to others for Christmas and go out in a frantic fourth-quarter comeback to get presents, gift certificates and other items for the people they love. This is in great contrast to the way God the Father prepared to give us the true Christmas Gift.
• In today’s first reading, a millennium the angels would sing “Hark!” in Bethlehem, King David tells the prophet Nathan that he is intending to build a temple, a fitting house for the Lord, asking Nathan to confirm that that would be pleasing to God. Nathan’s first reply was simply to go for it, that of course it would please God. But the Lord came to Nathan and told him to return to David saying that rather than have David build a house for the Lord, the Lord himself would establish a house for David, saying “I will up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his Kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. Your house and your Kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.” One-thousand years later, God would make good on that promise. When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, he said, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” The Lord had spent a millennium preparing to give us that gift!
• At the time of Christmas, those of us who remember that Jesus is the reason for the season, often make all types of good plans and resolutions about what we will give to God. We imitate the Shepherds in going with haste to the manger. We emulate the Magi in giving the Lord the best we have and falling down before him in prayerful homage. We model ourselves on Mary and Joseph in loving him. We echo the angels in announcing him. We strive to make loving crèche displays in our homes and Churches as a sign of our loving expectation, receptivity and response in the temple we have become through baptism. But to all of this work, God says to us as he said to David, “Should you build me a house to dwell in?” God, in response builds us a house, builds us a dwelling place in him, a dwelling that will be secure forever. Christ has come in order to build that house so that where he is we may be with him (Jn 14:1-6). And the house he builds for us is even greater than the house he builds for David. Jesus would say 30 years later that John the Baptist was the greatest born of woman but the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. The Lord wants to build us something even greater than what he did for David. The Messiah and Son of God doesn’t descend from us according to the flesh, but by baptism he makes us spiritual sons not of an earthly King but of the King of Kings. This is what we celebrate at Christmas, what God has done, is doing and wants to do in us. The real meaning of Christmas is not what we do for or give to God and to others in his name, but it’s what God continually does for and gives to us.
• This love of God should make us explode with unbelievable joy and gratitude! That’s what we see in today’s Gospel, with Zechariah’s famous Benedictus. As you remember, he had been muted for nine months to help him to grow in faith, but while he couldn’t speak, he could hear, he could pray. For several months, the Blessed Virgin Mary had been in his and Elizabeth’s home, doubtless sharing at least some of the elements that God had done for her. Zechariah pondered with her how all of God’s long-awaited preparation and promises were coming to fulfillment in the one Mary was carrying in her womb, in whose mission his son John would be inextricably bound. When he finally could speak again, he didn’t thank God so much for his own son — his long-awaited son for whom he and Elizabeth had prayed for so many years — but for his Savior!
• “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” he said, “for he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty Savior, born of the house of his servant David.” Zechariah was giving the first public announcement that the Messiah had come to his people to liberate them in fulfillment of all God’s prophecies. Zechariah listed three other famous ones beyond his being born of David’s House. “Through his prophets he promised of old that (1) he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us. (2) He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant. (3) This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hand of our enemies, free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.” God’s promises, Zechariah was saying, stretched back even beyond David to Abraham, 1800 years earlier.
• Then he turns briefly to his son’s role in the fulfillment of these prophecies before returning to the Savior. Speaking to his eight-day old circumcised boy named “God is gracious,” he says, “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” The salvation the Messiah is bringing is not a political liberation but an eschatological and moral one, salvation from our sins, from the division and hurt they bring, from the death to which they lead.
• He finishes by recapitulating the O Antiphon O Oriens we pondered on Saturday. “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high (Oriens, Rising Star) shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death (illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis), and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Jesus had come into the world not only to save us through his mercy but to guide us to peace on earth for those of good will and to everlasting peace in heaven.
• As we prepare to celebrate Christmas tomorrow, we should be getting ready our own explosive hymn of praise to God. Advent has been a period of prayerful silence to help us to contemplate within God’s promises so that like Zechariah we can be filled with joy and thanksgiving at their fulfillment. This joy is encapsulated in the last* of the O Antiphons we’ve been considered throughout these days, O Emmanuel, rex et legisfer noster, espectatio gentium et salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine Deus noster, “O God-with-us, our king and lawgiver, long-awaited one and Savior of the nations, come to save us, Lord, Our God.” Jesus is the long-awaited God-with-us promised through Isaiah. He is our King and not just our King, but our lawgiver, someone who cares enough about us that he tells us his expectations and trains us by his law of love to know and live his wisdom. He is the long-awaited hope of all those looking for salvation from sin, from misery, from hardship, from suffering and death. We turn to him who we identify as “Lord, Our God” and ask him to come and save us from ourselves and from all our enemies, including the principalities and powers that always seek to harm us. That is what Christ has done. God has heard these incessant cries. He’s responded and he’s coming.
• The O Antiphons finish with a sign of hope. All the messianic titles they contain were arranged by the early monks in a particular order so that the first letter of each O Antiphon read backwards would give us a very important message. Emmanuel (God-with-us), Rex (King), Oriens (Rising Sun), Clavis (Key), Radix (Root), Adonai (Lord), Sapientia (Wisdom), Ero Cras: “I will be (there) tomorrow!” Yes he will! O Come, O Come Emmanuel!

* (There is a lack of alignment among the O Antiphons between what is used as the Gospel verse and what is used for Magnificat antiphon during Vespers. Vespers preserves the original order of the seven O Antiphons: O Sapientia (Wisdom, Dec 17), O Adonai (Lord and leader of the house of Israel, Dec 18), O Radix Iesse (Root of Jesse, Dec 19), O Clavis David (O Key of David, Dec 20), O Oriens (O Rising Sun, Dec 21), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations, Dec 22), O Emmanuel (O God-with-us, Dec 23). There is no O Antiphon for Vespers on December 24, because it is first Vespers of the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord. In the Gospel verses, however, while the first four days are the same (Dec 17-20), the Mass liturgies change the order of the others: O Rex Gentium is not only said on Dec 22 but repeated on Dec 23, O Emmanuel is moved from Dec 23 to Dec 21, and O Oriens is moved from Dec 21 to Dec 24, so that the words “illumine those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” will correspond to the words of Zechariah’s canticle in the Gospel. In the homilies that I’m giving throughout this proximate preparation for Christmas, I’m retaining the original order with one exception. Since on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, there is no O Antiphon at Mass, I am focusing on O Rex Gentium at Mass on Dec 23 and O Emmanuel at Mass on Dec 24, since it is the culmination of all of the O Antiphons. The O Antiphons, in a sense, allow this, because all seven are saying basically the same thing under different and progressively deeper angles! I write this explanation because, as far as I have been able to find through internet searches, there is no other explanation of the disparity between the O Antiphons at Mass and at Vespers.)

The readings for today’s Mass were: