Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 19

December 19, 2020

Jdg 13:2-7.24-25, Ps 71, Lk 1:5-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.19.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s readings and O Antiphon help us to enter more deeply into the dynamism of God’s interaction with us as Christians, how he seeks to transform what seems lifeless into something fruitful and sacred and how we need silence to approach these mysteries with a proper sense of wonder.

* The O Antiphon that the Church has us ponder in the Gospel Verse and at Vespers today is O radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, iam noli tardare, “O root of Jesse, who stand as a sign for the people about whom kings stay silent and before whom all the nations pray: come to free us, do not delay.” These sacred fourth-century words come from two parts of the famous passage from the Book of Isaiah that we heard back on Tuesday of the first week of Advent: “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. On that day, the root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the nations, the Gentiles shall seek out for his dwelling shall be glorious” (Is 11:1,10).  The other part of the Antiphon comes from the passage about the Suffering Servant later, when Isaiah, speaking about what he would suffer for us, prophesies, “Even as many were amazed at him — so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals —  so shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; for those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it” (Is 52:14-15). Together they reveal to us the shocking surprise of the rise of the shoot from Jesse’s stump. From a stump — which seems sterile, cut down — we don’t expect much growth, but we see that the shoot would eventually reach across the globe and into eternity. Isaiah was referring not to King David’s descendant Jesus, who was set up as a sign to the nations of the presence of God. And that leads us to the response before this wondrous transformation: Before him, the O Antiphon based on Isaiah continues, kings stayed silent, as we see with the three kings at his birth, blown away by his humility, resting not in silk garments in a palace but wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. We see it before King Herod on Good Friday. We see it still as the kings and leaders or the earth look at Jesus on the Cross. God’s love, his willingness to become so small and humble, his willingness to suffer and die to save us, ought to make us speechless with amazement. Likewise before him all the nations come to pray, as we saw once again in the coming of the Magi, in the Centurion, Syro-Phoenician woman, the Greeks and so many others during his lifetime, and still today. His dwelling turned out out to be even more glorious than the Temple in Jerusalem in all its splendor: his very body became the refulgence of the glory of God.

* We can enter more deeply into this exodus from barrenness into fruitfulness, from silence to the fullness of wonder, in today’s readings, both of which feature sterile women. In something as wondrous as a shoot sprouting from a stump that didn’t seem capable of generating a whole forest that would never be cut down, we see two women whose wombs were barren, who after much prayer and longing finally conceived a son. In the first reading, we have the wife of Manoah (who unfortunately is never named!), who hadn’t been able to conceive. The angel appears to her doubtless as a response to her prayer and say...