Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

December 18 Mass

December 18, 2020

Jer 23:5-8, Ps 72, Mt 1:18-25

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.18.20_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* “This is the name they give him,” the Prophet Jeremiah says today. A name is essential for us to enter into interpersonal dialogue. Today we encounter five different names, names God gives to himself, names we use to refer to God. Each of them helps us to relate to God more deeply as the names complement and deepen our understanding of God, how he wishes us to interact with him and how he wishes to have us grow in his image and likeness.

* The first two names come from today’s O Antiphon, which influences how we’re supposed to live this day of Advent longing and how we’re supposed to hear and receive the Word of God announced to us in Mass. The Latin is O Adonai et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento, which is literally translated, “O Lord and Leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come to redeem us with outstretched arm!” We refer to God today as both  “leader of the house of Israel” and “Adonai” (Lord), the latter meaning not leader not just of Israel but of everyone, pointing to how Jesus came to redeem not merely the Jews but all nations. We remember how this God revealed himself as Lord of all to Moses in the burning bush, identifying himself as “I am who am” (Yahweh in Hebrew), the one gives existence to every creature. This name was so holy that only the high priest would utter it only once a year in the Holy of Holies. The Jews would substitute “Adonai” for it, “Lord,” but use it to refer to the same reality as Creator and life-giver. But the long-awaited One was also the leader of the house of Israel, the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” who specially blessed the Jews with the Covenant on Mt. Sinai featuring the commandments. Therefore, we, both Jews and non-Jews, turn to the Messiah and ask him to redeem us with his outstretched arm. The image is of someone saving us from falling off a cliff, or reaching in to the water to pull us up as we’re drowning. And the three-fold way the antiphon implies he will save us is through prayer (dialogue with God as seen in the burning bush), the moral life (shown in the commandments which train us to love), and ultimately the Cross (when Jesus stretched forth his arms to save us).

* These thoughts help us to approach the real drama contained in the readings where we find the other three titles. In the Gospel, we get both “Emmanuel” and “Jesus.” Emmanuel means “God-with-us” and Jesus means, “Yahweh saves.” The Lord and leader of the House of Israel comes to be with us in the incarnation precisely in order to save us. We see this salvation depicted in the first reading. The prophet Jeremiah describes how, in the days of the  “righteous shoot” to David,  “Judah will be saved.” Just as God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, so he would redeem Israel again from the “lands of the north,” which refers not only to Assyria and Babylon to which many of the Jews were forcibly brought after conquering Israel, but much more broadly to those in other lands, since with the exception of Egypt, most of the other known inhabitants were located north of the Holy Land. The Lord would save them from them all. In the Gospel, when the Angel reveals what St. Joseph is to call Mary’s son, he says that the child will be called “Jesus,” “God saves,” precisely because “he will save his people fr...