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Commentary on Micah 5:1-4; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-44

The birth of Jesus is now imminent. In just a few days’ time we will be celebrating the memory of that great event. Today’s Mass prepares us for the Christmas celebration. Each of the three readings takes up a different aspect of this great mystery to help us in our understanding and in our personal preparation.

Promise of things to come
The First Reading, from the prophet Micah, sets out the promise of great things to come. The unexpected starting point will be the obscure town of Bethlehem and not some other greater centre of Israel. But the one who will come from there will be the:

…one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days.

The one who is to come:

…shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.

And his new people:

…shall live secure, for now he shall be great
to the ends of the earth.

And, very significantly:

…he shall be the one of peace [Hebrew, shalom]. (Micah 5:5)

A remote corner of Israel
This promise is magnificent, but how is it to come into existence and fulfilment? In the Gospel we come down with a bump into the real world. From the grand prophetic language of Micah we are brought to a small remote corner of Israel. Two unknown women, Mary and Elizabeth, seem to be the principal actors. There is no mention of Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth, though he must have been around. But he had doubted the word of the angel and so he will not be able to speak until after the birth of his son.

And yet, the really important characters are the unseen children, Jesus and John. It is through their mothers that they are first brought together.

Though both women are with child, it is Mary who takes the initiative to visit Elizabeth. In a sense, that is right and proper because Mary is the younger of the two. On the other hand, we know that the status of Mary is higher because she bears within her the Son of God.

When Mary approaches, the child in Elizabeth’s womb reacts immediately. Already, before his birth, John is touched with the Spirit of Jesus. This, we might say, is his baptism. Although John will appear first on the public stage, Jesus is the real source of John’s role as prophet, and of his greatness.

At the sound of Mary’s voice, John experienced the presence of Jesus and is filled with the Spirit. Elizabeth tells Mary:

For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.

But Elizabeth also is affected by the presence of Jesus. She bursts into praise for Jesus and his mother and says prophetically:

And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?

And by implication, she is graced with a visit from the Lord himself. Surely it is only through faith and the inspiration of the Spirit that she recognises in her younger cousin the Mother of her Lord.

Spirit of service
Already we can see a major theme of Luke’s Gospel being unfolded at this early stage in the coming of Jesus, even before his birth in Bethlehem. For we are presented with the humility of the mother and her Son. It is they who go to visit and not they who are visited. There is no question of status or ‘face’ with these two people. Even before he is born, Jesus already comes to serve and not to be served. It is through service we will recognise him as Lord. Later on he will tell his disciples:

You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. (John 13:13-15)

It is the beginning of God’s great plan to bring salvation and wholeness to the world. God’s own Son is preparing to come and live among us as a human being. He will be like us in every respect except in his freedom from sinfulness and its source—our fears and insecurity. As we party our way through the Christmas season, let us not forget what it is really about—the coming of God among us to show us the greatest love that can be shown, the laying down of one’s life for one’s friends.

We should not, then, be surprised at the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass. It reminds us to look forward to the life of Jesus, a life lived totally in love that will end in suffering and death as the way to glory and everlasting life. Christmas might seem a strange time to be thinking of the suffering of Jesus. But Jesus’ life is to be seen as a seamless robe—birth in poverty to death on a cross as the essential way to new life and glory. We celebrate his birth because of the triumphant victory of his death. He emptied himself for love of us and the Father has raised him to the highest heavens.

Total submission
All that happened from the moment of Jesus’ appearing among us as a human person can only be fully understood in the light of the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, which is our Second Reading for today.

It is by the total submission of the Son to the will of his Father that the fulfilment of the promise becomes possible. The Father, says the Letter, is not really interested in sacrifices and oblations of animals and things:

Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.

Instead, “a body” the Father prepared for his Son. And, united with that body as a true human being, the Son offered himself unconditionally to his Father:

See, I have come to do your will, O God…

The obeying of that will was effected by the total offering of his human self. This self-offering far transcends any other offering that could be made. No one can offer more than one’s own self.

That offering of himself will be seen in the whole life of Jesus as it unfolds in the Gospel pages, leading finally to the dramatic confrontation between love and greed, hatred and pride. Not without difficulty, Jesus will make the final offering of himself, saying:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13)

The outcome will be the Cross as the gateway to Resurrection.

An invitation to follow
Jesus does not only do all this for us while we sit back and wait to be ‘saved’. He invites us to say, along with him, to the Father:

See, I have come to do your will.

Mary herself has already followed her Son, though he is not yet born. Asked as an unmarried virgin if she is willing to be the mother of Jesus and assured that, with God, all things are possible, she has already said: “Yes! Let all this happen to me as you have planned it.” At this stage, she has no idea what is in store for her, but she has said her ‘Yes’ and she will be faithful to it.

An old advertisement once asked: “Have you said ‘Yes’ yet?” It is a question that the readings of today’s Mass are asking each one of us. We are about to celebrate Christmas very soon. Probably all our other preparations have been made, or we are up to our eyes making them. But have we made the most important preparation of all? Have we said our ‘Yes’ to the Father, our ‘Yes’ to Jesus, our ‘Yes’ to all that we will experience in the coming year—our ‘Yes’ to every call that God makes, and will make, of us?

Part of the meaning of Christmas is that, by contemplating the experiences of Jesus and Mary, we learn from them how to say an unqualified and unconditional ‘Yes’, because that is where the real joy and happiness of Christmas lies. All the rest is just tinsel.

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Note: Depending on the translation of the Bible used, today’s scriptural citations for the last two verses may be in two different chapters. For the New American Bible Revised Edition, they will be 3:23-24, but for the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue) Bible quoted in these commentaries, they are 4:5-6.

Commentary on Malachi 3:1-4,23-24 (or Malachi 3:1-4,4:5-6)

The prophecy of Malachi appears as the very last book in the Old Testament and is followed immediately in our Bibles by the Gospel according to Matthew. Nothing is known about this Malachi except that he probably lived in the period 500-450 BC. He speaks frequently of the Covenant and shows great respect for the supplementary priestly teaching of the Torah. His emphases on sin, judgement and repentance in preparation for the Lord’s coming mark him out as a prophet, even though his writing style is different.

The prophet writes:

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…

The Hebrew for ‘messenger’ is mal’aki, the name given to the author of today’s reading. But the messenger Malachi speaks about is traditionally believed to be Elijah, who would return to pave the way for the coming of the Messiah. Matthew, however, will apply this text (Matt 11:10) to John the Baptist, whose birth and circumcision are described in today’s Gospel.

John, in fact, will bring the Old Testament to a close. He carries on where Malachi, the last of the prophets, left off. He, himself, then bows out as Jesus inaugurates the New Covenant of God with his people—now the people of the whole world. In fact, the Gospel sees John as more an Old Testament figure (“the least in the Kingdom is greater than he”) because he died before the redemptive work of Jesus was completed.

The return of Elijah was an important tradition in Jewish belief, but Jesus will say that Elijah came in the person of John the Baptist:

He is Elijah who is to come… (Matt 11:14)

And, after the Transfiguration (where Elijah was seen speaking with Jesus), Jesus says to his disciples:

Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things [i.e. get everything ready for the coming of the Messiah], but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased…Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist. (Matt 17:11-13; also see Mark 6:14-15)

It will be the role of John as the ‘messenger’ of Malachi’s prophecy to announce the Lord’s coming—in the person of Jesus—and bring about the fulfilment of God’s work in history.

He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents…

In Luke’s Gospel (1:17), this is foretold as being precisely what John the Baptist would do. And Jesus, the “messenger of the Covenant”, in his turn will come as a refiner and purifier to purge his people of their sin and their infidelities. He will do this through his life, suffering, passion, death and resurrection.

At the end of today’s Gospel, on seeing the circumstances surrounding John the Baptist’s birth, the people ask:

What then will this child become? (Luke 1:66)

The answer to this is in the Gospel.

But we should turn this question on ourselves. What was I expected to turn out to be? How have I, in fact, turned out?

Whatever my answer, there is still time to turn myself in the direction I know God is calling me to follow. And part of the answer will be—like John the Baptist—to go ahead of the Lord and help bring him into other people’s lives.

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Commentary on Luke 1:46-56

The Magnificat is not exactly what one would expect to hear from the lips of a simple village girl. It has been described as a highly dangerous revolutionary statement with strong political overtones. It is Mary’s response to the greeting she received from her cousin Elizabeth, who protested that the “mother of her Lord” should come to visit her when it should have been the other way round.

The song is full of joy, especially because Mary recognises that God has acknowledged the presence of a simple girl living in a small place—in the eyes of the world, a person of no consequence. But where God is concerned, everyone is of equal consequence. She proclaims:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…

Then, considering her present obscurity, she makes an extraordinary prophecy:

Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me…

Blessed indeed with the unique grace of being chosen as Mother of the Incarnate God. Yet the prophecy has more than been fulfilled and is as true today as it ever was.

Mary then goes on to say that she is not the only one of God’s ‘little ones’ who will experience a reversal of affairs:

…indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.

God has great things in store for his people. It is again a vision of the Kingdom, of God’s will being done on earth. It is the Good News.

All this is very much in line with the picture of Jesus that Luke will show emerging as one reads through his Gospel. His is a Gospel where the poor, the weak, the marginalised, the outcast and the sinful have a special place in the eyes of Jesus.

We, too, can rejoice with Mary in the long list of good things that we have been gifted with by our loving Lord. Those gifts are not just for our enjoyment. Our task, in accordance with those gifts, is to make sure that the love of God is tangibly experienced by the poor, the weak, the marginalised, the outcast and the sinful in our own midst.

The realisation of what Mary sings about will only take place when we all work together with Jesus to bring it about. With Mary, let us say today a resounding ‘Yes’ to God’s plans for his children.

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Commentary on 1 Samuel 1:24-28

The reading comes from the beginning of the First Book of Samuel. In our Bible, there are two books, although there was only one in the original Hebrew. They speak about three principal characters—Samuel, Saul (Israel’s first king), and his successor, David.

The accounts of Samuel and Saul are found in the first book, while the second half of the first, and the whole of the second, deal with David. Like many of the more significant characters in the Old Testament, Samuel was born of a woman who was barren and had lost hope of having children. We mentioned already the cases of Sarah (Gen 17:16-19), Rebekah (Gen 25:21-26), Rachel (Gen 29:31; 30:22-24) and Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-17).

As we saw in the case of Samson (see the First Reading commentary for 19 Dec), a woman giving birth late in life indicated that God played a special part in the birth of the child, who was destined for some outstanding service to God and his people. And so it is, too, with Samuel.

It all starts with an ordinary couple living a familiar drama in a hill town. A woman, afflicted with sterility, complains to Yahweh—she is not resigned to a seemingly useless life. Yahweh listens to the afflicted and his answer always exceeds what they ask for. He not only gives Hannah a son, he also gives his people a prophet.

According to the Christian Community Bible:

“God likes to choose his servants precisely from those families who have no hope of having children. It is God who gives life to the dead and hope to those who have none. The same happens with the birth of Isaac and John the Baptist (Luke 1:5). In the book of Isaiah is a poem which starts with these words: ‘Shout out for joy, oh you who were barren!’ (Isa 54:1)”

Hannah is gifted with a son, but as we saw earlier with Samson, he does not belong totally to her. The language suggests that he is ‘lent’ by God to her, because she will give him back to devote his whole life in the service of Yahweh. She dedicates the child, even before his birth, to be a minister in the sanctuary. And like Samson, his hair remains uncut as a sign of total dedication to God’s service. And, she confirms this in the final words of the reading:

For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.

Many a mother must have prayed like this when she saw her son leave home to become a priest or Brother or her daughter leave to become a Sister.

Immediately following the reading is the Responsorial Psalm. It is actually not from one of the Psalms, but rather from 1 Samuel (2:1, 4-8), and represents the hymn of praise and thanksgiving Hannah makes for the birth of her son:

My heart exults in the Lord my Savior.

It is an ancient poem, originally thought to have nothing to do with Samuel’s birth, but it fits perfectly into the context.

In language and context, it bears many similarities to the Magnificat, the prayer of praise and thanksgiving that is put on the lips of Mary on the occasion of her Visitation to Elizabeth, and which is given in the Gospel for today. The Magnificat, however, is more personal in tone. Hannah and Samuel, then, are seen as prototypes of Elizabeth and John the Baptist, but also, though in a different way, of Mary and Jesus.

For us, it is an opportune time to see how God has called us to his service and to what extent we are following that call. Every one of us has a ‘vocation’—we are all, through our Baptism, called to love and service of brothers and sisters, and to working together to build God’s Kingdom on earth. We might also at this time give thanks for our parents who brought us into this world and set us on the road to Life.

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Commentary on Luke 1:39-45

We continue reading from Luke, picking up from yesterday’s text. In the last two days we’ve heard about the two annunciations—to Zechariah and to Mary—and about the birth of two special children, John the Baptist and Jesus.

Obviously, both mothers, cousins to each other, must have been very excited about the birth of their first child. They were anxious to share together their joy and happiness.

On one hand, it would make sense for Mary to visit Elizabeth, because the younger should visit the older. On the other hand, Elizabeth should be the one to visit, because Mary’s child was a person of such rank and dignity—God’s own Son. In a way, the story is more interested in the children than in the mothers. And Luke uses his Infancy Narrative as a vehicle to present, in advance, some of the characteristics of Jesus’ future life.

Here, it is the characteristic of service that he illustrates. Jesus later on will say:

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve…
(Mark 10:45)

And so, still in his mother’s womb, he comes to visit his cousin John, rather than wait at home to be visited.

The power of the Spirit is also much in evidence. John leaps in his mother’s womb at the very sound of Jesus’ voice. Elizabeth recognises this as the power of God in Jesus reaching out to her son. Elizabeth herself is also filled with the Spirit, and recognises in her young cousin the Mother of her Lord.

As we saw, the choice of the First Reading is interesting. It is taken from the Song of Songs (also called the Song of Solomon), a poem of the passionate love between two young people. It is a fitting expression of the love that should exist between Jesus and his followers, and between the followers themselves.

There is no such thing as a purely ‘spiritual’ love. True love literally ‘em-bodies’ the whole person—spirit, mind, emotion and body. Mary, filled with the Spirit, will soon break out into that wonderful hymn of praise that we call the Magnificat, a hymn that will proclaim the message of liberation Jesus will later deliver by word and action. We will see that tomorrow.

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Commentary on Song of Songs 2:8-14 and Zephaniah 3:14-18 Read 21 December – First Reading »

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Commentary on Luke 1:26-38

For us Christians, the heart of today’s Gospel passage—continuing immediately from yesterday’s text—is a turning point in the history of the world. It is so even for those who do not know Christ, or who refuse to believe in his origins.

As the story is told by Luke, Mary must have been truly alarmed at the words of her unexpected visitor. Her cousin Elizabeth is now pregnant for six months. The incident is taking place in Nazareth, not exactly the centre of the earth, or even of Palestine. A future disciple of Jesus will be heard to say with some cynicism:

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? (John 1:46)

Truly, in the eyes of the more sophisticated, Nazareth was something of a backwater. Yet this is the place God chooses to enter our world—not Rome, not Athens, not Alexandria, nor any of the other great centres of power, culture or learning in the world of the time.

The angel Gabriel greets Mary:

Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.

Gabriel is the same angel who spoke to Zechariah. How did Mary react to such an extraordinary salutation? The Gospel says that she was “much perplexed”, and well she might be. As a young girl in an obscure little town, what could the words possibly mean? “Favored one” means that she is being showered with God’s special grace. It is more something that is happening to her, than something she already has. The nature of that favour is expressed in what follows—she is to become the mother of a Son whom she is to call Jesus (meaning ‘God saves’). He will be a King:

…and of his kingdom there shall be no end. (Luke 1:33)

What really disturbs Mary is that, although she is already betrothed to Joseph, she is not yet married to him. In other words, she is not yet intimate with him as his wife. How can she become a mother? It will happen because the conception will be the work of God:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…

The child who is born will be, in a very special way, the Son of God. He will also, of course, be the son of Mary. In this way we have the deep mystery of the Incarnation expressed in the language of a story. Jesus will be, at the same time, someone who is fully divine and fully human. Jesus will be the unique bridge between God and his creation. He will be human “like us in all things but sin”. He will also, through his whole life, his words and actions, be the “splendour of the Father”.

In a great leap of faith and trust in the angel’s message, Mary says ‘Yes’:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

For us Christians, the moment of that ‘Yes’ is a turning point in the history of the world—as it is also even for those who do not know Christ or who refuse to believe in his origins. It is the moment of Incarnation, when the Word became flesh and began to live among us as one of us. The world would never be the same. In a way, this is a more important moment than Christmas, but it is understandable that we should tend to celebrate more the visible presence of God in Jesus at Bethlehem.

Mary had yet to learn what that ‘Yes’ involved, but it was given unconditionally and it was never withdrawn. Through a life of trials and tribulations, of which we can know surely only a fraction, right up to those terrible moments as she stood beneath the cross and saw her only Son die in agony and shame as a public criminal, she never once withdrew that ‘Yes’.

There is a clear message there for us. We too have been called in our own special way to give birth to Jesus in our lives and in our environment. We too have been called to say ‘Yes’—an unconditional ‘Yes’ to following Jesus. Now is the time for us to renew that pledge with Mary’s help and example.

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Commentary on Isaiah 7:10-14

The Gospel today (Luke 1:26-38) will describe the fulfilment of the prophecy spoken of in today’s First Reading from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking to King Ahaz of Judah. Among a number of bad kings, King Ahaz of Judah comes out as particularly bad. He revived the barbarous custom of human sacrifice:

He even made his son pass through fire [burnt his son as an offering], according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel. (2 Kings 16:3)

He followed other religious customs of the neighbouring idolatrous religions. When the king of Syria attacked Ahaz’s capital of Jerusalem, he appealed to the Assyrians:

I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me…
(2 Kings 16:7)

He then took treasures from the Temple, and sent them as a gift to the Assyrian king. He also made an exact copy of an altar he saw in Damascus, set it up in the Temple, and moved the bronze altar of the Temple to one side. On this new altar, he made offerings in the Assyrian manner, which included throwing blood on the altar.

Ahaz’s reign lasted 16 years and he was succeeded by his son Hezekiah, whom the Bible speaks of as being one of the best of the kings. His reign lasted for 29 years, but it was a very trying period for the Jews. During it, the famous Sennacherib “came down like a wolf on the fold” and laid siege to Jerusalem, but his whole army was suddenly decimated by some highly contagious epidemic which swept right through it killing, according to the Bible account, more than 100,000 soldiers. The siege had to be called off.

All of this, of course, is only indirectly connected with today’s reading, but it does give some idea of the context in which the prophecy was made. The reading begins with the Lord (through the mouth of Isaiah) urging Ahaz to ask for a sign either from God or from Sheol, the place of the dead. Ahaz, however, declines because he does not want to put his God to the test. Nevertheless, although God (and especially his prophet, Isaiah) is clearly not pleased with this rejection of the Lord’s offer, Ahaz will be given a sign anyway.

The statement is a prophecy, and is very positive in meaning. It denotes God’s blessing on the Kingdom of Judah and on God’s people. It is also seen as a messianic prophecy. It promises a king and an heir to David who will bring salvation to God’s people, who, at this time, are being attacked by the Syrians on one side, and by the Assyrians on another.

Even though it seems that Isaiah is immediately thinking of a successor to Ahaz, namely, his son Hezekiah, the formal nature of the prophecy and symbolic name given to the future heir indicates he was speaking about a more decisive intervention by God and the establishment of a messianic kingdom.

The prophecy reads:

Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.

This is clearly meant to be an encouragement to Ahaz about the future of the kingdom now under siege from so many sides. The original text does not say explicitly that it is a virgin who will give birth. The Hebrew word almah simply means a young girl.

However, in Genesis (24:43), ‘almah’ refers to a young woman about to be married (and hence still a virgin). The pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint and made by Jews, translates ‘almah’ as ‘virgin’. It is this version that Matthew uses, and reads it as indicating that Mary is a virgin when she conceives Jesus.

And of course, from the time of the Gospels, especially with Matthew who quotes from today’s passage, the prophecy has been understood as pointing to the birth of Christ, who is Immanuel, ‘God-is-with-us’. And Matthew will emphasise this at the very end of his Gospel when, just before leaving his disciples, Jesus in his final instructions promises:

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:20)

This Child does not only give us God’s blessings, and miraculous and divine liberation, but through him, God becomes present among humankind and the promises heard so many times come true:

…I will be your God, and you shall be my people. (Jer 7:23)

We see the beginning of the fulfilment of all this prophecy in the Gospel, which speaks of Mary’s being invited to be the Mother of the Saviour who will be both God’s Son and hers. Even Isaiah is not likely to have dreamt of the implications of all this—when the Word was made flesh and lived among us as one of us.

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Commentary on Luke 1:5-25

There are close parallels in Luke’s Infancy Narrative between the birth of John the Baptist and that of Jesus. There are also significant differences. The First Reading, too, provides a prototype for today’s Gospel story as it describes the birth of Samson.

Today we read about the annunciation to Zechariah about the birth of a son to his elderly wife, who is already past child-bearing age. Clearly it was a birth which, in normal circumstances, should not have happened. In a society where having children, and especially boys, was a wife’s primary duty, to be unable to produce children was a terrible shame—the ultimate failure. One had been chosen as wife for this purpose and this purpose alone. Love and affection would have had very little to do with it. And of course, it would have been presumed that the wife and not the husband had failed. At that time, a woman who could not be a mother was considered less than a person.

That is why widows in the Scripture are listed as among the most pitiable of people. Such women might still be quite young when they lost their husbands to war, an accident or disease, but as widows, they were not eligible for remarriage and so would not become mothers.

Right through the Scriptures—in both the Old and New Testaments—the births of significant people happen in circumstances which point strongly to some divine intervention. So, there are in the Bible a number of incidences where elderly women who had never borne a child are, through the intervention of God, blessed with a child, usually a son. Here, too, Elizabeth’s barrenness is seen less as a curse than as a preparation for something special.

As we see, today’s First Reading recounts one of these incidents—the birth of Samson. What is peculiar to all these stories is that the child to be born has a very special role given to him by God. In today’s Gospel, too, there is a sign of God’s intervention in the birth of John the Baptist. He is no ordinary child. He has been chosen for a very special purpose, to be the forerunner of Jesus, the last of the great prophets of the Hebrew Covenant.

The opening of Luke’s Gospel is a kind of diptych, with parallel stories announcing the birth of John the Baptist and the birth of Jesus. We are not dealing here with literal history, although Luke posits the story in a genuinely historical context:

In the days of King Herod of Judea…

Luke writes in imitation of Old Testament birth accounts (like the one in the First Reading), mixing historical facts and legends. So we do not ask: Did all this happen exactly as described? Rather, we ask: What does it mean? And primarily it is part of the answer to another question: Who is Jesus Christ?

In today’s story we have the classical situation of the elderly wife who is childless. Then one day, the husband Zechariah, a member of the priestly caste, is spoken to by an angel while serving in the Temple. The birth of a son is announced, along with his destiny. He will not touch strong drink (like Samson before him) and he will be filled with the Spirit of God even before his birth. He will be the source for many to find their way back to God. Zechariah responds with some scepticism and is punished with loss of his ability to speak because of his unbelief. But following this experience, Elizabeth conceives a child. The stage is then set for the next, and more important, Annunciation.

Today, let us reflect seriously on our own calling by God. Like John, each of us has been called to be a forerunner of Jesus, to prepare the way for Jesus to come into other people’s lives, especially those who have not yet had the experience of knowing him.

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Commentary on Judges 13:2-7,24-25

In the Bible, there are a number of incidences where elderly women who had never borne a child, through the intervention of God are blessed with a child, usually a son. Today’s First Reading recounts one of these—the birth of Samson.

What is special to all these stories is that the child to be born is given a very special role by God. It is as if to say that God had played a role with the mother in the birth of this child. He was, in a way, God’s child. And that is what we also see in today’s Gospel, which speaks about the circumstances in which the elderly Elizabeth is blessed with a son, who will be John the Baptist.

Today’s reading is from the Book of Judges. These ‘judges’ were really heroic figures from various Israelite tribes who were engaged in the struggle of the Israelites to establish their dominion over the land which they believed had been allotted to them by God. Not surprisingly, the present occupants of the territories were not too pleased and resisted strongly, with varying degrees of success and failure on both sides.

Our reading is concerned with one of these ‘judges’—Samson. Overall, he is presented as being physically very strong, but in other respects very weak, particularly where women were concerned. And it was a woman, the notorious Delilah, who would bring about his downfall. Nor, in spite of some successes, did he ever manage to free his country from the Philistine enemy. His exploits were more concerned with himself than with his people.

The Philistines, who will appear later in the story of David (remember, Goliath was a Philistine), were a non-Semitic people, possibly from Crete. They settled on the coastal plain of Palestine about the same time as the Hebrews were entering the land from the east. Conflict between them was inevitable.

In a way, Samson can be seen as a symbol of his people. The misdeeds of the Israelites are often pictured by the prophets in the light of their foolish pursuit of foreign women, some of ill-repute, and falling victim to them. During the Judges’ period, the people constantly prostituted themselves in worshipping Canaanite gods.

Samson was from the tribe of Dan. His story is told from birth to death. We are only concerned today with his birth. His father’s name was Manoah and he came from Zorah, in the territory of Dan (Dan was one of the twelve sons of Jacob). Manoah’s wife, whose name is not given, is “barren”—in the society of her time, the greatest curse a married woman could suffer.

She shares this fate with some other prominent women in the Old Testament—Sarah, the mother of Isaac; Rebecca, the mother of Jacob; Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel; and, of course, in today’s Gospel, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.

But it is then that “the angel of the Lord” appears to her. She hears the wonderful words:

…you shall conceive and bear a son.

These same words are repeated in the Gospel, and will be heard again during the Annunciation to Mary.

Samson’s mother is to prepare for his birth by not taking wine, or any food regarded as unclean. As a future liberator of his people, this son will be especially dedicated to the Lord. From his very conception he is to be regarded as a Nazirite. The word nazir in Hebrew means ‘consecrated’. A Nazirite was obliged to abstain from drinking wine or having his hair cut. In early times, the Nazirite vow was for life, but in later times it could be temporary, and its termination would be signified by the cutting of one’s hair. It is implied that Samson’s uncut hair is the source of his great strength, which is lost when it is cut by the treacherous Delilah.

When the child is born, his mother names him Samson, a word which means ‘sun’ or ‘brightness’. This could be an expression of joy over the birth of an unexpected child or refer to a nearby town, Beth Shemesh—‘house of the sun(-god)’.

The passage ends with the words:

The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him.

This final remark refers to his future feats of strength. Compare this with the words about Jesus after he had returned to Nazareth following his presentation in the Temple by Mary and Joseph:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor. (Luke 2:52)

Today, let us reflect on our own calling by God. Perhaps there was nothing very special about it. Yet, like John the Baptist, each of us has been called to be a forerunner of Jesus, to prepare the way for Jesus to come into other people’s lives, especially those who have not yet had the experience of knowing him.