DAILY READING and REFLECTIONS For Thursday, December 18, 2014 3rd week of Advent - Psalter Week 3 (Violet) Readings: Jer 23:5-8; Ps 72:1-15; Mat 1:18-28 Response: Justice shall flourish in his time and fullness of peace forever. Rosary: Luminous Mysteries Verse: She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins. SAINT OF THE DAY: Saint Rufus Rufus and Zosimus were citizens of Antioch (or perhaps Philippi) who were brought to Rome with St. Ignatius of Antioch during the reign of Emperor Trajan. They were condemned to death for their Christianity and thrown to wild beasts in the arena two days before the martyrdom of Ignatius. Feast Day December 18. FROM THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE: READING 1, Jeremiah 23, 5-8 5 Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall raise an upright Branch for David; he will reign as king and be wise, doing what is just and upright in the country. 6 In his days Judah will triumph and Israel live in safety. And this is the name he will be called, Yahweh-is-our-Saving-Justice. 7 So, look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when people will no longer say, As Yahweh lives who brought the Israelites out of Egypt, 8 but, As Yahweh lives who led back and brought home the offspring of the House of Israel from the land of the north and all the countries to which he had driven them, to live on their own soil. RESPONSORIAL PSALM, Psalms 72:1-2, 12-15, 18-19 1 [Of Solomon] God, endow the king with your own fair judgement, the son of the king with your own saving justice, 2 that he may rule your people with justice, and your poor with fair judgement. 12 For he rescues the needy who calls to him, and the poor who has no one to help. 13 He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the needy from death. 18 Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who alone works wonders; 19 blessed for ever his glorious name. May the whole world be filled with his glory! Amen! Amen! on THE GOSPEL: Matthew 1:18-25 18 This is how Jesus Christ came to be born. His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph; but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, decided to divorce her informally. 20 He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins. 22 Now all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: 23 Look! the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom they will call Immanuel, a name which means God-is-with-us. 24 When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home; 25 he had not had intercourse with her when she gave birth to a son; and he named him Jesus. REFLECTIONS: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God) OPENING PRAYER: Lord, faithful God, in Jesus you have given us someone taken from our human flesh and blood, a man, yet your Son, through whom you want to restore integrity and fidelity among us. Help us to give with him, to you and also to one another, the proper and adequate response of faithful, serving love, which you expect from your people. Be our God for ever through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. ON READING 1: Jeremiah 23:5-8 (The Future King) Jer 23, 1-8. The previous chapters (21:1-22:30) announced the exile to come, and come it did, on account of the kings failure to keep the Covenant. The kings, in chronological order, were the subject of the various oracles. Now Jeremiah, looking to the future, uses the image of shepherds to proclaim a new era in which God himself will be the shepherd-ruler of his people (vv. 1-4); he will raise up a new king who will govern justly (vv. 5-6); and the new situation that will develop after the return from exile will be more glorious than that of the period after the exodus from Egypt (vv. 7-8). John Paul II refers to this oracle to stress that the new people of God, the Church, will always have pastors to guide it: In these words from the prophet Jeremiah, God promises his people that he will never leave them without shepherds to father them together and guide them: I will set shepherds over them [my sheep] who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed (Jer 23:4). The Church, the people of God, constantly experiences the reality of the prophetic message and continues joyfully to thank God for it. She knows that Jesus Christ himself is the living, supreme and definitive fulfillment of Gods promise: I am the good shepherd (Jn 10:11). He, the great shepherd of the sheep (Heb 13:20), entrusted to the apostles and their successors the ministry of shepherding Gods flock (cf. Jn 21:15ff; 1 Pet 5:2) (Pastores dabo vobis, 1). Jer 23, 5-6. The promise of the new king is the key to understanding Jeremiahs thought. The passage is repeated (with slight variations) in 33:15-16. The days are coming, a phrase often found in oracles of salvation, is a reference to the End Time, but sometimes it can mean the return from exile. The righteous branch, meaning the future king, will eventually become a technical term for the Messiah, in both Zechariah (Zech 3:8; 6:12) and the New Testament (cf. Lk 1:78): he is righteous, he shall execute…righteousness and he will be called the Lord in our righteousness. All this insistence on justice and right indicates, firstly, that Jeremiah wants to justify the accession of Zedekiah, whose name means justice of the Lord; but he also wants to show that the future Messiah will be Davids legal, legitimate descendant: the Lord guarantees this by calling him a righteous that is legitimate, branch. And the main message, of course, is that in the new era justice will reign and there will be peace and security; it will be the time of definitive salvation. Thus, Jeremiah is proclaiming the coming of a descendant of David who will bring about a new era of prosperity and salvation. Jeremiah is the last prophet, in order of time, to proclaim a Messiah King, an intermediary between God and his people. At the same time, he is also promising direct intervention by God. ON THE GOSPEL: Matthew 1:18-25 (The Virginal Conception of Jesus, and His Birth) In Luke’s Gospel the story of the infancy of Jesus (chapters 1 and 2 of Luke) is centred around the person of Mary. Here in the Gospel of Matthew the infancy of Jesus (chapters 1 and 2 of Matthew)is centred around the person of Joseph, the promised spouse of Mary. Joseph was of the descent of David. Through him Jesus belongs to the race of David. Thus in Jesus, are fulfilled the promises made by God to David and to his descendants. As we have seen in yesterday’s Gospel, in the four women, companions of Mary, in the genealogy of Jesus, there was something abnormal which did not correspond to the norms of the Law: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Today’s Gospel shows us that Mary was also somewhat abnormal, contrary to the Laws of that time. In the eyes of the people of Nazareth she appeared being pregnant before living with Joseph. Neither the people nor the future husband knew the origin of this pregnancy. If Joseph had been just according to the justice of the Scribes and the Pharisees, he should have denounced Mary, and the penalty which she would have suffered would have been death, stoning her. Joseph was just, yes, but his justice was different. Already beforehand he practiced what Jesus would teach later on: “If your uprightness does not surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5, 20). This is why, Joseph not understanding the facts and not wanting to repudiate Mary, decided to leave her in secret. In the Bible, the discovery of the call of God in the facts of life, takes place in different ways. For example, through the meditation of the facts (Lk 2, 10.51), through the meditation of the Bible (Acts 15, 15-19; 17, 2-3), through the angels (the word angel means messenger), who helped to discover the significance of the facts (Mt 28, 5-7). Joseph succeeded in perceiving the significance of what was taking place in Mary by means of a dream. In his sleep an angel uses the Bible to clarify the origin of Mary’s pregnancy. It came from the action of the Spirit of God. When everything was clear for Mary, she says: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word!” When everything was clear for Joseph, he takes Mary as his spouse and they went to live together. Thanks to the justice of Joseph, Mary was not put to death, was not stoned and Jesus continued to live in her womb. Matthew 1, 18. St. Matthew relates here how Christ was conceived (cf. Luke 1:25-38): We truly honor and venerate (Mary) as Mother of God, because she gave birth to a person who is at the same time both God and man (St. Pius V Catechism, I, 4, 7). According to the provisions of the Law of Moses, engagement took place about one year before marriage and enjoyed almost the same legal validity. The marriage proper consisted, among other ceremonies, in the bride being brought solemnly and joyously to her husbands house (cf. Deuteronomy 20:7). From the moment of engagement onwards, a certificate of divorce was needed in the event of a break in the relationship between the couple. The entire account of Jesus birth teaches, through the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 (which is expressly quoted in verses 22-23) that: 1) Jesus has David as His ancestor since Joseph is His legal father; 2) Mary is the Virgin who gives birth according to the prophecy; 3) the Childs conception without the intervention of man was miraculous. Matthew 1, 19. St. Joseph was an ordinary sort of man on whom God relied to do great things. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to do, in each and every event that went to make up his life. That is why Scripture praises Joseph as a just man. In Hebrew a just man means a good and faithful servant of God, someone who fulfills the divine will (cf. Genesis 7:1; 18:23-32; Ezekiel 18:5ff.; Proverbs 12:10), or who is honorable and charitable toward his neighbor (cf. Tobias 7:6; 9:6). So a just man is someone who loves God and proves his love by keeping Gods commandments and directing his whole life towards the service of his brothers, his fellow men (St. J. Escriva, Christ Is Passing By, 40). Joseph considered his spouse to be holy despite the signs that she was going to have a child. He was therefore faced with a situation he could not explain. Precisely because he was trying to do Gods will, he felt obliged to put her away; but to shield her from public shame he decided to send her away quietly. Marys silence is admirable. Her perfect surrender to God even leads her to the extreme of not defending her honor or innocence. She prefers to suffer suspicion and shame rather than reveal the work of grace in her. Faced with a fact which was inexplicable in human terms she abandons herself confidently to the love and providence of God. God certainly submitted the holy souls of Joseph and Mary to a severe trial. We ought not to be surprised if we also undergo difficult trials in the course of our lives. We ought to trust in God during them, and remain faithful to Him, following the example they gave us. Matthew 1, 20. God gives His light to those who act in an upright way and who trust in His power and wisdom when faced with situations which exceed human understanding. By calling him the son of David, the angel reminds Joseph that he is the providential link which joins Jesus with the family of David, according to Nathans messianic prophecy (cf. 2 Samuel 7:12). As St. John Chrysostom says: At the very start he straightaway reminds him of David, of whom the Christ was to spring, and he does not wish him to be worried from the moment he reminds him, through naming his most illustrious ancestor, of the promise made to all his lineage (Hom. on St. Matthew, 4). The same Jesus Christ, our only Lord, the Son of God, when He assumed human flesh for us in the womb of the Virgin, was not conceived like other men, from the seed of man, but in a manner transcending the order of nature, that is, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that the same person, remaining God as He was from eternity, became man, which He was not before (St. Pius V Catechism, I, 4, 1). Matthew 1, 21. According to the Hebrew root, the name Jesus means savior. After our Lady, St. Joseph is the first person to be told by God that salvation has begun. Jesus is the proper name of the God-man and signifies Savior -- a name given Him not accidentally, or by the judgment or will of man, but by the counsel and command of God [...]. All other names which prophecy gave to the Son of God -- Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (cf. Isaiah 9:6) -- are comprised in this one name Jesus; for while they partially signified the salvation which He was to bestow on us, this name included the force and meaning of all human salvation (St. Pius V Catechism, I, 3, 5 and 6). Matthew 1, 23. Emmanuel: the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, quoted in this verse, foretold about 700 years in advance that Gods salvation would be marked by the extraordinary event of virgin giving birth to a son. The Gospel here, therefore, reveals two truths. The first is that Jesus is in fact the God-with-us foretold by the prophet. This is how Christian tradition has always understood it. Indeed the Church has officially condemned an interpretation denying the messianic sense of the Isaiah text (cf. Pius VI, Brief, Divina, 1779). Christ is truly God-with-us, therefore, not only because of His God-given mission but because He is God made man (cf. John 1:14). This does not mean that Jesus should normally be called Emmanuel, for this name refers more directly to the mystery of His being the Incarnate Word. At the Annunciation the angel said that He should be called Jesus, that is, Savior. And that was the name St. Joseph gave Him. The second truth revealed to us by the sacred text is that Mary, in whom the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 is fulfilled, was a virgin before and during the birth itself. The miraculous sign given by God that salvation had arrived was precisely that a woman would be a virgin and a mother at the same time. Jesus Christ came forth from His mothers womb without injury to her maternal virginity. This immaculate and perpetual virginity forms, therefore, the just theme of our eulogy. Such was the work of the Holy Spirit, who at the conception and birth of the Son so favored the Virgin Mother as to impart fruitfulness to her while preserving inviolate her perpetual virginity (St. Pius V Catechism, 1, 4, 8 ). FINAL PRAYERS: For God rescues the needy who calls to him, and the poor who has no one to help. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the needy from death. (Ps 72,12-13) Thank you, loving God, for for the blessing of our family. I often forget just how much you trust us as parents, by giving your precious children into our care. Please give me the eyes to see you in my children, your heart to love them, and your wisdom to help them grow. Amen. It is by God’s mercy that we are saved. May we never tire of spreading this joyful message to the world. -- Pope Francis Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. -- St. Jerome The Father uttered one Word; that Word is His Son, and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence; and in silence the soul has to hear it. -- St. John of the Cross
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:57:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015