Message of Abbot Paul - Thursday 23rd December
Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist
Message from Fr Paul for Thursday, 23rd December 2021
It was good to visit my mother yesterday, as it had been a month since I last went down to spend the day with her. This time it was only half a day, as Toby couldn’t come with me: he had an appointment with the vet and, in any case, can’t travel at the moment, let alone go for a run on the beach. It seemed so strange not to have him with us for our Italian Christmas dinner, taken before the feast day this year, as we have no idea what will happen afterwards. That’s not true about Wales, but England seems afraid to make decisions that will be unpopular. I’ve a suspicion that few people now even bother to listen to what the government has to say, most of us deciding for ourselves what we need to do to be safe.
Best stick to the story at hand and look at the O Antiphon for today and the Gospel reading. Today we have the last of the O Antiphons, O Emmanuel. Here is a translation. “O Emmanuel, our King and our Lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour; Come and save us, O Lord our God.” Emmanuel is the name given by the Prophet Isaiah to the Messiah and means God with us, for in Jesus God is truly present, as St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Cor 5:19) It’s interesting to note that in medieval England, because of the great devotion to Our Lady (England was known as Mary’s Dowry), there was an eighth O Antiphon, O Virgo Virginum. Here is a translation. “O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.” The divine mystery is, of course, the Incarnation, by which God became a human being in the womb of the Virgin. In England, in fact, the O Antiphons started to be sung a day earlier, on 16th December. I find it terribly sad when venerable, ancient customs disappear.
Our Gospel today presents us with the birth, circumcision and naming of John the Baptist. We read from Luke, (Lk 1: 57-66), after which the scene is set for the birth of Jesus. Here is the complete text of the Gospel.
“The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son; and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.
Now on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; they were going to call him Zechariah after his father, but his mother spoke up. ‘No,’ she said ‘he is to be called John.’ They said to her, ‘But no one in your family has that name’, and made signs to his father to find out what he wanted him called. The father asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And they were all astonished. At that instant his power of speech returned and he spoke and praised God. All their neighbours were filled with awe and the whole affair was talked about throughout the hill country of Judaea. All those who heard of it treasured it in their hearts. ‘What will this child turn out to be?’ they wondered. And indeed the hand of the Lord was with him.”
What we note above all, and this is an underlying theme throughout Luke’s Gospel, is the joy that is shared by Elizabeth with her family and neighbours at the birth of her son. Think of the message of the angels to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus. Then the name chosen for the child, John, meaning graced by God or the Lord is gracious. John was God’s gift to Elizabeth and Zechariah in their old age. He was also God’s gift to the world. We are told that “the hand of the Lord was with him.” Linked with rejoicing is always praise and thanksgiving. Yesterday we read the Gospel of the Magnificat, an outstanding example of rejoicing, praise and thanksgiving. Then, all those present, who witnessed the events of John’s birth, or only heard of them, treasured them all in their hearts. May we follow their example and treasure in our hearts the events we celebrate at Christmas.
