Wednesday, December 23, 2015 4th Week of Advent
1st Reading: Mal 3:1-4, 23-24 Gospel: Luke1:57-66
When the time came for Elizabeth, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the merciful Lord had done a wonderful thing for her and they rejoiced with her.
When on the eighth day they came to attend the circumcision of the child, they wanted to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called John.” They said to her, “No one in your family has that name”; and they asked the father by means of signs for the name he wanted to give. Zechariah asked for a writing tablet and wrote on it, “His name is John,” and they were very surprised. Immediately Zechariah could speak again and his first words were in praise of God.
A holy fear came on all in the neighborhood, and throughout the Hills of Judea the people talked about these events. All who heard of it pondered in their minds and wondered, “What will this child be?” For they understood that the hand of the Lord was with him.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
Elizabeth was barren at a time when barrenness was a big source of social and spiritual embarrassment – an indication that a couple was not in God’s grace. Thus she suffered a lot under the yoke of social and spiritual shame. She herself referred to her situation as a situation of disgrace. The bigger embarrassment was that of humanity which suffered under the yoke of damnation. In both situations God intervened. To Elizabeth he gave a baby boy. To humanity he also gave a baby boy, savior of the world.
Both situations involved barrenness at different levels. Elizabeth was barren at the physical level, while humanity was barren at the spiritual level because it was impossible for it to conceive of any scheme to appease the God it offended by the great disobedience of its first parents.
In both impossible situations God intervened. Was it out of compassion?
But compassion is suffering with the suffering person. Could God feel the sufferings of humans? We couldn’t really tell, for God was pure spirit while humans corporeal and sentient. Then the incarnation happened where God “took the form of a slave being born in the likeness of men.” That was the time we were sure that God could literally feel what humans feel and suffer what humans suffer. “It was our infirmities that he bore”. That was the time we knew God’s intervention was all out of compassion. When Jesus allowed himself to go through the worst sufferings possible to humanity, his incarnation became an assurance that he will always be compassionate to his people. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website:www.frdan.org.