Friday, December 23, 2016
4th Week of Advent
1st Reading:
Mal 3:1-4,23-24
Gospel: Luke 1:57-66
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)
Jose Marti, the Apostle of Cuban Independence, when asked what a man should do before he dies, said that a man should plant a tree, write a book and sire a son. These acts perpetuate oneself in this world since most trees outlive their planters, most books outlast their authors and sons carry the name of their fathers beyond the grave. But while all of us can plant a tree and while the geniuses among us can write a book, not all can sire a son. Zechariah, for example, breached the age of fertility without an issue because he and his wife Elizabeth were barren. The Old Testament treated childlessness as a punishment. In the Book of Leviticus, having sexual relations with an aunt or with a brother’s wife in an act of impurity was punished, and the prescribed punishment was death without a child (Leviticus 20:20-21). From the perspective of Judaism Zechariah was cursed. From the perspective of Jose Marti Zechariah was doomed because he had no son to perpetuate his name.
But God intervened and gave him a baby boy. Given his particular circumstance they should have named him after his father Zechariah. But they named him John, a name, which in Hebrew means “God shows favor”. Zechariah did not protest. By confirming the name, Zechariah was proclaiming the child as a big favor from the Lord.
The issue was no longer whether or not he could sire a son to perpetuate himself. What was important to him was that his siring a son was part of God’s bigger plan to save the world. In the context of God’s bigger plan siring a son is service to humanity and not just self- perpetuation. – (Atty.) Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM.
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