Tuesday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 11:1-10
We have today a messianic poem describing the principal features of the coming Messiah:
- He is of Davidic stock;
- He will be filled with the spirit of the prophets who went before him;
- He will establish a society reflecting the peace and harmony of God himself.
The reading is a beautiful portrait of Jesus, although that was not in the mind of the prophet when this was written. It is a description of a future kingdom of peace. There is some dispute as to the author and the time of its writing. The emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit seems to point to a later period.
It begins:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
Jesse was the father of David, and Jesus, of course, came through the Davidic line. The line is described as “the stump”, meaning root-stock, rather than a tree because, after the Babylonian exile, very little of the Davidic dynasty remained. But it is enough to produce the shoot that will be Jesus, the messianic King.
He is endowed with the beautiful gifts of the Spirit—the Spirit of God is seen operative throughout biblical history. It is first seen hovering over the abyss at the beginning of creation. It will inspire the Judges, give Joseph his wisdom, and guide the true prophets (the false prophets follow their own spirit). Later, that same Spirit will come down on Jesus as he is baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan. It is the same Spirit which we wish to guide our own lives.
The Spirit’s gifts are listed in three pairs. Only six of the usual seven are mentioned here; the seventh, the ‘spirit of piety’, is added by the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, which early Christian writers often used. The New Jerusalem Bible says:
“The prophetic spirit confers on the Messiah the outstanding virtues of his great ancestors: the wisdom and insight of Solomon, the heroism and prudence of David, the knowledge and fear of God characteristic of patriarch and prophet—of Moses, Jacob and Abraham.”
Endowed with these gifts, the coming Messiah will manifest deep insight that goes beyond just what the senses perceive:
He shall not judge by what his eyes see
or decide by what his ears hear,
but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor
and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth…
This will result in justice for the poor and the weak, but death for the wicked.
This combination of spiritual giftedness and deep sensitivity for those in greatest need brings about an environment of peace, symbolised by normally hostile animals lying down together in harmony. The sign that true justice prevails is the presence of enduring peace and harmony.
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Monday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 2:1-5 (Years B and C) and Isaiah 4:2-6 (Year A)
Now that we are entering the season of Advent, we are making our preparations to welcome the coming of the Son of God among us as one of us. The Child, born in such obscure surroundings, will become the Light of the Nations.
Our First Reading is taken from the early part of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, as will be the case for much of the Advent season. Depending on the Church Year (A, B or C), the verses will come from one of two sections in Isaiah. This commentary reflects on the verses starting with Isaiah 2:1. It begins with the lovely prophecy:
In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
In the ancient Near East, temples were seen as the places where gods lived. Frequently too, temples were built on the tops of mountains. Isaiah is primarily thinking of the Temple in Jerusalem to which he sees peoples from all over coming to pay homage to the one true God. For us, of course, at this season we are thinking of the Temple of the New Covenant, which is the Incarnate Word of God.
Eventually, he will be raised up in glory and, in a very different sense, will be:
…highest of the mountains
and shall be raised above the hills.
And his is a Temple to which over the centuries “all the nations shall stream to it”. Who would ever have thought, in those early days of Christianity, that the fellowship would one day number more than two billion people? Such a number was not in any vocabulary in those days!
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
In this context, Mount Zion and Jerusalem are one and the same.
After the disciples of Jesus were filled with his Spirit, following the resurrection and glorification of Jesus, the word of the Lord did begin to go out from Jerusalem until it spread to every corner of the world. Jerusalem is no longer the centre, because wherever there are Christian communities, there is the Temple, the very presence of the Risen Christ. And the message that is going out is the message of love and peace. It is a message that has been heard by many, but needs to be heard a lot more.
He shall judge between the nations
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation.
Indeed there are nations which have gone a long way to being havens of peace and justice and which have reduced their weapons to a minimum. Unfortunately, there are still many who think that only by violence can problems be solved, and the arms industry still thrives.
As Christians we have a lot of work to do to bring the spirit of Christ and the gospel into our world. To do that effectively we need to hear and respond to the invitation with which our reading closes:
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord!
Monday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 8:5-11
The Gospel describes the story of the centurion who came to Jesus, asking that his servant be healed. When presented with the unexpected level of faith this gentile soldier had:
Jesus…was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…”
The Kingdom which Jesus comes to proclaim is for all peoples everywhere. It is the central message of Christmas. This is not just a time for celebration and for parties. The birth of the Prince of Peace in the poverty of the stable is a challenge to us to carry on his work among God’s children everywhere.
Jesus has not failed. It is we who have done so little to carry on what he began. Advent is a time for us to reflect on the real meaning of God’s coming to live and work among us, and on the responsibility of his followers to carry on the work of making the Kingdom a reality for all.
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Wednesday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 25:6-10
Both readings today are about the abundance that comes from God. The theme of an eschatological banquet is common in early Jewish and early Christian literature. In Matthew’s Gospel, after healing the centurion’s servant, Jesus says:
I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven… (Matt 8:11-12)
And again, in Matthew (22:1-14) and in Luke (14:16-24), Jesus tells the parable of the banquet to which those invited made excuses not to come.
As in the Gospel parables, in our First Reading from Isaiah, there is a universal tone to the words:
The Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
It is not just for God’s people. People from all nations will pour in to join this immense banquet with the Lord. God calls every single person to experience his love and share his eternal presence.
It is not surprising that this image should be used as a vision of the future life. It was used by peoples who all too often experienced hunger and thirst brought on by drought, floods and poverty. A future life beyond death was easily conceived as an unending banquet at a table groaning with rich food and the finest drinks, things which in this life only the tiny minority of the rich could enjoy. Today’s Gospel about the feeding of the 4,000 in the desert confirms what the prophet is foretelling.
At the same time, the Lord will put an end to death, symbolised by the shroud that envelops the peoples and the sheet covering the nations. In fact, “Death has been swallowed up in victory”, a phrase quoted by Paul (1 Cor 15:54).
Later, in the Book of Revelation we read in the hymn to those who have sacrificed their lives for the gospel that:
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Rev 7:17)
And again in Revelation:
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more. (Rev 21:4)
In the Third Eucharistic Prayer, when we pray for the dead, we also say:
There we hope to share in your glory when every tear will be wiped away.
Then, about Mount Zion on which the Temple of Jerusalem was built, the prophet says:
For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.
With the coming of God (remember we are in Advent and Jesus is on the way), there comes comfort in all our sorrows—”Every tear will be wiped away”. This is what salvation means—the fulfilling of all our needs: spiritual, emotional, social and physical. What is promised in Isaiah will become a reality in Jesus.
In our world today we live with abundant food production that serves us even with our population growth. Yet, there is hunger, malnutrition and other unmet needs. We, God’s stewards, are failing in our task of distribution. It is certainly not the fault of God that our brothers and sisters go hungry—it is ours.
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Saturday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 30:19-21,23-26
The first part of today’s reading consists of words of consolation for the people of Zion, who are God’s people. They shall weep no more and the Lord will respond to their cries for help. This is so:
Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction…
This is always a mystery for many—how a God who loves us so much can allow us to endure pain and hardships. Some common reactions one hears from people are that God wants us to suffer so he sends us sufferings, or that a God who tolerates such sufferings is not a loving God at all, or simply that God does not exist.
Yet, if we reflect, we will understand that the sufferings we endure either have natural causes which can be explained, or else are the result of the distorted actions of other human beings. But as to why I should suffer a particular mishap rather than someone else is something we cannot understand in this life. Nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 horror in 2001, but a far larger number, including some in the buildings, escaped. As Jesus once asked, on the occasion of a tower’s collapsing and killing a number of people:
…do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? (Luke 13:4)
Jesus did not think so.
Let us rather listen to the promise in today’s Reading:
Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any longer, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
God, who in the past taught through the veiled language of the prophets, will at a future time help his people to understand his teaching more clearly. This is a straightforward pointer to the coming of the Prophet Jesus, whose teaching made so much clear.
That time will be one of great fertility and fruitfulness:
He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, will be rich and plenteous. On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures, and the oxen and donkeys that till the ground will eat silage that has been winnowed with shovel and fork.
The prophet expresses it in agricultural terms, a language easily understood by the ordinary person of the day. He also says that even:
…the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold…
But with the coming of Jesus as indicated in today’s Gospel, it will be a different kind of fertility:
…on the day when the Lord binds up the injuries of his people and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
Jesus will bring healing, wholeness, freedom and peace into people’s lives. And this is not only the work of Jesus, but also the work of his followers.
That is the paradox: although there is healing, it does not mean the end of pain or hardship or unexpected tragedies. Jesus himself, in the midst of the most terrible pain imaginable, died in the peace of a relationship of total acceptance and self-surrender to his Father. Jesus is our Teacher and invites us to walk this way.
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Thursday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 7:21,24-27
Today’s Gospel reading reminds us of what true discipleship means. People often confess that they have not said their morning and evening prayers or that they have not been to Mass. Perhaps they should remember the words of today’s Gospel:
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…
On the other hand, those of us who always do say our morning and evening prayers, and never miss a Mass, also need to remember those same words. Something more is needed than just being a ‘pray-er’. What is needed is that we:
…do the will of [the] Father in heaven.
What is that will? It is that we be filled with the spirit of the Kingdom and work to make that Kingdom a reality in our world. It involves constant outreach beyond ourselves. We have to go to God by finding him present in the world around us and helping others to be aware of that loving presence also. We will not do that by piously calling on God’s name while ignoring the needs of our brothers and sisters. To do that is to build our house on sand.
That is not to say that prayer is not important. We cannot effectively do God’s work unless we spend time listening to and responding to his Word in times of undisturbed quiet. But our prayer is only genuine when it becomes the spur for us to go out and bring something of God’s love and compassion into our world.
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Friday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 9:27-31
Our readings today are both about seeing. The Gospel speaks about the healing of two blind men. It is a story which we also find in Mark’s Gospel, but here with significant differences. For instance, Mark has only one blind man while Matthew has two. It is important that we not read this as just another miracle, another proof of Jesus’ divine power.
It begins with two blind men going after Jesus—calling after him in desperation:
Have mercy on us, Son of David!
There is already an element of faith in calling Jesus by this messianic name (“Son of David”) and it also points to the healing power of Jesus; he is more than an ordinary rabbi. When they catch up to Jesus, he asks them:
Do you have faith that I can do this?
Without their trust in him, Jesus cannot do anything for them.
We remember what was said about the unbelieving people of Nazareth. These men say they do believe and Jesus responds:
According to your faith, let it be done to you.
They get their sight back. They can now see. Jesus tells them not to say anything about it. Jesus is not interested in being a sensation; he does not want people to have a wrong idea of his real mission. But they ignored his appeal and went about telling everyone of what had happened.
There is more here than meets the eye! What we have here is not just the restoration of their physical sight. They have gained ‘in-sight’. They can really see. They can see who Jesus really is, the Word of God, the Action of God—and they simply have to share that experience with everyone else. It is not something that they can keep to themselves.
It is significant that the following story is about the healing of a man who is unable to speak. There are several instances of Jesus’ healing people of muteness, deafness and blindness in the Gospel. As disciples of Christ we need to be able to see, hear and understand the message of Jesus and then we need to proclaim it everywhere.
Today is a day for us to be aware of our own blindness and our own deafness. We often have difficulty really hearing and accepting the Word of God, and how many us can claim that we can see Jesus as he really is? If we are to celebrate Christmas properly, we must learn how to listen to God’s Word, with understanding and acceptance, and learn how to see deeply into the meaning of his life as it is presented to us. And it starts right there with the baby in the stable.
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Wednesday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 15:29-37
In today’s Gospel, full of trust and confidence, people bring the disabled, the blind, those unable to speak and those unable to hear. Jesus healed them all and the crowds were amazed. There then comes a scene which is a kind of parable of what Jesus stands for: the compassion of God and his desire that the needs of all be supplied. The people have been with him for three days and are hungry. They must be fed. There’s not much to feed them with—seven loaves of bread and a few fish. It is enough for Jesus. And again and again people who have dedicated themselves to caring for the hungry and homeless have found what they needed turning up on their doorstep.
At the end, seven (a perfect number) baskets are still left uneaten. All this symbolises the care God takes of his people. And yet, is it happening in many parts of the world today? There is a crucial element in today’s Gospel we cannot overlook. It was not Jesus, but his disciples who distributed the food. In our world there is an abundance. Food production outpaces population growth. If there is hunger, malnutrition and other unmet needs, it is because we, God’s stewards, are failing in our task of distribution. If there is hunger and suffering and death, it is not the work of God—it is our failure to work.
Christmas is a time of giving. We could ask ourselves: To whom are we giving? With whom are we sharing what we have or can afford to buy? Perhaps we could widen the circle this Christmas with gifts that mean life or death for the receivers. Beneficiaries who will never know who their benefactors are, and who will not be able to give anything back. Did Jesus not say something about giving so quietly that the left hand will not know what the right hand is doing?
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Thursday of Week 1 of Advent – First Reading
Commentary on Isaiah 26:1-6
Today’s reading is a psalm in praise of Zion. There is a strong contrast with what had been said in an earlier chapter (Is 24:10-13):
The city of chaos is broken down;
every house is shut up so that no one can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;
all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished.
Desolation is left in the city;
the gates are battered into ruins.
For thus it shall be on the earth
and among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.
Contrast that with today’s upbeat statement:
We have a strong city;
he sets up walls and bulwarks as a safeguard.
Open the gates,
so that the righteous nation that maintains faithfulness
may enter in.
Tuesday of Week 1 of Advent – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 10:21-24
As Christmas and all it means approaches, the Gospel reminds us of the tremendous privilege that has come to us through our knowing Jesus Christ:
Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see but did not see it and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
These words were spoken by Jesus just after seventy-two of his disciples had returned from their mission of proclaiming the Kingdom and doing the same work as he was doing. They echo words he had spoken to them earlier:
To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to others I speak in parables, so that
‘looking they may not perceive and
hearing they may not understand.’ (Luke 8:10)
These words imply, not that only the disciples are offered insight and understanding, but rather that the disciples are, by definition, those who open themselves to hear and to see and to understand the message.
So for us, today is a day of special thanksgiving for being so blessed. But with privilege comes responsibility. It is for us to see more clearly who Jesus really is, and to have a deeper understanding of his vision and of his ways. It is for us to listen ever more acutely to the Word of God so that it really penetrates our consciousness and is absorbed into our very being.
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