“The Lord owns earth, and all earth’s fulness,
Psalm 23(24) [link]
the round world, and all its inhabitants.
Who else has built it out from the sea,
poised it on the hidden streams?
Who dares climb the mountain of the Lord,
and appear in His sanctuary?
The guiltless in act, the pure in heart;
one who never set his heart on lying tales,
or swore treacherously to his neighbour.
His to receive a blessing from the Lord,
mercy from God, his sure Defender;
his the true breed that still looks,
still longs for the presence of the God of Jacob.
Swing back, doors, higher yet;
reach higher, immemorial gates,
to let the King enter in triumph!
Who is this great King? Who but the Lord,
mighty and strong, the Lord mighty in battle?
Swing back, doors, higher yet;
reach higher, immemorial gates,
to let the King enter in triumph!
Who is this great King?
It is the Lord of Armies
that comes here on His way triumphant.”
Let the Lord enter! He is the King of glory…! This is our response to the psalm this weekend. Psalm 23(24) is a bit of a Christmas psalm, or perhaps an Annunciation psalm. For, roughly nine months ago, we celebrated that feast day. The ladies among us know best what nine months mean for a new life sparked into being… gradually clothing itself more and more in flesh, until she arrives (God willing) and opens her eyes to the light for the first time.
Let the Lord enter… into what? Let the Ancient of Days – the Eternal One – into His new reality, as not only God Most Holy, but as God Most Holy in human flesh. Who opens the door for Him to enter thus into our humanity? The beautiful young lady of Nazareth, when she says to the angel in March, May it be done as God has willed.
At the beginning of all things, the Holy One spoke a word and all things came into being in their turn. Then He said, Let us make mankind in Our own image. And so we became. With another word, God Himself in March took human form within the Virgin, and now in December we find Him all en-fleshed, appearing before His Mother and the holy guardian S. Joseph. The Lord, the King of glory, in conception, pregnancy and birth, thus enters as a man. And already Adam is reborn anew – the new Adam – and so the salvation of the human race is at hand.
What is the gift that Christ brings, what of humanity does He bring with Him that was lost? Remember Adam and Eve and how in pride they sought to be gods. Christ will teach us humility, He will teach us how to put our lives utterly at the service of God the Father. Whereas Adam failed to trust in God’s plan and decided to make his own plans, Christ now will fall in perfectly with His Father’s plan. Perfectly… even to the torture of the cross.
“Then it was that the Lord said to Isaias, ‘Take with thee thy son, Jashub the Survivor, and go out to the end of the aqueduct that feeds the upper pool in the Fuller’s Ground. There thou wilt meet Achaz, and this shall be thy message to him, Shew a calm front, do not be afraid. Must thy heart fail thee because Rasin king of Syria and the son of Romelia are thy sworn enemies? What is either of them but the smouldering stump of a fire-brand? What if Syria, what if Ephraim and the son of Romelia are plotting to do thee an injury? They think to invade Juda and strike terror into it, so that they can bring it into their power, and set up the son of Tabeel as its ruler; a vain errand, the Lord says; it shall not be. As surely as Damascus rules Syria,✻ and Rasin rules Damascus, within sixty-five years Ephraim will be a people no longer. As surely as Samaria rules Ephraim, and the son of Romelia rules Samaria, if you lose courage, your cause is lost.‘ The Lord sent, besides, this message to Achaz, Ask the Lord thy God to give thee a sign, in the depths beneath thee, or in the height above thee. But Achaz said, ‘Nay, I will not ask for a sign; I will not put the Lord to the test.’ ‘Why then,’ said Isaias, ‘listen to me, you that are of David’s race. Cannot you be content with trying the patience of men? Must you try my God’s patience too? Sign you ask none, but sign the Lord will give you. Maid shall be with child, and shall bear a son, that shall be called Emmanuel.’“
Prophecy of Isaias, 7: 3-14 [link]
In our first reading this weekend, we hear of this Jewish King Achaz. In the story that we have here, he is threatened from the north by the alliance between his rivals in the kings in Samaria and Damascus. He cannot trust God, and he wants to call for help from the Assyrians, or (failing that) the Egyptians. In another situation in the northern kingdom of Israel, the Israelite king Achab sought relief from a time of drought by making a syncretist bid to worship multiple gods, and the prophet Elijah had arrived to ask him whether or not there was a God in Israel. The prophet Isaiah now arrives before Achaz of Judah with a message from on High, and the king pretends piety. I will not test God, he says. But Isaiah knows his heart, and he replies with prophecy: the House of David did not then trust God, but in the distant future, the House of David would bring forth the greatest of all created beings – the Lady of Nazareth. She would trust as none of us shall ever trust, and through her the Promise would arrive. As the prophet says, the Virgin will give birth, and God will walk among men once more, as He did long ago in the garden with Adam and Eve, as He did when Israel left Egypt and marched towards the Holy Land.
Let us prepare ourselves to meet Him, as the psalm says, with clean hands and pure hearts, desiring not the worthless things of this world, but desiring only Him.
The Church has always asked us to remember. Memory in the Jewish/Hebrew sense is not about looking at photographs in old albums, but rather climbing right into those old photographs. That’s why we have sacred images, and at this time of year we have the numerous Christmas crib scenes. We should somehow become part of these, standing with the little figures of the angels and the shepherds and the kings, hovering over the little Baby with the shiny face.
The Hebrew festivals of old were designed for the people of every century and age to walk with Moses out of Egypt and into the desert, and to navigate that desert with God, and so take possession of the Land He had designed for them. Memory in the Christian sense is scarcely different, for it was a Jew Who gave us our festivals and rituals, and it was His Apostles and bishops who carried them to the ends of the earth. We are to remember Christ at every Mass, to remember His passion, death and resurrection. We can find all that expressed in our Eucharistic prayers.
The Mass draws us into the chamber of the Last Supper, when we may sit at the table with the Apostles, and it draws us to the foot of the Cross, where we may stand in horror with the Lady and the Apostle S. John, as they witness the reason why the Child was conceived and born, why the Holy One took flesh and walked as a Man among them. And so we celebrate Christmas as everything else at the foot of the Cross. Christmas had to be, so that Good Friday could be.
Emmanu-el. God-among-men. And this in order that, through His sacrifice, men could walk again in the company of God, in the shade of the trees in the Garden of Eden, at the Beginning.
“…an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take thy wife Mary to thyself, for it is by the power of the Holy Ghost that she has conceived this Child; and she will bear a Son, Whom thou shalt call Jesus, for He is to save His people from their sins. All this was so ordained to fulfil the word which the Lord spoke by His prophet: Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel (which means, God with us). And Joseph awoke from sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, taking his wife to himself…”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 1: 20-24 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 