Saturday in the Third Week of Advent, December 19, 2020

Luke 1:5-25

In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the priestly division of Abijah; his wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both were righteous in the eyes of God, observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years. Once when he was serving as priest in his division’s turn before God, according to the practice of the priestly service, he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord to burn incense. Then, when the whole assembly of the people was praying outside at the hour of the incense offering, the angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right of the altar of incense. Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall name him John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers toward children and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous, to prepare a people fit for the Lord.”  Then Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” And the angel said to him in reply, “I am Gabriel, who stand before God. I was sent to speak to you and to announce to you this good news. But now you will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.” Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah and were amazed that he stayed so long in the sanctuary. But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He was gesturing to them but remained mute. Then, when his days of ministry were completed, he went home. After this time his wife Elizabeth conceived, and she went into seclusion for five months, saying, “So has the Lord done for me at a time when he has seen fit to take away my disgrace before others.”

As we enter the week before Christmas, the Church speaks to us of the Lord’s Precursor, John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus through his preaching and his severe and distinctive manner of life.  Preaching penance, he practiced it as well, though he was certainly in less need of this than the people who came to him to be plunged into the Jordan as a sign of their own contrition for sin.  We might wonder, as we consider this: how should we live penitential lives with our load of sins when this holy man lived as he did?  

Luke tells us of John’s parents, the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth: “Both were righteous in the eyes of God, observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly. But they had no child.”  This verse sums up the situation for the Jews under the old law.  Obeying the law did not obtain a child, that is, grace, for them — grace, the life of God which sanctifies us and unites us to him.  They did all they were commanded to do, and yet they lay under the curse of childlessness, signifying original sin.  This afflicted them particularly because Zechariah and Elizabeth were descended from Aaron, the first priest.  If anyone should have been blessed with children, it was this couple.  “Both were advanced in years”: the Chosen People had long awaited a Redeemer.  Kings had reigned and died, prophets had been raised up and died, and the people could still lament, “Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us” (Ecclesiastes 1, 10).  

But then one day, Zechariah was chosen to offer incense within the Temple, and “the angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right of the altar of incense”.  The altar of incense was located in an inner chamber of the Temple, adjacent to, but separate from, the holy of holies, where only the high priest could go, and that only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, when coals and incense from the altar of incense were brought there.  The chamber of the altar of incense signifies John the Baptist because it leads to the holy of holies, which signifies the Lord Jesus because it is the place where the high priest would pray for mercy for the people in the presence of God.  The angel Gabriel is said to appear at the right of this altar.  St. Ambrose points out that Luke does not say that God sent Gabriel from heaven to Zechariah, but that Gabriel simply “appeared” to him, as though he had been there all along, but was invisible.  The angel appears at the “right” side of the altar: if the altar represents God, then the angel shows himself as acting and speaking for God with power.

“Zechariah was troubled by what he saw, and fear came upon him.”  The Virgin Mary was confused by what the angel called her (“perfected with grace”), but Zechariah is troubled by the very sight of him.  Of the two, the old priest and the young virgin, we would expect the first to be most prepared to see an angel.  The fact that it was Mary who was more prepared and composed tells us much about her.  The Fathers agree that the angel must have appeared in human form in order to communicate with Zechariah, but Gabriel must also have shown his angelic nature in some way.  Gabriel tells the priest, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.”  This leads us to think that at the time Zechariah was ministering in the chamber, he was, even in his old age, praying for a child.  This signifies the perseverance of the Jews in the Old Law despite its inability to bestow grace on them.  Gabriel says of the child God will give Zechariah and his wife: “He will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.”  The injunction against the drinking of wine or strong drink sets their son apart from the rest of the people as a visible sign of their need to set themselves apart from the world by doing penance.  The prophesy that the child would be filled with the Holy Spirit even in his mother’s womb is made in view of what will happen to him when Mary, pregnant with the Son of God, comes to him and his mother.  “He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah.”  The fact that Luke quotes Gabriel as speaking of Elijah is notable because Luke is writing for Gentile Christians for whom the fulfillment of Malachi 4, 5-6 was not important.  It is a sign of the veracity of Luke’s account.  “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”  In understanding what Zechariah means when he asks how he is to “know” this, we ought to understand that the Virgin Mary uses this word when she says to Gabriel, “How will this be, since I do not know man” (Luke 1, 34).  That is, Zechariah is not asking how he will know that this will happen, but how he is to conceive a child with his wife “in her old age” (Luke 1, 36).  This reveals that he has doubts not simply as to their physical ability to do this but even that God could render them capable of it.  This is the reason for Gabriel’s stern reply: “You will be speechless and unable to talk until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”  Here, we see the sign of the faltering in faith of Israel’s priesthood which will cause the son of Zechariah and our Lord so much hardship.  In some Greek texts Gabriel says that Zechariah would be deaf as well as dumb, conditions which often go together.  That would seem to be the case here, since it is later regarded as miraculous that he understood the question surrounding his son’s name and wrote it on a tablet.

“He was unable to speak to them . . . he was gesturing to them but remained mute.”  The priest came out of the sanctuary unable to tell the people the message from God that he had received.  The priesthood of the old law becomes silent so that the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness” might be heard.

“His wife Elizabeth conceived, and she went into seclusion for five months.”  Elizabeth withdrew from the world just as it had seemed that God had withdrawn from her life from the time she was married.  Her seclusion was broken only by the arrival of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The reason Elizabeth gives for secluding herself might be put into smoother English: “Thus did the Lord do for me before he removed my reproach from before others.”

As the Lord prepared the world by the actions indicated in the signs in this reading, so he prepares us for his Second Coming.  He reveals to us that the ever-shifting laws and beliefs of this world cannot give us happiness.  He gives us signs that the priests of this world — the advertisers, politicians, movie stars, and proponents of bad science — cannot save us.  We Christians must run from these into a place of seclusion, into the wilderness, where we can repent, do penance, and await our God.