Friday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, September 24, 2021

Haggai 2:1-9

In the second year of King Darius, on the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: Tell this to the governor of Judah, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and to the high priest Joshua, son of Jehozadak, and to the remnant of the people: “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? And how do you see it now? Does it not seem like nothing in your eyes? But now take courage, Zerubbabel, says the Lord, and take courage, Joshua, high priest, son of Jehozadak, And take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work! For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. This is the pact that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, And my spirit continues in your midst; do not fear! For thus says the Lord of hosts: One moment yet, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations will come in.  And I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. Mine is the silver and mine the gold, says the Lord of hosts. Greater will be the future glory of this house than the former, says the Lord of hosts; And in this place I will give you peace, says the Lord of hosts!

In the First Reading for today’s Mass, we hear Almighty God speaking through his Prophet Haggai, urging the Jewish people whom he had brought back from exile in Babylon to rebuild his Temple in Jerusalem.  

“Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?”  Since the period of the exile extended about seventy years, few that returned to Jerusalem could describe from their own experience what the original Temple had looked like.  The Lord is telling the people that they are a new generation who will make a new Temple, and also that fears of not being able to build one the equal of the original are unfounded.  No one remains who can make that comparison.  “And how do you see it now? Does it not seem like nothing in your eyes?”  All that is left is pitiful ruins.  Whatever the Jews are able to build, with their limited resources, will surpass these ruins.

“Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work! For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.”  God addresses by name the governor, Zerubbabel, a descendent of David, and the high priest, Joshua, telling them, and also the people, to take courage and to set to work.  The project, already begun and shortly afterwards discontinued, would entail much labor and expensive material.  It amounted to an enormous undertaking by a people still struggling to live amidst drought and political intrigue. “For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. This is the pact that I made with you when you came out of Egypt, And my spirit continues in your midst; do not fear!”  The Lord assures the Jews that he will prosper their work on the Temple just as surely as he led their ancestors out of Egypt.  Note here the use of the second person plural “you”: “This is the pact that I made with you”.  For the Jews, a person was his ancestors, and the descendants of a person were that person.  This is the meaning of the cry of the Jews to Pilate, “Let his Blood be on us and on our children!”  Their children were not innocent, in their eyes, but were also necessarily implicated in Christ’s Death.

“One moment yet, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations will come in.”  The Greek word translated here as “treasures” actually means “the choice things”, or, “the chosen things”.  It is used in the Gospels to speak of “the elect”.  For this reason, this verse traditionally has been understood to refer to the Messiah, the Elect of God, being his only-begotten Son.  Thus, the coming of the Messiah, his Incarnation and Birth, are attended with signs of a seismic change in the universe: God becomes man.  This was prophesied in a psalm: “In my affliction I called upon the Lord, and I cried to my God: And he heard my voice from his holy temple: and my cry before him came into his ears.  The earth shook and trembled: the foundations of the mountains were troubled and were moved, because he was angry with them. There went up a smoke in his wrath: and a fire flamed from his face: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens, and came down, and darkness was under his feet” (Psalm 18, 7-10).  The human race, unable to save itself from sin and death, calls out to God, and he himself comes down.  The heavens and the earth shake at the sight of this. Peter acknowledges Jesus Christ as “the Christ of God” in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass.  The Father has revealed this to him.  The revelation is hardly less of an event than the Incarnation itself.  It is very much “earth-shaking” news.  

“And I will fill this house with glory.”  That is, with the glory of his Son.  “Mine is the silver and mine the gold”.  For the Jews of the time of Haggai, these words were an assurance that God would provide the gold and silver for the adornment of the Temple.  We Christians can understand these as the spiritual riches with which the Lord endowed his Church.  “Greater will be the future glory of this house than the former.”  While Almighty God dwelt in the original Temple in sign, the Son of God would in fact walk about the second Temple and defend it as his Father’s House.  This second Temple can also be understood as the Church, the fulfillment of the sign of the Chosen People.  “And in this place I will give you peace!”  That is, the Prince of Peace.  “For he is our peace” (Ephesians 2, 14).