Homily for Advent 4 - Dec 20, 2020

 

Homily for Advent 4

December 20, 2020

Fulfillment of All Prophesies

 

            Recently I read that there are over 500 different prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament. I’m going to trust that statistic because I’m not going to go through the Old Testament and count each one! But it’s a bit mind-boggling to think that books written 2,000 years before Christ would have such accuracy in predicting the coming of Our Lord. This goes to show us that the Bible is not just a collection of writings of individuals, but rather that the Holy Spirit inspired these sacred writers to put down on paper what God Himself wanted us to know.

            Today’s Gospel is the fulfillment of a number of Old Testament prophecies. As twenty-first century Catholics, we don’t hear this Gospel in the same way a first-century Jew would hear it…they would immediately recognize that this encounter is rife with Old Testament references! Let’s dive in to see how the Old Testament is fulfilled in the Annunciation!

            First, the story starts out with a virgin of the house of David. Isaiah prophesied about this in Isaiah 7 when he said, “The virgin shall be with child, and shall name Him Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’.”

            Then the angel says, “The Lord is with you!” Of course we Catholics would respond, “And with your spirit!” But a Jewish person would realize that this phrase occurs somewhere else in Scripture – in the Old Testament, while Israel was held captive by the Philistines in the book of Judges, an angel appears to Gideon and tells him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty warrior!” And Gideon is given the task of saving Israel from their oppression and slavery. Mary would have recognized this – and realized that her task would be to bring into the world the “mighty warrior” who would set free the People of God from the ancient bondage of sin.

            The angel then tells Mary that she will name Him “Jesus”. In Aramaic, the language Mary and Jesus spoke, the name would have been “Jeshuah” – Joshua – which means “God Saves”. In the Old Testament, Joshua was the one who took over after Moses died and finally led the people into the Promised Land. Jesus, then, is the new Joshua who would lead His people into the Promised Land – not a territory on earth, but the Promised Land of Heaven.

            The angel tells Mary that this newborn child will inherit the “throne of His father, David, and His kingdom would never end.” We heard in the first reading where this prophesy came about. King David, overwhelmed with his love for God, wanted to build a Temple in Jerusalem as a place to worship the Lord. But God said, “No, for you have shed too much blood to build Me a house. Rather, I will build a house for you – I will raise up a king in your lineage, whose kingdom will never end.” Now, this prophesy was not fulfilled immediately. David’s son Solomon was a great king, but after him, the kingdom was split between two rival kings, and eventually the line of kings came to an end when the whole land was conquered by the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans. So the promise remained unfulfilled by earthly kings…until the coming of Christ! Jesus, born in the lineage of David, would fulfill that promise by instituting a Kingdom that never ends – the Kingdom of God, where Christ will reign over Heaven and earth.

            Finally, when Mary asks how this will be, the angel responds that the power of the Most High will “overshadow” you. This has an amazing connection to the Old Testament. During the years that the Israelites wandered in the desert, they were led by God directly, as God appeared to them as a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Think about a cloudy day when the sun just begins to peek over the clouds and you see those really cool rays of light shooting out from behind the cloud – this is what it looked like. In Hebrew, this was called “shekinah glory” – the glory of God in visible form – and it would descend to guide the Israelites through the desert. But in a special way, it would descend upon one specific place in the Israelite camp – over the “tent of meeting” where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Ark of the Covenant was considered the dwelling-place of God, where the Ten Commandments were kept, along with the Manna from Heaven and Aaron’s staff. Moses would enter the meeting tent to have face-to-face conversations with God, Who would respond to him out of the Ark of the Covenant. Whenever the shekinah glory would come to rest upon the Meeting Tent, the Scriptures would say that “the glory of God would overshadow” the tent.

            So when the angel tells Mary that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you,” Gabriel is saying that Mary is the new Ark of the New Covenant! Jesus is going to be the new meeting-place between God and humanity. If we wish to speak to God face-to-face, as Moses did, all we need to do is go to Jesus! God’s new dwelling is not in a tent or a temple made of wood and stones – God now dwelt among human beings in-the-flesh, in Jesus! The Ark of the Covenant and the meeting-tent was only a symbol – now, in Jesus, the reality has come.

            It is amazing to think that these Scriptural prophesies, written thousands of years before Christ, all pointed to Him. Everything in the Old Testament was hidden and veiled until Christ came and showed us what it meant – because He is the perfect revelation of God to human beings.