And again & again & again. . .

December 24 (Morning Mass): 2 Sam 7.1-5, 8-16 and Luke 1.67-79
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

Zechariah’s tongue, struck mute by the archangel Gabriel as a punishment for his failure to trust God’s plan, is now unstuck at the birth of his son, John, and Zechariah wisely uses his first words to praise the Lord, the God of Israel. And more than praise God he blesses God and recounts as a memorial all that God has done for the people of Israel. And more than praise God and bless God for His mighty deeds, Zechariah prophesies his son’s task and the future-history of his people. This canticle, called the Benedictus, is so much a part of our lives of prayer together—we pray it every morning—that I wonder if we really hear it anymore. In poetry, repetition is used to emphasize the importance of a word or concept or emotion. Repetition in prayer inscribes, writes on the heart and mind of the one praying a Word or Deed, spoken and done, a word or deed that reveals God to us and reminds us each time we pray that we live and move and have our being in the promises of God. John was promised to Zechariah and Elizabeth. John’s coming heralds the coming of the Christ. And so, today, for one more day, we wait—praising, blessing, prophesying, anticipating the arrival of the Christ Child among us. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel!

Repetition is a means of remembering and forgetting. What is written can be read and misread. What is written can be true and false. In repetition, we can know better or forget more. The familiarity of recitation becomes the comfort of knowing-well and knowing-well what we pray can become an inauthentic mumble, the vain repetition of small noises. However, we know that Zechariah’s witness to our salvation history is authentic, and delivered with authority, precisely because his tongue was struck mute by the archangel. His initial seed of doubt is contained. Held in, dammed up, given over to silence and the methodical march of the calendar. Like the infant in his wife’s womb, Zechariah’s doubt gestates for nine months, maturing, distilling, insistently progressing toward its term and its inevitable, exuberant birth! From doubt to praise. From anxiety to blessing. From silence to prophecy. Zechariah’s prayer, like his son and the Christ his son announces, is a dawning, a daybreak, a morning of mornings.

Our God has come to his people—again. He has set us free—again—this time by raising up from the house of David the king, a powerful savior, the Christ. He has saved us—again—from the harm our enemies would do to us. He has—again—made good on His promises to be our God by showing our ancestors an undeserved mercy. He shows us that He has once again remembered the covenant He swore to Abraham, our father in faith. His vow to us to save us from our enemies, to set us free to worship Him, rejoicing and singing, to make us holy and righteous; this vow He has—again—kept in perfect love.

Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s son, John, prepares the way of the Christ by baptizing with water for repentance, a turning from sin with forgiveness that prepares us, leaves us knowing that our salvation is at hand. Praying this prayer, repeating the praise, blessing, and prophecy of Zechariah, brings to our hearts and minds again the coming dawn from on high. And we, those who dwell in the dark and live in the shadow of death, we are guided—again—on the way to peace. Forever we will sing the goodness of the Lord because we will forever sing the canticle of blessing that greets John on his birth as prophet and herald of the Lord, The Lord—Wisdom of God, Lord of Israel, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Radiant Dawn, King of Nations, and again, tomorrow, Emmanuel, “God-is-with-us”!