Friday of Late
Advent (Friday of the 3rd Week of Advent)
December 19, 2014 8:30am
Our readings for this Advent day,
December 19 lead me to two reflections.
First, throughout the Old
Testament, there are a number of special birth stories.
In each of these, a couple is
childless, or to use the word of the Scripture, the woman is barren.
In that religion and culture,
they looked upon barrenness as a punishment from God for some sin.
So, they hoped and prayed for a
child.
The Scripture tells us stories of
God intervening and enabling a couple to have a child.
The births of Isaac, of Jacob, of
Joseph, of Samuel, of Samson in today’s first reading, and in today’s gospel,
of John all happen in this way.
In each situation, God’s
intervention and gift of a child resolves the stigma and perceived punishment
of barrenness.
I suggest that one message from
all these stories is that there is a fundamental human barrenness.
We are all humanly barren, empty,
and lifeless without God.
We need the presence and
intervention of God to fill us as persons, to fill our lives with meaning and hope
and life itself.
This barrenness is finally
resolved in the birth of Jesus who was also born with God’s special
intervention.
My second reflection this morning
is that the birth of Samson in our first reading and of John in the gospel is
not just a gift to the parents.
It is also a gift to the
community.
Samson and John and all those
born before them through God’s intervention were also to bring God’s guidance
to the community.
It was a both-and: a gift to the
parents and a gift to the community.
The same needs to be true for
each of us.
We through our birth are gifts to
our parents.
And, we through our re-birth in
baptism are to be gifts to God’s people.
We are “called” in some way to bring
the good news of Jesus to others.
And in this, we too are in the
line of Samson and John the Baptist.
