17/12/2023

Today's first reading takes us  back to Isaiah again. Isaiah is one of God's prophets. He is a man who has been given and accepted the specific gift of holiness in this life and while still living in this world he has experienced God as all of us experience other people. He knows that he knows that Isaiah IS a person and also knows that there is another person infinitely greater than him, IAMIAM.

This prophetic knowledge of God fills him with Joy.

The Psalm is Mary's response to her cousin Elizabeth's greeting. There are very few of Our Lady's sayings recorded. This is a recasting of Isaiah's paen of praise for God who has touched his soul, but for her is a living presence in her womb. There is no-one who has lived in the Providence of God, or who has been given a greater knowledge of Father, Son and Holy Spirit than Mary. 

St Paul has received his mission in life directly from the Resurrection. He has had to learn about Jesus' life and sayings from the Apostles. He has been turned around from being a Rabbi by a direct Act of God and now proclaims the joy that we all should have for to know what he knows and teaches is to fulfill God's Will for each of us.

Eighty odd years before John had written his Gospel another "John" had been sent by God. The Temple had taken notice of this man for he proclaimed that God would forgive the sins of those who accepted to be baptized at his hands. The priests who came to question him did not do so because they "treated the Spirit of Prophecy with contempt" but because they knew that God intended to raise up among them a Messiah and wondered if John were he.

"I am not fit to unbuckle his shoe". I am much less than his slave.

Dear Lord, may my mind and soul be ready to do your will and let not preparation take over from the thanksgiving that should be the strongest of my emotions at this time of year. Let me be a child that knows you as a father and that it is only good that I should pray for the forgiveness that the child Jesus brings to Creation. May Mary who pondered much and said little be my role model for how to act in the presence of God. She and the Saints in heaven do not babble as the pagans do. Let me become like them and try to focus my whole being on you, My Lord and my God.