THE LESSON OF ZECHARIAH IN THE TEMPLE

GOSPEL - Luke 1:5-25

ACCLAMATION: O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay!

St. Luke opens his Gospel with a scene that connects the new with the old. He brings us into the Temple of Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish religion. It is the time of the evening sacrifice, and there is an old priest who was chosen by lot to enter the Holy Place and offer incense in front of the curtain that covered the Holy of Holies. This is where the message of a new beginning came to Zechariah. Luke, the “historian” among the evangelists, knows that new developments are only healthy when they are rooted in the past. That the Church moves often slowly, too slowly for many, is because whatever new that comes has to be born from the old.

Luke describes the annunciation to Zechariah when he is alone in the Holy Place of God’s house. It is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.

Recently somebody asked me, “Father, why did God speak so much in the stories of the Bible but why does He not speak now, to me, for instance?” I reflected for a while and answered, “You see, in biblical times, the world was quieter. People communed with nature. There was no radio, no TV, no computer. There were no movies, no cars — there was just silence. People could hear God speaking to them. Go to a contemplative monastery, and ask nuns and monks and they will tell you how they “hear” God speaking to them. Go every day for half an hour to one hour to an adoration chapel, calm down, and just listen. God will speak to you.”

In these days before Christmas, when everything is so noisy and so hectic, we miss the most important thing in this season: God speaking to us through the Scripture, speaking to us in the silence of our hearts — as He spoke to Zechariah in the silence of the Holy Place in the Temple of Jerusalem. ~ Fr. Rudy Horst, SVD