Thought of the Week

On this page you can read about the saints who are being celebrated this week at Glenstal Abbey.  By thinking and meditating on their lives and teachings you can grow in wisdom and find inspiration for your own life.  On some occasions instead we supply meditations on the readings of the day

Third Week in Advent:

Monday

First Reading: Num 24:2-7, 15-17; Gospel: Mt 21:23-27

Gospel: ‘Their reply to Jesus was, “We do not know”.’ For Matthew the Good News of the gospel is good news mainly for the Gentiles. For the Jews as a people, especially the religious leaders of today’s passage, it is a tragedy – for they will reject it by rejecting Christ, their Messiah. They have had all the chances through the prophets, and finally in the witness of John the Baptist. But their hearts, and therefore their eyes, are closed to the light of salvation. ‘They do not know’ because they do not want to.

St Matthew will portray this tragedy – of the contrasting reactions of men to Christ, even in Christ’s infancy – in the contrast between the Wise Men and the people of Jerusalem. Consulted by Herod about the place where the Messiah is to be born, the chief priests and the scribes have no problem. The answer is, of course, ‘Bethlehem’. They know Micah’s prophecy by heart – Bethlehem is only six miles from Jerusalem, an easy two hours’ walk across the fields. But will they go there? Not they. It is the Wise Men, the truly wise men indeed, who ‘come to Jerusalem from the East’ and from afar, with only the star to guide them.

First Reading: This is the ‘star from Jacob’ in the first reading, which St Matthew has in mind, the star seen by the far-seeing eyes of Balaam the pagan seer some twelve hundred years before. The star was a symbol of royalty. But it is also perhaps a symbol of judgement for us Christians if pagans shame us by living better lives than we do.

Tuesday

First Reading: Zeph 3:1-2, 9-13; Gospel: Mt 21:28-32

Gospel: ‘Tax-collectors and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before you.’ Jesus has come down from Galilee to Jerusalem to present the leaders of his people with a final challenge on his Father’s behalf. Yesterday we saw how he reduced them to silence when they asked him about his authority. Today he now takes the offensive with a parable: ‘A man had two sons’. The man represents God, his Father in heaven. His sons are Israel, the Chosen People on the one hand, on the other the Gentiles. Israel is the second son in the story. He professed to obey his father, but in fact failed to do his will, especially by rejecting Jesus. The first son, the Gentiles, seemed to have been disobedient from the start by following their false gods; but in the persons of the tax-collectors and prostitutes they have come back to obey God by accepting the teaching of Jesus. But even the return of these ‘prodigal’ Gentiles did not move Israel to amend its disobedience. Israel thus stands clearly condemned before God.

First Reading: Our first reading, from Zephaniah, reveals the Father’s plan in response to men’s rejection of the Messiah. Ruin is in store for the rebellious city, for ‘the proud boasters’. But he will preserve a faithful remnant, a humble and lowly people ‘who will have God as their shepherd’. ‘They will be able to graze and rest with no one to disturb them.’ This faithful remnant we shall meet shortly in the persons of Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zachariah, and others.

Wednesday

Advent: 17 December

First Reading: Gen 49:2, 8-10; Gospel: Mt 1:1-17

Gospel and First Reading: Today we acclaim the gospel in the words of the great pre-Christmas antiphon: ‘O Wisdom of the Most High, ordering all things with strength and gentleness, come and teach us the way of truth.’ And surely the strength and gentleness of God lie hidden behind the long genealogy of Matthew. From Abraham to Christ; from Judah, the lion cub of Jacob’s oracle in the first reading, to Mary the Virgin; from the warlike hunger for land that drove the sons of Jacob in to capture Canaan, town by town, from its former inhabitants; from that warlike greed to the vision of justice and peace flowing in today’s Responsorial Psalm: the Old Testament forecast of the reign of the Son of Man, the Prince of Peace.

What a revelation of the wisdom of God! ‘My ways are above your ways as the heavens are above the earth.’ Yet God makes use of human ways, even human violence and sin, to bring about his will. We may think of murky tales in Genesis, like that of Judah and Tamar. But there are much blacker chapters behind that long dramatis personae that Matthew gives us. And the Word of God is our Good News, the basis of our Christian patience and hope and endurance. We may never give way to our human fears. ‘The Lord is near. There is no need to worry.’  ‘Wisdom of the Most High, come and teach us the way of truth.’

Advent: 18 December

First Reading: Jer 23:5-8; Gospel: Mt 1:18-24

Gospel: ‘She has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit.’ Matthew here is explaining two points. First, how Joseph figures in the infancy narrative if God alone is Jesus’ Father. The answer is: Joseph is Mary’s fiancé. Secondly, Joseph’s adoption of Jesus is, like the rest of Jesus’ infancy, by God’s arrangement. There is no allusion to Joseph suspecting Mary of adultery. But the law of Deuteronomy would oblige a just man, as Joseph is, to expose her condition. The idea of putting her away informally is certainly evidence of his compassion, in not exposing her to the rigour of the law. St Jerome takes St Joseph’s silence about Mary’s pregnancy as a mark of humility and reverence: ‘He covered by silence a mystery he could not comprehend.’

Joseph is indeed a person to be studied in the context of Christ’s coming into all of our lives. Certainly he had not expected to be foster-father of a son conceived by divine power. Nor indeed the demands this foster-child would make on his life, even from his infancy. But this is the law of Jesus’ coming into all of our lives. ‘Like a thief in the night’ as he will put it himself: unexpectedly and in disguise. It is for us to be always ready in faith to recognise that it is he, and not mere chance, that is making demands upon us: on our health, our patience, our courage, our perseverance.

First Reading: ‘I will raise a virtuous Branch for David’. The significant emphasis in the first reading is laid on the activity of God in the work of salvation. Jeremiah is supremely the prophet of Israel’s traumatic exile to Babylon. But, like Isaiah before him, he envisages God’s power showing in a new Exodus, not from Egypt, but from Babylon. Further, he sees this as a spiritual exodus too: >From Israel’s past infidelity to a new ‘integrity’ conferred on it by God’s power.

Prayer-lines: Thank you, Lord, for giving us St Joseph as our model. May he help us this Christmas to recognise Christ in whatever guise he takes for his advent.

Advent: 19 December

First Reading: Jgds 13:2-7, 24-25; Gospel: Lk 1:5-25

Gospel: ‘He will begin to rescue Israel from the power of the Philistines’. It seems clear that Luke had the account of Samson’s birth in mind as he wrote his ‘annunciation’ of the birth of John the Baptist. The mothers of both men are barren; nazirite abstinence is imposed in both cases, on the mother in one, on John the Baptist in the other. For both children are to be consecrated to God and his saving plans. There is no comparison, of course, between greatness of the two men as characters, or in their function: Jesus himself tells us that there was no greater among the men before him than the Baptist. And we know the miserable downfall of Samson through his infatuation with Delilah.

First Reading: And yet Samson has his own relevance to the Christmas mystery and message. This mystery and message is, of course, one of Israel’s salvation. Jesus is the one by name, as the angel told Joseph in yesterday’s gospel passage, who will save his people. But Samson, too, in his own small way, was a saviour of his people. His story in the Book of Judges (better translated as ‘saviours’), gives an account of the charismatic leaders supplied by God at the critical stage when Israel was trying to consolidate its original invasion of the Promised Land. Scholars tell us that in fact Samson was only a village hero, who made little impact on the Philistine threat to Israel. But what matters is that though he was to prove such a moral weakling, God was prepared to use him as one of his instruments in the many rehearsals for the final deliverance of Israel, and all mankind, from the powers of darkness. Whenever we are tempted to discouragement at our own weakness, failures and mistakes, the story of Samson is there to encourage us. God can use the weakest of us in his work of salvation.

Advent: 20 December

First Reading: Is 7:10-14; Gospel: Lk 1:26-38

Gospel: ‘The child will be called Son of Man.’ Christians down through history have shown keen judgement in treating this scene as the key-point in history. Catholic piety has rightly made the ‘Hail Mary’ its ‘mantra’, its bond of prayer with Mary and God. The greatest paintings of the Annunciation have captured something of the awe and mystery of the occasion … And perhaps the best way to treat the passage is as a great picture that one sits (or kneels) in front of in a gallery, content to admire, and be nourished by it. Certainly there is no need to look elsewhere for Luke’s reputation as a painter.

There is no need to be distracted by the frame into which Luke has put his canvas. He has accepted the old traditional frame we met in the annunciations to Samson’s mother and the Baptist’s father: an angel’s greeting; human trepidation; angel’s reassurance; promise of a child, and so on. But into that old wineskin Luke has poured an incomparable new wine. Mary’s famous question, ‘How can this come about?’ brings the crowning revelation about her Son: Jesus will owe his very existence to the Spirit. The child will be called Son of God.

First Reading: ‘God is with us’, Emmanuel. This is the sign that God gives to us his people. The sign that Ahaz refused to ask for. The sign of hope for Ahaz and his people and no less the sign of hope for us today. God is with us, he has come among us as one like us. Lord, grant us the grace to accept the sign you have given us.