20141221 PREPARING OURSELVES TO BE THE NEW ARK OF THE COVENANT
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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2 Samuel
7:1-5,8-11,16 ©
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Once David had
settled into his house and the Lord had given him rest from all the enemies
surrounding him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, ‘Look, I am living in a
house of cedar while the ark of God dwells in a tent.’ Nathan said to the king,
‘Go and do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you.’
But that
very night the word of the Lord came to Nathan:
‘Go and
tell my servant David, “Thus the Lord speaks: Are you the man to build me a
house to dwell in? I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be
leader of my people Israel; I have been with you on all your expeditions; I
have cut off all your enemies before you. I will give you fame as great as the
fame of the greatest on earth. I will provide a place for my people Israel; I
will plant them there and they shall dwell in that place and never be disturbed
again; nor shall the wicked continue to oppress them as they did, in the days
when I appointed judges over my people Israel; I will give them rest from all
their enemies. The Lord will make you great; the Lord will make you a House.
Your House and your sovereignty will always stand secure before me and your
throne be established for ever.”’
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Psalm
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Psalm
88:2-5,27,29 ©
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I will sing for
ever of your love, O Lord.
I will sing for ever
of your love, O Lord;
through
all ages my mouth will proclaim your truth.
Of this I am sure,
that your love lasts for ever,
that your
truth is firmly established as the heavens.
I will sing for
ever of your love, O Lord.
‘I have made a
covenant with my chosen one;
I have
sworn to David my servant:
I will establish your
dynasty for ever
and set
up your throne through all ages.
I will sing for
ever of your love, O Lord.
‘He will say to me:
“You are my father,
my God,
the rock who saves me.”
I will keep my love
for him always;
with him
my covenant shall last.’
I will sing for
ever of your love, O Lord.
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Second reading
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Romans 16:25-27 ©
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Glory to him who is
able to give you the strength to live according to the Good News I preach, and
in which I proclaim Jesus Christ, the revelation of a mystery kept secret for
endless ages, but now so clear that it must be broadcast to pagans everywhere to
bring them to the obedience of faith. This is only what scripture has
predicted, and it is all part of the way the eternal God wants things to be. He
alone is wisdom; give glory therefore to him through Jesus Christ for ever and
ever. Amen.
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Gospel Acclamation
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Lk1:38
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Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the handmaid of
the Lord:
let what you have
said be done to me.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Luke 1:26-38 ©
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The
angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin
betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name
was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is
with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this
greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you
have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must
name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The
Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the
House of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the
angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit
will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will
cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son
of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself
conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month,
for nothing is impossible to God’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary
‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.
PREPARING
OURSELVES TO BE THE NEW ARK OF THE COVENANT
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: 2 SM 7:1-16; ROM 16:25-27; LK 1:26-38
Christmas
is coming in just a week’s time and we all look forward to this
celebration. For many of us, the most concrete way of preparing ourselves
to welcome the Prince of Peace is to express it materially. We put up
Christmas decorations, Christmas trees, and shop for gifts for our
friends. All these external preparations are well and good.
However, this is not the real preparation for Christmas that is needed.
The truth is that the place that the Prince of Peace wishes to enter and
live is not our house but the home within us.
Indeed,
this was the same situation and mistake of King David. He too
wanted to make a house worthy for the Lord. He was then living in a
palace as he and his people had settled into the sedentary life of the
Canaanites. Thus he felt guilty that his Lord and Master, that is,
Yahweh, the true King of Israel was still living in the Tent where the Ark of
the Covenant was kept. However, as the first reading tells us, God told
the prophet Nathan to tell David, “Are you the man to build me a house to dwell
in?” Rather, “the Lord will make you great; the Lord will make you a
House instead.”
In
saying this, God is telling King David and us that He does not want to dwell in
houses made by human hands. No, He wants to live in the hearts of
man. The truth is that nothing less than the hearts of men is a worthy
dwelling place for God.
To live in our hearts
implies that God reigns in our hearts and transforms us into people of love and
justice. This is
what living the life of the kingdom is all about. In this eschatological
sense, all of us are called to belong to the House of David where God will
reign in us through Christ.
This precisely is the
mystery that St Paul speaks about in the second reading. Indeed, for St
Paul and for us, Christ Jesus is the “mystery kept secret for endless ages but
now so clear.” Jesus is the wisdom of God in person, the one in
whom God lives totally. That is why we say that Jesus is the incarnation of
God, the God made man. In Jesus, we see that God really lives in the
hearts of men. In Jesus, we see the kingdom of God in person
because we see the life of Jesus as a life lived in total obedience to the
Father’s will, which is a life lived in love and mercy. Consequently,
in Jesus, we can say that He is the Emmanuel, God who is with us. And we
know that through His death and resurrection, He sends us His Holy Spirit at
Pentecost to dwell among and in us permanently.
If that is so, the
implication for us is that the real preparation for the birth of Christ is
to make our hearts the very dwelling place for Christ to be born. Our
hearts are the new stable of Bethlehem where Jesus was born 2000 years
ago. This is the only place worthy for Christ to be born. Anything
less than this will not do. Jesus does not need all the external
manifestations of our love for Him. What He wants is a heart of love, a
heart of compassion, a heart of God.
And thus, to prepare
ourselves to be the dwelling place of God, the Church on this last Sunday of
Advent invites us to turn to none other than Mary. Why? Because
scriptures and Church tradition since the apostolic Church tell us that Mary
is the New Ark of the Covenant. The old Ark of the Covenant, which
housed the Torah, the Holy Books of Moses which is the Word of God, lived in
the tents made by man. But Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant housed
Jesus who is the Word and Wisdom of God, as Paul tells us, in her very
being, her womb. We too are therefore invited to imitate Mary and make
ourselves the Ark of the Covenant, the place where Jesus, the Word of God made
flesh can live. Hence, we must now consider how Mary came to be
considered by the Church to be the New Ark of the Covenant.
If Mary is called the New
Ark of the Covenant, it is because she lived a covenanted life.
This is expressed in the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary when he said,
“Rejoice so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.” Traditionally,
we have translated this as “full of grace.” Whichever translation we
take, it is clear that if Mary is full of grace or that she is so highly
favoured by God, it is because the Lord is with her and she is with the
Lord. In other words, the covenantal life of Mary is that Mary lived a
life in deep relationship with God. And this relationship and union
with God is manifested not only in her disposition towards God but also in
her relationship with her fellow human beings by her life of charity
and service. For it is significant that after the annunciation scene, the
evangelist, Luke, related how Mary immediately went to the hill country of
Judah to help Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist in her old
age. This, then, is what the covenantal life is all about: a life of deep
union with God and others.
How then can such a
covenantal life of Mary be ours also? Firstly, we are told that Mary was a person filled
with the Holy Spirit. Indeed, only in Mary, do we have the same word
“overshadow” that was also used for Jesus at the Baptism and
Transfiguration. In other words, Mary, like Jesus, was certainly always
living in the presence of God. Mary was conscious of God’s presence
within and without herself, represented by the Cloud of God’s external presence
and the Spirit within her. So like Jesus, Mary was filled with the Holy
Spirit, the Spirit of God. We too must make ourselves the temples of the
Holy Spirit by being more conscious of God’s presence within us at every moment
in our lives. Like Mary, we must live and move by the Spirit.
Secondly, the gospel
describes Mary calling herself the handmaid of the Lord. To call
herself the handmaid is tantamount to calling herself the servant of God.
To be the servant of God is to be the servant of the Kingdom. Indeed,
Mary once again reflects what her Son is called to be – the Suffering Servant
of the Kingdom. In other words, like her Son, Mary made herself at the
disposal of God to be the servant of the Kingdom that God wants to establish;
that kingdom that was promised to her ancestor, King David. Following
from this, we too are called to be servants of the Kingdom. We too are
called to make the kingdom of God’s love and mercy a reality in our midst as
Mary did.
Thirdly, if we are to be
servants of the Kingdom, then the pre-requisite is that we be open to the will
of God. Mary said in response to the angel, “let what you have said
be done to me.” Here again, Mary, like her Son Jesus, saw that doing
God’s will is the way to bring about the Kingdom. It is no wonder that in
teaching the disciples to pray the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus linked doing the will
of God with the establishment of the Kingdom, “thy will be done, thy kingdom
come.” Indeed, to do God’s will is to live a life of love and
service. God’s will, then, is the calling of every human being to live
that life of charity according to the situation that one is in. It is
our faithfulness and obedience to this very calling to love, like Mary and
Jesus, that God’s kingdom of love can be realized.
Doing God’s will entails
that each of us, like Mary and all the people before her, from the prophets
to King David until Abraham, must accept the role that God wants us to play
in His salvific plan. All of us are important and contribute to the
realization of God’s plan of establishing His Kingdom of love in our
lives. There is certainly a unity in the plan of God, and everything in
life is guided by the wisdom of God. Our task is to respond generously to
God’s plan for us so that together, God’s vision of a covenantal family of love
can be fulfilled. Failure to co-operate with God’s plan will only delay
the coming of God’s Kingdom. Indeed, we are grateful to Mary for giving
that co-operation even when she could not fully understand the full
implications of her commitment there and then.
This brings us to the
fourth element of living a covenantal life, namely, trust. Mary not
only lived in love but also in trust. Even if she could not
understand how the incarnation could be possible, she responded by believing
that “nothing is impossible to God.” It is this trust that kept Mary
faithful to her calling and vocation until the end of her life. Even in
the later part of her life, when she had to face the trials and rejections of
Jesus and especially His death and crucifixion, she did not give up hope.
She continued to trust that God will vindicate her Son and herself. This
trust certainly reflects her deep union with God.
As Christians who are
baptized in Christ and in the Spirit, we too are called to be the new
tabernacles of the Lord. We are called to make Jesus present in our
very being and in our hearts. The real birth of Jesus is not outside of
us but really inside of us. To celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ
is to celebrate His birth in our hearts. Like Mary, it is more important
to conceive Jesus in the heart before we conceive Jesus in the flesh. It
is more important that Jesus lives in us in His Spirit than for us to be
concerned with all the external manifestations of love for Him. And
because God is present and lives in every man and woman, then necessarily, not
only are we called to be God’s tabernacles of love but we are also called to
recognize that Christ is also born and present in every one of us.
In this way then, we will
truly be ready for Christmas, for when that day comes, what we celebrate
externally will be but the expression of what we already experience and what we
already are, for Christ is born in our hearts. The incarnation of Christ
will therefore not simply be an abstract doctrine but a true reality in our
lives because in us Christ continues to dwell in man, to live among us and is
present with us as the Emmanuel.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV
WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP
OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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