Saturday of the Third Week of Advent
“O Radix, O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay! Alleluia!”
Less than a week, the Lord draws nearer and we pray that He may come even more quickly! As on Sunday, here too it is noteworthy that the Church does not presume graces, but rather seeks them explicitly in prayer. We ask for the grace to “venerate with integrity of faith the mystery of so wondrous an Incarnation and always celebrate it with due reverence.” The living worship which springs from faith, like the faith itself, is a gift from the Lord.
We hear this in the prayer of the psalmist today. The psalmist today does not sing about the Lord, but rather sings to the Lord: “you are my rock… you are my hope… On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength… you have taught me from my youth…” (Ps 71:3, 5, 6, 16) The very address to the Lord implies His nearness, implies that He is close and He listens. Indeed, we see signs of that closeness in the case of Samson who was to “begin the deliverance of Israel from the power of the Philistines” and whom “the Spirit of the Lord stirred”. (Jdg 13:5, 25) In the case of Samson the Spirit comes after he has been born. In the case of St. John the Baptist, the angel even declares, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb”. (Lk 1:15)
What about us? How shall we know the closeness of the God who stirred Samson and who filled John, to help them deliver and turn the People to the Lord and so prepare for the God who comes to us as a small Infant? Both Samson (Jdg 13:4) and John (Lk 1:15) lived under the Nazarite vow of drinking “neither wine nor strong drink”. We may not be asked to follow that particular path, and yet we may still learn from it. What do we see as the ‘strong drink’ with which we are tempted to fill ourselves? What space is the Lord inviting me to make in my habits and in my heart to prepare a place for His Spirit and His Son? Let us clear the way for the Lord, that He may come so near that we address Him with the familiarity of the psalmist, and speak of Him no longer as Him, but as “You”.