12th January 2025
Lectionary Readings: Is 40:1-5, 9-11; Ps 29:1-2, 3-4, 3, 9-10 (Ps 104); Ti 2:11-14; 3:4-7;Lk 3:15-16, 21-22 (21)
Dear friends and readers, A blessed New Year to all!
“And a voice (Bat Kol) came from heaven”
Our Sunday liturgy on January 12th places us within the Messianic announcement of Jesus as a continuation of the celebration of Christmas that we have just celebrated, based on the statement: “Today a Saviour has been born to you, who is the Messiah, the Lord, in the city of David” (Luke 2:11). And Luke, basing himself on the Scriptures of the Jewish people, completes by indicating the historical fulfilment of the plan of Salvation that God carries out through Israel in Jesus as the Messiah: “For my eyes have seen your salvation, a light for revelation to the Nations and the glory of your people Israel” (Luke 2:31-32).
The texts are small excerpts from the complete theological statement made by Luke, which, with some differences and additions, is also present in the other Gospels. The accounts are not absent from history and do not deny history, but they do not intend to convey historical information about events; rather, they intend to affirm a theological reality, based on the experience of faith in the resurrected One. We learn from the tradition of the Church that faith in the Jesus who was born of Mary in the bosom of the Jewish people, lived intensely the Word of God revealed to Israel, his people, died and God raised him from the dead, is a post-Easter faith. That is, it was after experiencing the resurrected Jesus that his followers were able to understand that this Jesus, Master of the Word of God, is God incarnate. He is the expected Messiah. He is the one announced in the Scriptures and the one the Jewish people were waiting for.
Therefore, this post-Easter understanding and its announcement depend on the Scriptures. The New Testament accounts are built on the experience of faith in the resurrected One and in its transmission, as well as on the interpretation of the Scriptures that support the announcement. As Paul says: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I myself received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…” (1 Cor 15:3-4). That is, Paul is not teaching historical facts, but events according to the interpretation (in accordance) of the Scriptures. Or as Mark also begins his Gospel: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah…” (Mk 1:1-2). This teaches us that the elaboration of the texts we receive follows the dynamics of the oral transmission of faith, experienced in the communities of Jesus’ followers in the various decades of the first century after the death and resurrection of Jesus.
As the Church document says: “Without the Old Testament, the New Testament would be an indecipherable book, a plant deprived of its roots and destined to dry up… When (the New Testament) speaks of the “Scriptures” or of “what is written,” it refers to the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people” (Pontifical Biblical Commission – The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, 2002, no. 84). Therefore, the elements that cover the account of the baptism, according to Luke, performed by John the Baptist on Jesus: the figure of John the Baptist himself, the purification by water (in Luke there is no Jordan River), the announcement of the one who is to come, the dove, the voice (Bat Kol), the Holy Spirit descending… can be correctly understood only from the Scriptures of the Jewish people and from the interpretation developed and transmitted orally throughout the period of the Second Temple. This reality preceded the texts of the New Testament.
Thus, at the end of the Epiphany period, we are invited to deepen our faith in the incarnation of God among us based on the Scriptures and the tradition that interpreted it. The liturgy of this Sunday presents us with this great challenge: the mystery of Immanuel (God with us) can only be conceived at the level of faith based on the Word and the tradition that announced it. We are all invited to seek it (darsheni) to find God who is born.
This week’s Sunday Liturgy Commentary was prepared by
Elio Passeto, NDS, Israel, Director
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