The Holy Spirit and the Book of Ruth at Pentecost

Events at the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts of the Apostles have roots deep in Salvation History. In the traditional Hebrew Pentecost, the Book of Ruth is read.

May 24 , 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

(Note: The graphic above depicts Ruth and Naomi preparing to depart Moab to venture down to Bethlehem.)

Shannon Bream, host of Fox News Sunday, is a lawyer by training having earned her Doctor of Law degree at a prestigious Florida law school. Prior to that, she graduated magna cum laude from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, a school founded in 1971 by evangelist Jerry Falwell. Not surprisingly, Ms. Bream has been well informed by her alma mater, and has written several books with an evangelical biblical perspective. Her titles to date include, The Women of the Bible Speak, The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak, and The Love Stories of the Bible Speak.

One of the heroic women of the Biblical literature Ms. Bream wrote about in the first of those titles is Ruth, heroine of the Book of Ruth. It is a brief but remarkable story. In Jewish tradition, its author was the Hebrew judge Samuel. Although the book is descriptive of the period “when the judges ruled” (1:1), scholars have variously argued for its oral tradition in the time of the monarchy of King David (10th to 8th century BC), in the postexilic era (5th to 4th century BC), or somewhere in between the two.

The Book of Ruth tells of a family from the ancient town of Bethlehem in Judah that takes refuge in the country of Moab during a famine. While there, the sons of the Judean family marry Moabite women. When the father and the two sons die from unknown causes, the bereaved mother, Naomi, determines to return to her ancestral home in Bethlehem. She urges her daughters-in- law, Ruth and Orpah, to remain in Moab with their own people.

Orpah remains, but Ruth discerns that her duty of devotion to her deceased young husband also extends to his bereaved mother, Naomi, who is now widowed and alone. So Ruth insists on accompanying Naomi to Bethlehem. The story provides a moving quote of Ruth that over the centuries has found its way into the popular music of Christian liturgy:

“Wherever you go, I shall go. Wherever you dwell, I shall dwell there also. Your people will be my people, and your God shall be my God too. Wherever you die, I shall die, and there shall I be buried beside you.”

— Ruth 1:16-17

In Bethlehem, Ruth’s beauty, devotion and kindness soon attract the attention of Naomi’s near kinsman Boaz, (2:l-4:12). Despite the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, Boaz, a Jew, marries her, and by an act of Divine Providence she becomes the great grandmother of King David, of whose lineage Jesus was born. This is noted in the genealogy at the beginning of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. It’s an odd inclusion in the genealogy:

“... and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Raihab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the King.”

— Matthew 1:4-6

It was highly unusual for any genealogy to add the name of the maternal line in Sacred Scripture, but both Ruth and the small and inconspicuous Book of Ruth have an outsized influence and footprint on the faith of Israel and Pentecost. It is evidence of the Spirit of God guiding Salvation History across millennia. I must remember that when I am bowed low by whatever cross I happen to carry in this time. The Great Tapestry of God has threads I can only see from the back in another life.

Pentecost and a Bigger Picture

As a story, the Book of Ruth provides an account of the series of events that led up to the inclusion of a Moabite in the ancestry of King David, and one thousand years later, of Joseph, spouse of Mary, and, by extension and adoption, Jesus. The story’s emphasis on the fact that Ruth is a foreigner, her acceptance by the people of Bethlehem despite this fact, her place in the genealogy of King David, and the acceptance of the book as part of the Hebrew canon all suggest a deeper and more complex purpose.

So it comes as no surprise that the Book of Ruth is read in the Hebrew observance of “Shavuot,” known in English as the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. It is one of three pilgrimage festivals requiring a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for its observance. In the Hebrew calendar, Shavuot falls on the Sixth day of Sivan, the day after the conclusion of seven weeks — the fiftieth day after Passover. Hence the name, “Pentecost,” from Greek, “pentekoste” meaning fiftieth day.

In later Old Testament times, the Festival of the Harvest also became associated with the giving of the law to Moses upon Mount Sinai which, by tradition, also took place on the Sixth Day of Sivan. Because of the association with the giving of the Torah, a tradition evolved among Jews to honor Shavuot with an all-night vigil called the “Tikkun for Shavuot Eve.” It included readings from the first and last verses of each weekly Torah reading, a selection of Psalms, paragraphs from the six Orders of the Krishnah, a list of the 613 precepts of Moses, and the Book of Ruth.

It was for the observance of the Hebrew Pentecost that Mary, Mother of the Lord, and the Apostles were present in Jerusalem for the events that would become the Christian Pentecost (Acts 2: 1-47) the fiftieth day after the Resurrection of Jesus. It was the descent of the Holy Spirit among them. It was the birth of the Church.

When Beyond These Stone Walls began in the summer of 2009, I had no idea that I would still be writing posts from prison for it in 2023. I wrote about many things, but a priority for me was to write posts about Sacred Scripture with a focus on some of the Sunday Gospel readings which many readers seemed to like.

But I have run into an unforeseen problem. I have tried to research and write special posts at major feasts such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost but in 2023 I am faced with writing about the same Scriptures again and again. I do not have the luxury of looking out at a congregation gathered for Mass to adjust the length of my homily by the number of people I see yawning or dropping off.

Writing at Pentecost has been one of my biggest challenges. For one thing, Pentecost always comes at or near the anniversary of my priesthood ordination which I also feel obliged to mention in a post. It would be an insult to Catholics if I ignore my own ordination. In 2022, Pentecost fell on June 5th which was also my 40th anniversary of priesthood. So for the first time I combined the two subjects into one post. The next few paragraphs are an excerpt from “Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost”:

It is interesting that the word for both wind and breath in Hebrew is ‘ruah,’ and the term in Hebrew for the Holy Spirit is ‘ruah ha-Qodesh.’ It simultaneously means the Spirit of God, the Wind of God, and the Breath of God. The same term is used in the story of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2) :

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God, ‘ruah ha-Qodesh,’ was moving over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)

And the term was used again in Genesis 2:7 as God breathed the Spirit into the nostrils of Adam, and again in the Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the Apostles, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22)

When I look back on forty years of priesthood, most of them in exile, imprisoned souls were reached through no merit of my own. In spite of myself, the Wind of God took me up in its vortex, and I am simply blown away by it.

The Great Gifts of the Spirit

“Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

— Peter at the Institution of the Eucharist, Luke 22:33

In Genesis 11:1-9 is related the story of a great tower erected in the land of Shinar in Babylon. The great Tower of Babel was left unfinished because Yahweh confounded the speech of the builders so they could not comprehend each other. The city was thenceforth called “Babel” which is the etymology of our word, “babble,” a term for incomprehensible speech. The story was an imaginative attempt to account for the origin of the diversity of languages.

The tower is today recognized as a “ziggurat,” a towering pyramid of successively recessed levels of stone. For the Babylonians, its purpose was ceremonial as a “cosmic mountain,” symbolic of the Earth itself. Its height was seen as a way to God as described in Genesis 11:4, a tower that “could reach to the heavens.”

As in many such stories, there is both a literal history behind it and an interpretation of it in the mind of the Ancient Near East. The tower became in time the story of God’s scattering of the human race into diverse languages. The story of Pentecost in Acts 2:5-12 has “men from every nation under heaven” in a multitude that came together and were bewildered as each heard the witness of the Apostles in their own languages.

They were “Parthians and Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya, and Cyrene, and parts of Rome, Jews and Greeks alike, Cretans and Arabs.” They were the known world of that time, all the nations of Northern Africa and the Middle East surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, literally the Sea of Middle Earth. Each heard of the mighty works of God in their own languages (Acts 2:5-12). For some, it was an answer to the divisions of our Babel-ing.

But others only mocked, accusing the Apostles of drunkenness: “they are filled with new wine.” Then came the great discourse of Peter (Acts 2:14-36) which began with a spirited defense of the Apostles:

“Men of Judea, and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose for it is only the third hour of the day.” And then Peter spoke from the Prophet Joel, and in the end, a great multitude came to believe and were received into the Church.

This was Peter filled with the Spirit and fortitude, the same Peter who, just 54 days earlier at the Last Supper vowed to the Lord that he would go with him to prison and to death. It was the same Peter who just a day later fell to the lower depths of Golgotha to deny three times that he even knew Him.

In my life as a priest, the wind of Pentecost has been more like a Category Five storm than the gentle breeze of the Spirit I once envisioned priesthood to be. After graduation with a double major in psychology and philosophy from St Anselm College in New Hampshire in 1978, I enrolled in a four year post-graduate degree program in theological studies at St. Mary Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland from 1978 to 1982. Summers and between semesters were spent in a three-year counseling internship for the Baltimore County Police Crisis Intervention Unit. It was an education in human suffering.

One of my seminary professors was a young priest named Fr Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, a popular Catholic author who taught courses in Scripture and spirituality. Forty-one years later, just as I started this post, I discovered Father Rolheiser again in the pages of Give Us This Day, a monthly prayer and liturgical guide published by Liturgical Press in Collegeville, Minnesota. He had a brief reflection on Pentecost that I have been trying to decipher. Here is a segment:

“The Christian paschal cycle has five distinct moments: Good Friday, Easter Sunday, the Forty Days, the Ascension, and Pentecost. These were five moments in Jesus’ life as he moved through his death, his resurrection, his forty days of post-resurrection appearances, his ascension, and his sending of the Holy Spirit. ... The five interpenetrating moments in Jesus’ life that stretch from Good Friday to Pentecost invite us to always: Name your deaths; Claim your births; Mourn what you lost; Don’t cling to what you had but let it ascend. If we do this, Pentecost will happen in our lives. We will receive a new spirit for the life that we are, in fact, living.”

— Fr Ron Rolheiser, OMI, “Pentecost Will Happen”

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this Pentecost post with its challenges to let the Spirit of Truth and Grace dwell within us. You may also like these related posts:

Forty Years of Priesthood in the Mighty Wind of Pentecost

Priesthood, The Signs of the Times and The Sins of the Times

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Please note that Pentecost ends the Easter Season. We will be removing our Holy Week Retreat as a menu option, but we will include it from henceforth as a Library Category of posts. It was well received among readers, and I thank you.

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Personal Intention from Fr Gordon MacRae: May 24, 2023 marks one year since the tragic losses of life in Uvalde, Texas. Please pray for the people of this deeply wounded community and for the healing of this community's broken hearts.

Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing

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Our Adoration Chapel founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe will remain at Beyond These Stone Walls. Jesus came to us through Mary, and now we may reciprocate. Thank you for spending time in Eucharistic Adoration. Please also offer a prayer for me because I am the only one among us unable to see the Chapel.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Simon of Cyrene Compelled to Carry the Cross

Simon of Cyrene was just a man coming in from the country to Jerusalem for the Passover when his fated path intersected the Way of the Cross and Salvation History.

Holy Week 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I first wrote about Simon of Cyrene in Holy Week, 2010. While restoring that post, I ended up completely rewriting it. It led me almost immediately to a vivid example of the descent of this world at a time when faith invites us to ascend to Eternal Life. We are all going to die. It is an ordinary part of life. But don’t just die. Set out now for home. The only true path to life leads “To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”

A single sentence about Simon of Cyrene in each of the Synoptic Gospels conveys a wealth of meaning with a roadmap to the way home. Several readers told me privately and in comments that they were struck by these last few sentences in a recent post that mentioned Pornchai Moontri. In “God in the Dock: When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I wrote,

“It was upon reading [a] passage from Pope Benedict that Pornchai made his decision to journey with me from the Exodus, through the desert, to the Promised Land toward which we, in hope, are destined. Faith never rescued us from our trials, but it taught us to carry one another's cross like Simon of Cyrene. That is the key to Heaven. Even in suffering and sorrow, it is the key to Heaven.”

Under the weight of Earthly Powers, this world loses sight of our true destiny while the great masses of people focus only on what they have stored up in this life. When a bank fails those whose treasury contains little more than money in life, people panic, some even commit suicide. It's a tragedy unfolding before our very eyes in the weeks leading up to Holy Week.

I turn 70 years old on Easter Sunday this year. It haunts me to reflect on how much the values of this world have changed in my lifetime. While researching this post about Simon of Cyrene, I came across a reference to The Greatest Story Ever Told, a 1960 United Artists film production of the life of Jesus from his birth to his Resurrection. Today, many of the woke denizens of Hollywood might shun such a project, but in 1960 it drew an enormous cast of Hollywood stars clamoring to be part of 'it.

Some of the film industry's most stellar actors were cast, some surprisingly in even minor roles: Max von Sydow portrayed Jesus, Dorothy McGuire was Mary, Claude Rains was Herod the Great, Jose Ferrer was Herod Antipas, Charlton Heston was John the Baptist, Telly Savalas was Pontius Pilate. He shaved his head for the role and never grew his hair back again. This is why he was bald when he played the famous NYPD detective, Kojak. David McCallum was Judas Iscariot. The list of Hollywood stars goes on and on.

The great John Wayne was cast as a captain of the Roman Centurions who professed his belief in Jesus at the foot of the Cross, as depicted in the top graphic on this post. John Wayne became a Catholic not long after this film. Today, his grandson is a Catholic priest in California.

Simon of Cyrene was portrayed by Sidney Poitier who three years later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a drifter who became a handyman for a community of nuns in Lillies of the Field. He was an interesting choice to play Simon of Cyrene. In New Testament times, Cyrene was a major city in Northern Africa with a large Jewish population in what is present day Libya. It was the home of Lucius, a prophet and teacher of Antioch mentioned in Acts 13:1, and of Simon, a man who ventured to Jerusalem for the Passover but found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time or, depending on your perspective, in the right place at the right time.

Weep Not for Me, Jerusalem

My first inkling to learn about Simon of Cyrene was during Holy Week in 2000, nine years before this blog began. An old friend planning a visit to the Holy Land asked me to write a prayer that he promised to leave in a crevasse in the famous Western Wall. Known popularly as the “Wailing Wall,” it was built by Herod the Great (who was not so great, really!). That section of wall was all that remained standing after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. Known in Hebrew as “ha-Kotel ha-Maaravi,” it is today one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land.

According to the Midrash, a collection of ancient rabbinic scholarship, the Wall survived the destruction of the Temple because the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, rests there. My friend left my handwritten prayer in a crevasse in that Wall. Just a day later, during a historic pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope John Paul II left his own prayer in that same place in the Wall. I recall hoping that his was not blocking mine!

On that same day, just beyond the city walls, my friend came upon a tourist area where a photographer was capitalizing on the presence of the Pope. He tried to coax my friend into picking up a mock cross and carrying it for a photograph. My friend was appalled by the disconnect between what happened at Calvary 2000 years earlier and what was happening in that present scene. He refused to pick up the cross.

Reflecting on the scene upon his return from Jerusalem, my friend wrote to me in prison asking, “What can you tell me about Simon of Cyrene?” His question took me to a single sentence in each of the Synoptic Gospels from which I felt compelled to unpack some hidden meaning. It turned out that there was much to unpack.

Jesus, denounced by the Chief Priests, tried and condemned before Pilate, was mercilessly scourged to the point of near death. Roman soldiers tasked with his crucifixion feared that he may die before the ascent of Golgotha while bearing history's heaviest cross. Roman law allowed soldiers to press Jews into service for Rome so they forced a passerby to assist the “King of the Jews” as recounted in all three of the Synoptic Gospels:

“As they went out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; this man they compelled to carry the cross.”

— Matthew 27:32

“And as they led [Jesus] away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus.”

— Luke 23:26

“And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.”

— Mark 15:21

Sidney Poitier as Simon of Cyrene in The Greatest Story Ever Told

He Was There When They Crucified My Lord

Crucifixion was entirely unknown in Jewish history until the Roman occupation of Palestine in 31 BC. Sacred Scripture, however, contained echoes of the sacrifice to come. Some 2,000 years before Jesus ascended Calvary bearing his Cross, Abraham was summoned by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac in the land of Moriah (Genesis 22).

Israelite tradition (2 Chronicles 3:1) identifies Moriah as the site of the future Jerusalem Temple. What became Golgotha or Calvary was one of its foothills. Obedient but brokenhearted, Abraham placed upon his son the wood for his sacrifice and together they climbed Mount Moriah.

Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered, “God will provide himself the lamb for the offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8). In the end, an Angel of the Lord stayed Abraham’s hand, and his obedience became the basis for God’s covenant with Israel. Two millennia later, in that same place, God Himself did provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Hence, in our Liturgy, Jesus is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment among Persians, Egyptians, and Romans from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. The punishment was ritualized under Roman law which required that a criminal be scourged before execution. The accused had to carry the entire cross or just the crossbeam from the place of scourging to the execution. Crucifixion was abolished in 337 AD by Emperor Constantine out of respect for the emergence of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Jews carried out their own form of capital punishment by stoning, but the Romans forbade such executions when they occupied Palestine. This is why Jesus was handed over to Pilate for trial.

The gruesome punishment of crucifixion was reserved by the Romans for criminals, seditionists, and slaves. Roman law forbade the crucifixion of a citizen for any crime. Saint Paul, who was a Roman citizen, could not be crucified so he was martyred by Emperor Tertullian, likely by beheading, in 60 A.D.

When Pilate had Jesus scourged, he may have instructed his tormentors to go beyond the usual torture hoping to convince the Sanhedrin and the mob that scourging was punishment enough. That plan failed when the crowd, spurred on by the Chief Priests, shouted “Crucify Him!”

However Jesus had been beaten so severely that Roman soldiers doubted that he could carry his cross the entire distance to Calvary alone. Note that I use the terms “Golgotha” and “Calvary” interchangeably. They are one and the same place. Golgotha is a Greek translation from an Aramaic word meaning “Place of the Skull,” a name likely derived from the fact that many executions were carried out there. “Calvary” is derived from “calvaria,” the Latin translation of Golgotha.

A condemned man was then led through the crowds to the place of crucifixion. Just as today, most of the people in the crowds assumed that an all-powerful and righteous state has justly condemned a real criminal to punishment, so many joined in the mocking and humiliation even if they knew nothing of the accused or the alleged crime. It was part of the ritual. Along the way, the condemned was forced to carry his cross — or at least the crossbeam upon which his arms would be tied and his hands or wrists nailed (see John l9:l7).

In 1994, the year I was sent to prison, archeological remains of a crucified man were discovered intact near Jerusalem. It was the first evidence of what actually took place in a typical Roman crucifixion.

It is unclear from the Gospel passages above exactly what part of the Cross was imposed upon Simon of Cyrene. Luke’s Gospel refers to Simon carrying the Cross behind Jesus, a position which also came to be symbolic of discipleship. It is likely that Jesus, like other condemned, carried the crossbeam upon which he would be nailed, while Simon may have carried the vertical beam or the rear of the entire Cross.

I learned from Mel Gibson’s famous film, The Passion of the Christ, that Simon of Cyrene is the person in the Gospel to whom I can most relate. I did not pick my cross willingly, nor do I willingly carry it. I did not see it as a share in the Cross of Christ at first. Few of us ever do.

The Passion of the Christ portrayed with power what I have always imagined must have become of Simon of Cyrene. Something stirred within him compelling him to remain there. He became a part of the scene, setting his own journey aside. The lights went on in Simon’s soul and he became compelled not just from Roman force, but from deep within himself.

Note that Saint Mark alone mentions that Simon of Cyrene had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. The Gospel implies that both became well known to the early Church. Being the earliest of the Gospels to come into written form, Mark addressed his Gospel to Gentile Christians in Rome. So did Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans. Mark was with Paul at the time he was imprisoned in Rome so he was likely aware of Simon’s profound transformation as a witness to the Crucifixion and Saint Paul’s knowledge of his sons, Rufus and Alexander cited in Saint Mark’s Gospel.

Hence in the concluding verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans Paul wrote: “Greet Rufus, eminent in the Lord, and also his mother who is a mother to me as well” (Romans 16:13).

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which is now on our list of Holy Week posts for our sponsored Holy Week Retreat. It is not too late to follow the Way of the Cross this week by pondering and sharing our

A Personal Holy Week Retreat from Beyond These Stone Walls.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents

After the Birth of the Messiah, a second angelic dream warns Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and the Christ Child as Herod orders a slaughter of the Innocents.

December 28, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The following is the second of a special two-part Biblical Christmas Season post. Part one, which appeared here two weeks ago was “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah.”

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In the proclamation of the Gospel Matthew (2:13-18) on the day this is posted, the Church recalls in just six verses an account of the Visit of the Magi, Joseph’s second dream of an Angel of the Lord, the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, and the wrath of Herod as he orders the slaughter of all male children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem. As a priest, I have read this account over forty-one consecutive Christmas seasons, but never before was it overshadowed by such tragic realism.

Our safe, emotional buffer zone from that 2,000 year old account is gone now. The sense of personal distance is lost. A dark cloud still hangs over America since the shocking and senseless deaths of 19 young children in a small Texas city called Uvalde. I first wrote of this midway through the year in June, 2022 in “Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing.”

A lot of soul searching has gone into a quest for what could have spawned such a horrific event, how it developed, how it might have been prevented, and what should have been done differently by responding police. The tragedy was devastating. I can only imagine the heartache of the parents of Uvalde as they faced this Christmas with broken hearts and shattered dreams.

Then it happened again — this time in Thailand, and this time the killer was not a crazed teenager, but a drug addicted police officer. The story devastated the Kingdom of Thailand. On October 6, 2022 the recently fired police officer brought a 9mm handgun and a knife into a preschool daycare center in the village of Uthai Sawan. It was near where Pornchai Moontri lived as a small child. With no known motive, the former officer murdered 24 children ages two to five. Then he killed his wife and his own child before turning his gun on himself.

I could not bring myself to write that story, but Pornchai Moontri bravely took it up. Several readers told me that they did not read it because they knew it would be terribly painful. It was and still is. But there is much more to it than sorrow. There is hope there as well. “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand” was Pornchai’s faith-filled gift to his Homeland and to us. It is a most unusual post that I highly recommend. We will link to it again at the end of this one.

The Magi Take the Long Way Home

I am painfully aware that on the day this is posted, the Church honors those first Christian Martyrs, the innocent male children of Bethlehem who were subjected to the selfish wrath of King Herod. They became collateral damage in the first demonic attempt to rid the world of Christ. The explosive account is told with blunt force in the Gospel According to Matthew:

“Now when the Wise Men had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise! Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.’

“And Joseph arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the Prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, he was in a furious rage. He sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and all that region who were two years old and under according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah:

“‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.’”

— Matthew 2:13-20

In the first installment of this two-part post, I described the unique attributes of Joseph’s three dreams in Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. Dreams are an important element of the story. As I wrote in “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah”:

“There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. But the dreams of Joseph are unique in the Biblical literature. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here.

“‘Onar’ in Greek refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs. Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” then the scene takes on a sense of great urgency when compared with a multitude of other angelic messages conveyed through dreams.”

In this second of Joseph’s dreams, the urgent intervention is God’s foresight that Herod is enraged, believing that he was tricked by the Magi. Herod plots to kill the child. He had asked the Magi to return from Bethlehem to reveal the location of this Christ-child with a false promise that he, too, would pay him homage. After a dream premonition not to return to Herod, the Magi left by another route. I wrote about the Magi in a popular Christmas post linked again at the end of this one: “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”

There is an important element of the Magi story that I omitted when I first wrote that post. The Magi were traditionally associated with astrologers and astral religion, a fact seen as scandalous to some early Christians who did not want to accept this aspect of Matthew’s account. In later Christian tradition, they became not Magi, but kings, a likely reflection on Psalm 72:10 — “May the kings of Tarshish and of the Isles bring him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.”

The Star of Bethlehem is a popular element of the story, but it, too, was a scandal among some in the early Church. Some of the people of the Ancient Near East were drawn to astral religion because it brought a sense of surety in the midst of social chaos. But over time, astrology became oppressive, making people feel hopeless against the tyranny of “fate” when their destinies seemed dictated by the cold movement of the stars.

In contrast, however, the Star of Bethlehem served only God’s purpose. That, and the presence of astrologers who came to worship Christ, broke the power of astral religion and its belief in fate. But history repeats itself. As our culture again becomes socially chaotic, many are once again drawn into nature religions such as astrology, Wicca, and druidism for a false sense of determinism guided by practitioners claiming to interpret and control destiny. I recently saw a TV commercial selling fifteen minute intervals with a California seer. G.K. Chesterton once famously said that people without faith do not believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

Tragedy in Thailand | Photo courtesy of Reuters

Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents

There are four rulers named Herod appearing in New Testament Scripture: Herod the Great reigned in Palestine from 37 B.C. until shortly after the Birth of Jesus. His son, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, ordered the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14) and sent Jesus to trial before Pilate (Luke 23:7-15). His son, Herod Agrippa, imprisoned the Apostle Peter (Acts 12); and his son, Herod Agrippa II, attended the trial of Saint Paul (Acts 25:13).

Herod the Great was part of a non-Jewish Edomite family from a territory east and south of the Dead Sea. They were descendants of Esau, the elder brother of Jacob (Genesis 25:30). Herod was given the title, “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate and ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 B.C. as a vassal king appointed by Caesar Augustus. Centuries-old adjustments to the Roman calendar place the birth of Jesus near the end of Herod’s life between six and four B.C.

Herod the Great (“Great” by Roman standards only) appears in Scripture only during the events surrounding the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1:5). He ruled Palestine with brutality and paranoia. It is ironic that Herod took such violent steps to end the life of Jesus just prior to the undocumented end of his own life. He took great umbrage at the Magi’s revelation that the Star of Bethlehem was an omen for one who is born King of the Jews, a title Rome had bestowed upon Herod.

But Herod’s paranoia ran deeper than that. The Star of Bethlehem innocently described by the Magi recalled for Herod and his Hebrew advisors the ancient Fourth Oracle of Balaam in the Book of Numbers. The oracle predicted a future messiah and the end of Edom’s power. From the Oracle of Balaam (Numbers 24:17-19):

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. It shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites. Edom will become a possession of its enemies, while Israel thrives valiantly. One out of Jacob shall rule.”

Being a descendant of the Edomites, Herod “was greatly troubled” (Matthew 2:3). So he summoned the Magi to ascertain exactly when the Star appeared. He sent them on to Bethlehem after securing a promise that they would return with the exact location of this newborn Child-King. When the Magi failed to return, Herod flew into a rage. He ordered his forces to find and kill all male children under two years of age in Bethlehem.

This event also has an echo from a much older time in Salvation History. Jesus is presented as the New Moses, one who will lead God’s people out of bondage. The first Moses led Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, but Pharaoh was immovable until the Tenth Plague struck down the firstborn sons of Pharaoh and all of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-31).

The Evangelist, Matthew, captures with a quote from the Prophet Jeremiah the devastation that Herod left behind. In the Eighth Century B.C. the Assyrians devastated Northern Israel when their army swept through the city of Ramah about five miles north of Jerusalem. Ramah became equated with Israel’s great depth of sorrow left behind by the evil of tyranny. So it is of Ramah that is recalled in the face of Herod’s evil:

“A voice heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because her children were no more.”

— Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 3:15

Jesus, the New Moses would lead God’s People from the bondage of sin and death. Herod believed that the murder of the Children of Bethlehem was the last word, but it was not the last word. Then Herod the Great somehow became Herod the Dead. Scripture does not describe how, when, or where. God knows. The narrative of the Birth of the Messiah ends with the third dream of Joseph from an Angel of the Lord:

“Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead. And [Joseph] rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Herod’s son reigned in his place, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.”

— Matthew 2:19-23

Thus concludes Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. It was not the end of tyranny, but it was the beginning of all hope.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts cited here:

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men were Missing

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. Today the Chapel has a real-time live feed for a most beautiful adoration chapel where people around the world can spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. We invite you to come and spend some quiet time this Christmas celebrating the rebirth of the Messiah in your own life.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Saint Joseph is silent in the Gospel account of the Birth of the Messiah, but his actions reveal him as a paradigm of spiritual fatherhood and sacrificial love.

December 14, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I wrote a post similar to this one during Advent in 2016. At the time I wrote it, I had been living in dire straits with eight prisoners to a cell. Daily life there was chaotic and draconian. The word “draconian” refers to a set of punishing conditions notorious for their severity and heavy-handed oppression. The word was derived from Draco, a Seventh Century B.C. politician who codified the laws of Athens to severely oppress the rights and liberties of its citizens.

Pornchai Moontri was living in that same setting with me, though neither of us had said or done anything to bring it about. It was simply a bureaucratic development that we were told would last for only a few weeks. One year later, we were both still there. Later in 2017 we were finally moved to a saner, safer place, but that Advent and Christmas in 2016 are etched in my mind as a painful trial, with but one bright exception.

Many of our friends were also thrust into that same situation, living eight to a cell in a block of 96 men seemingly always on the verge of rage. I was recently talking with a friend who was there with us then. He said that what he recalls most from the experience was how Pornchai and I went from cell to cell on our first night there to be sure our friends were okay. And what he recalled most about Christmas Eve in that awful setting was Pornchai setting up a makeshift workspace in our cell to make Thai wraps for all the other prisoners on the block.

Over the previous week in visits to the commissary, I stocked up extra tortilla wraps and ingredients. Our friends helped with distribution as Pornchai undertook his first-ever fast food job. The hardcore “lifers” around us were amazed. Nothing like this had ever happened here before. Just weeks earlier, Donald Trump was elected President. He announced a policy that foreign migrants seeking to stay in the United States would first be sent to Mexico to await processing. While the entire cellblock was eating Thai wraps, Pornchai announced to loud cheers that they are henceforth to be called “Thai Burritos.”

It was in that inhumane setting that I first wrote the story of Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah described in the Gospel according to Matthew (1:18-24). It was the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in 2016 and is repeated this coming Sunday in the Advent calendar. When I went back to look at my 2016 post on that Gospel passage about Joseph’s dream, I thought it reflected too much the conditions in which it was written. So instead of restoring it, I decided to write it anew.

The People Who Walked in Darkness

The Gospel of Matthew begins with “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” (Matthew 1:1). Many have pointed out some differences between the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s account and that found in the Gospel of Luke (3:23-38). They are remarkably similar in the generations from Abraham to King David, but from David to Jesus they diverge. This is because Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus forward from Abraham through King David to Jesus in the line of Joseph who connects to Jesus by adoption, the same manner in which we now call God “Our Father.”

The genealogy in Luke, on the other hand, begins with Mary and runs backward through David to Abraham and then to Adam. It is a fine point that I have made in several reflections on Sacred Scripture that we today find ourselves in a unique time in Salvation History. Abraham first encountered God in the 21st Century before the Birth of Christ. We encounter God in the 21st Century after. At the center of all things stands Jesus whose Cross shattered a barrier to “The Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate.”

That both genealogies pass through David is highly significant. This is expressed in the first reading from Isaiah (9:1-6) in the Vigil Mass for the Nativity of the Lord on Christmas Eve:

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing... For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed as on the day of Midian.... For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They call him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and ever peaceful from David’s throne and over his kingdom which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice now and forever.”

— Isaiah 9:1-6

The differences in the genealogy accounts are a testament to their authenticity. Matthew stresses the Davidic kingship of Jesus over Israel by adoption through Joseph mirroring our adoption as heirs to the Kingdom. Luke, by tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Mary all the way back to Adam, stresses a theological rather than historical truth: the Lordship of Jesus over sin and grace and our redemption from the Fall of Man — a Savior born to us through Mary.

The Birth of the Messiah

What initially struck me in Saint Matthew’s account of the Birth of Jesus is its language inferring the sanctity of life. Having just passed though a disappointing national election in America in which the right to life was center stage, we heard a lot of talk about fetal heartbeats, viability, and reproductive rights. Our culture’s turning away from life is also a turning away from God. The fact that many nominally Catholic politicians lend their voices and votes to that turning away is a betrayal of Biblical proportions. In the Story of God and human beings, we have been here before. Planned Parenthood is our culture’s Temple to Baal.

The Gospel passages about the Birth of the Messiah clearly establish a framework for the value Sacred Scripture places on human life. Mary is never described as simply pregnant, or in a pre-natal state, or carrying a fetus. She is, without exception from the moment of the Annunciation, declared to be “with child.” But it was not all without politics, obstacles, and suspicions, and fears of finger-pointing to discredit her fidelity. The story begins with Matthew 1:18-19 and Joseph pondering how best to protect Mary from the scandal that was surely to come.

“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.”

— Matthew 1:18-19

I am struck by the fact that in the Gospel, Mary never attempted to explain any of this to Joseph. What would she have said? “An angel appeared to me, said some very strange things, and when he left I was with child?” Would Joseph have just accepted that without question? Would you? The story’s authenticity is in its human response: “Joseph being a just man unwilling to expose her to disgrace, resolved to send her away quietly.” (Matthew 1:19)

It is important to understand the nuance here. What made Joseph and any Jewish man, a “just” man in the eyes of the Jews — and in the eyes of the Jewish-Christian Evangelist, Matthew — is his obedience to the Law of Moses which required a quiet divorce. Early Church traditions proposed three theories about why Joseph became resolved to send Mary away quietly.

The first is the “suspicion” theory, the weakest argument of the three but one held by no less than Saint Augustine himself in the early Fourth Century. The theory presents that Joseph, like what most men of his time (or any time) might do, initially suspected Mary of being unfaithful in their betrothal, and thus felt compelled to invoke the law of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 to impose a bill of divorce because he had found something objectionable about her.

In that theory, Joseph clings to his decision until an Angel of the Lord sets him straight in a dream. However the theory entirely overlooks the first motive ascribed to Joseph in the Gospel: that of being a just man “unwilling to expose her to disgrace.” (Matthew 1:19)

The second theory is the “perplexity” theory proposed by Saint Jerome also in the early Fourth Century. In this, Joseph could not bring himself to suspect Mary of infidelity so the matter left him in perplexity. He thus decided to quietly send her away to protect her. According to this theory, his dream from the Angel of the Lord redirected his path with confirmation of what he might already have suspected. This theory was widely held in medieval times.

The third is the “reverence” theory. It proposed that Joseph knew all along of the divine origin of the child in Mary’s womb, but considered himself to be unworthy of her and of having any role in the life of this child. He thus decided to send her away to protect the divine secret from any exposure to the letter of the law. This theory was held by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Thirteenth Century.

But I have a fourth theory of my own. It is called Love. Sacrificial Love. But first, back to Joseph’s dream.

The Angel of the Lord

“As [Joseph] considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called, Emmanuel (which means ‘God with us’). When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. He took Mary as his wife, but he knew her not until she had borne a son, and he called his name Jesus.”

— Matthew 1:18-24

There is a lot to be unpacked from this passage. This account represents the first of three dreams experienced by Joseph in which he was instructed by an “Angel of the Lord” to undertake specific action relative to his pivotal role in the lives of Mary and Jesus. The method of delivery for each message is not just some rank and file angel — though that would certainly have sufficed — but rather an “Angel of the Lord.” The title appears only a rare few times in the Hebrew Scriptures and only four times in the New Testament: Once in Acts of the Apostles and three times in the Gospel of Matthew, and only in reference to Joseph’s dreams about the Birth of the Messiah.

There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here. It refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs.

Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” the scene takes on a sense of great urgency when compared with other angelic messages. The urgency is related to Joseph’s pondering about what is best for Mary, a pondering that could unintentionally thwart God’s redemptive plan for the souls of all humankind.

There are many parallels in this account with events in the life of the Old Testament Joseph. Both had the same name. Both were essential to Salvation History. Both were in the line of King David — one looking forward and the other backward. Both were the sons of a father named Jacob. Both brought their families to safety in a flight to Egypt. God spoke to both through dreams.

The task of the Angel of the Lord is to redirect Joseph’s decision regardless of what motivated it. The divine urgency is to preserve the symbolic value of King David’s lineage being passed on to Jesus by Joseph’s adoption. The symbolism is immensely powerful. This adoption, and the establishment of kingship in the line of David in the human realm, also reflects the establishment of God’s adoption of us in the spiritual realm.

Remember that the title, “King of the Jews” is one of the charges for which Jesus faced the rejection of Israel and the merciless justice of Rome. There is great irony in this. Through the Cross, Jesus ratifies the adoption between God and us. Mocked as “King of the Jews,” He becomes for all eternity Christ the King and we become the adopted heirs of His Kingdom. It is difficult to imagine the Child born in Bethlehem impaled upon the Cross at Golgotha, but He left this world as innocent as when he entered it. His crucified innocence won for us an inheritance beyond measure.

And Saint Joseph won for us an eternal model for the sacrificial love of fatherhood.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: This was Part 1 of a special two-part Christmas post based on Sacred Scripture. Part 2 is:

Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents.

Thank you for reading and sharing this post which is now added to our Library Category, Sacred Scripture.

Please visit our Special Events page.

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

A theological expedition into Salvation History reveals a startling truth about the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament and the identity of Mary, Mother of God.

December 21, 2021

Most long time readers of these pages might guess my favorite among the canonical Gospels. Back in 2019, I wrote a post entitled “St. Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician.” In part, it profiled a 1959 book by Taylor Caldwell that I read at age 21 during my novitiate year as a Capuchin. Several years later, life took me in another direction to diocesan priesthood, and then down darker roads that seemed to have a will of their own. These were roads of betrayal and false witness that sent me ever further from the dream of my vocation to priesthood as I first envisioned how it would be.

That story is told in small snippets in multiple places. One day, I will compose the whole story. For this post, suffice it to say today that one book always stood out in the back of my mind as a story of Divine Providence that very much influenced my life. It was Dear and Glorious Physician, the 1959 novel by Taylor Caldwell on the life of Saint Luke. It was Taylor Caldwell's Magnum Opus, forty years in the making, and a masterpiece of Catholic literature.

Two years after I first wrote about the book, I saw it in a library catalog from Ignatius Press. I was looking for a copy of Prison Journal Volume 2 by George Cardinal Pell when I spotted a reprint of Dear and Glorious Physician and decided that I could afford another $22.00. Forty-seven years after my first reading of it, I am reading it again for Advent in honor of St. Luke. Dear and Glorious Physician is indeed a masterpiece.

Among the four New Testament evangelists, Saint Luke provides the most theologically nuanced information about the identity of Mary and her role in Salvation History. The Gospel of Luke is unique. He is the only Gentile author to compose a New Testament book and the only evangelist to write a sequel — the Acts of the Apostles which begins where Luke’s Gospel narrative ends.

Luke’s intended audience on the surface included Gentile Christians throughout the Mediterranean world. I write “on the surface” because Luke writes a fascinating narrative beneath the obvious one. A deeper reading reveals a secondary audience, the Diaspora, the dispersion of Jews living outside of Palestine since the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BC.

In subtle echoes of the Old Testament, Luke reaches into ancient times recalling the most sacred imagery for the people of Israel. Nowhere is this more evident in Luke’s Gospel than in his Infancy Narratives about the Annunciation to Mary and her Visitation to Elizabeth which is the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

The Ark of the Covenant

That narrative requires some understanding of the most treasured and sacred object for Israel in the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant. First, I need to clarify what is meant by a “Testament.” In relation to Scripture, the word is a Latin translation by St. Jerome of the Hebrew “berit” and the Greek, “diathēkē.” Both words refer to a kinship bond with obligations between connected parties. It is the master theme of Sacred Scripture, and in that sense, the word “Covenant” captures better than “Testament” the meaning and intent of what we call the Old and New Testament.

I recently read in a secular commentary that Christianity is the only religion that includes the entire Sacred Scriptures of another religion, Judaism. That is not accurate. Christianity is not a replacement of Judaism, but rather a continuation of it. The Gospel According to St. Luke makes this most clear in Luke’s treatment of the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark was a chest constructed in the time of Moses as described in the Book of Exodus (25:10-26). It was constructed of acacia wood, a tree that grows nowhere but in the southern district of Palestine in the Jordan Valley. Acacia appears in Scripture in three places: the Books of Exodus (Ch 25-27, 30) and Deuteronomy (10:3) in reference to the construction of the Ark, and in a prophecy of Isaiah (41:19) who states that in the messianic restoration of Israel, Yahweh will make acacia grow in the desert. This is significant.

The desert in Scripture is highly symbolic of exile and wondering. It is a place of demons, a place where mankind becomes lost. To make acacia grow there is symbolic of God bringing the Ark of the Covenant even there. This is why the Gospel gave John the Baptist the title of “A Voice in the Wilderness” in fulfillment of a prophecy of Isaiah (40:2-5):

“A voice cries in the wilderness ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God ... and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.’”

Inside the Ark of the Covenant — also called the “Ark of Testimony” and the “Ark of the Presence” — was placed the stone tablets of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments inscribed by Yahweh and given to Moses on Mt. Sinai after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. As such, the Ark was believed by all of Israel to be the Tabernacle of the Presence of Yahweh.

The Ark was elaborately designed according to specifications issued to Moses by Yahweh. The acacia was covered inside and out by gold plating. At the four corners of the Ark were rings of solid gold to permit gilded acacia poles to carry the Ark so human hands would not touch it. Its lid was a solid gold slab that formed the “kapporet,” the seat of atonement along with two cherubim of beaten gold facing each other (Exodus 25: 17-22). The two golden cherubim formed a footstool for the Hidden Lord.

The Ark was the place of the Lord’s intimate presence among his people, and it became the most cherished object in Israel. It was secured in the Holy of Holies, the Tabernacle where Moses conversed with the Lord (Numbers 7:89). The Ark was carried into the Promised Land of Canaan appearing in the Books of Joshua (3:3; 3:11), Judges (20: 27), and First Samuel (4: 3,11). During a struggle with the Philistines, it was captured and carried off (1 Samuel 4: 11).

The Philistines suffered seven months of earthquakes and plague before returning the Ark to the Israelites. Out of fear of human contact with it, the Ark was kept in Kiriath-Jearim for 20 years in the home of Abinadab and his son, Eleazar, both consecrated with responsibility for the Ark. Then, about 1,000 years before the Birth of the Messiah, it was returned to David who placed it prominently in a Tabernacle in his established capital, Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:2ff).

Later, David’s son, Solomon, enshrined the Ark in the Jerusalem Temple where it remained for 400 years until the Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586 BC. The Second Book of Maccabees (2:5-7) refers to the Ark saved from destruction by the Prophet Jeremiah and hidden on Mount Nebo “until God gathers His people together again, and shows His mercy.”

Mary, the New Ark of the Covenant

In the Book of Revelation (11:19) the Ark of the Covenant appears again, this time in the Celestial Temple in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah. This vision of the Ark leads immediately in Revelation to the vision of the Woman Clothed with the Sun who was with child (Rev. 12:1). The image is that of Mary, presented as Mother of the Messiah and spiritual Mother of Israel, the New Ark of the Covenant.

I alluded to this earlier in an Advent post, “To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” In the first two chapters of his Gospel, Saint Luke strings together some of the most beautiful traditions from both Testaments (Covenants) about the nature of the Ark of the Covenant. In subtle language, he leads the careful reader to a conclusion about Mary herself: that she, as “Theotokos,” the Bearer of the Presence of God, is thus the Ark of God’s New Covenant while the Ark of the Old Covenant prefigures a more wonderful Ark to come, the Mother of the Messiah.

Luke draws upon a tradition from the Old Covenant setting up a subtle but significant parallel between Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth (Luke 1:30-45) and David's encounter with the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:2) about 1000 years earlier. Consider these passages:

In Luke 1:39: “In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a city of Judah.” In Second Samuel 6, David arose and went in haste to the same place to receive the Ark of the Covenant.

In Luke 1:41: “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb.” In Second Samuel 6:16, David danced with joy in the presence of the Ark. In the Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth asks of Mary, “Who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). In Second Samuel (9:8), David, who prefigures the coming Messiah, is then asked by the son of Jonathan, “Who am I that you should look upon someone such as me?” In Luke, Mary stays at the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth for three months. In Second Samuel (6:11), David stays in the house of Obed-edom three months.

These opening narratives from Luke have a multitude of such parallels with which Luke draws faithful Jews of the Diaspora who were familiar with the Old Covenant into the New. Finally, in Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, Mary is present with the Apostles at Pentecost as the Holy Spirit calls forth the newborn Church. This provides a fulfillment of the declaration of Jesus from the Cross establishing Mary in the unique role of Motherhood over the whole Church:

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved, he said, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your Mother.’ From that hour, the disciple took her into his home.”

— John 19:26-27

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From the vision of Saint John:

“Then God’s temple in Heaven was opened and the Ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals of thunder, heavy hail, and the Earth quaked. And a great sign appeared in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child.”

— Rev. 11:19 - 12:2

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O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,

Who to Thy tribes on Sinai's height

In ancient times did give the Law

In cloud and majesty and awe

O come, Thou rod of Jesse's stem,

From every foe deliver them

That trust Thy mighty power to save

And give them victory over the grave

Rejoice! rejoice! O Israel

To Thee shall come Emmanuel!

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Special Announcements:

• Please visit our SPECIAL EVENTS page and please consider taking part in a most important Advent of the Heart in support of some of the poorest in our midst.

• If you like this excursion into Sacred Scripture, please visit our Sacred Scripture category in the BTSW Public Library for other titles that make Scripture come alive. Just scroll through the images and titles and click or tap the ones you want to read.

• Our Voices from Beyond feature has an article by Father Gordon MacRae and Felix Carroll on the work of Mary behind those stone walls. Father G says, “Don’t let the top graphic on that post scare you away.”

• You may also wish to visit these related posts:

To Christ the King through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

St. Gabriel the Archangel When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe