Zechariah

Today’s Gospel consists of the well-known prophecy of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist.

The Gospel begins by telling us that Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied.  In other words, this temple priest who had had the temerity to rebuff the angel Gabriel himself, had somehow become a prophet. But we know no details. Unlike in the case of Elijah in the Book of Kings or with Jeremiah we’re told nothing of any divine appropriation, a first illumination or the disclosure of a mission.  

In the life of a prophet in Israel there always came the moment when God laid his hand upon him.  Before this, he’s a believer among all the other believers.  Then the hand of God touches him, and he’s filled with the Holy Spirit.  From that moment the simple figure of a man becomes an instrument of God.  The will of the Father is completely assumed into his own will and his will ascends completely into the will of the Father.  That moment must have come sometime during the nine months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy and in the same nine months of Zechariah’s state of aphonia.  Guided by the Spirit, Zechariah’s will must have been gestating parallel to the child in Elizabeth’s womb. 

With the naming of his newborn son, Zechariah regains the ability to speak.  Not only that, he astounds everyone by actually prophesying.  He utters the beautiful canticle in which he declares his son John to be a prophet of the Most High and precursor of the Messiah, foretold in the book of Samuel (our first reading today).

That’s the last we hear of Zechariah.  Origen, the great early Christian theologian, wondered if perhaps the Zechariah mentioned in Matthew’s gospel (23:35) as having been killed between the temple and the altar may have been the father of John the Baptist, but we don’t know.  

We can be sure, though, that his story continued and that he and the boy’s mother, both “blameless” and “well advanced in years” would have spared nothing to raise their son according to the most orthodox and exacting ways of his people.  Zechariah, especially, having received pardon for his arrogance and undergone a dramatic spiritual transformation, would have most scrupulously prepared the young John in religious authenticity and holiness.  

Later, during the two years in the wilderness as he proclaimed the coming of the Messiah, John the Baptist violently attacked the Pharisees and Sadducees, as a brood of vipers and in no uncertain terms assured them of the coming wrath they faced.  Perhaps in the style and words of John, we receive a glimpse of his father; we hear an echo of an unrelenting voice of the repentant Zechariah.

As our Advent comes to an end we might remember that the will of the Father is most precious, and pray that “God’s will be done”, asking this through Him whose coming is certain, whose day draws near.