Place and Time are Holy
“Zechariah enters the Temple; he enters the sacred space,
while the people wait outside and pray. It is the hour of the evening sacrifice
when he places incense on the burning coals. The fragrance of the rising
incense is a symbol of prayer: ‘Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice,’ as we read in Ps
141:2. The Book of Revelation describes the heavenly liturgy in these terms:
the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders were each ‘holding a harp,
and ... golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the
saints’ (5:8). At this hour, in which heavenly and earthly liturgies unite,
there appears to the priest Zechariah ‘an angel of the Lord,’ whose name is not
yet indicated. He stands ‘on the right side of the altar of incense’ (Lk 1:11).
Erik Peterson describes the positioning as follows: ‘This was the south side of
the altar. The angel stands between the altar and the seven-branched
candlestick. On the left, the north side of the altar, stood the table with the
bread-offerings’ (Lukasevangelium, p.
22).
Place and time are holy: this new step in salvation history
is in complete harmony with the ordinances of the divine Covenant of Sinai. In
the Temple itself, during its liturgy, the new begins: the inner continuity of
God’s dealings with men is very powerfully manifested. This corresponds to the
ending of Saint Luke’s Gospel: as the Lord is about to ascend into heaven, he
tells the disciples to return to Jerusalem, there
to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and from
there to bring the Gospel to the world (cf. Lk 24:49–53).
At the same time, we must note the difference between the
annunciation of the birth of the Baptist to Zechariah and the annunciation of
the birth of Jesus to Mary. Zechariah, father of the Baptist, is a priest and
he receives the message in the Temple, during its liturgy. Mary’s lineage is
not mentioned. The angel Gabriel is sent to her by God. He enters her house in
Nazareth—a town unknown to the sacred Scriptures, a house that we must surely
picture to ourselves as very humble and very simple. The contrast between the
two scenes could not be greater: priest—Temple—liturgy on the one hand, an
unknown young woman—an unknown small town—an unknown private dwelling on the
other. The sign of the new Covenant is humility, hiddenness—the sign of the
mustard-seed. The Son of God comes in lowliness. Both these elements belong
together: the profound continuity in the history of God’s action and the
radical newness of the hidden mustard-seed.”
~Benedict XVI
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