The Annunciation: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us

The Gospel of Saint Luke opens with a news flash from the Archangel Gabriel for Zechariah the priest, and Mary — Theotokos — the new Ark of the Covenant.

March 25, Solemnity of the Annunciation

On the 25th day of March, the Church remembers the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary marking a pivotal event in Salvation History. The account is conveyed to us in the first chapter of the Gospel According to Saint Luke, a Gentile physician and a companion of the Apostle Paul. Several of the Fathers of the Early Church attribute the Third Gospel to Saint Luke and affirm his authorship of it. I once wrote of this unique Gospel in “Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician.”

This Gospel reveals many facets of the life and mission of Jesus, but foremost among them is its universal message of Salvation. Luke, despite being a Gentile, anchors his Gospel in the traditions of the earlier Covenant, the Old Testament, portraying Jesus as the Savior and Redeemer of God’s Old Covenant people. He thus presents Jesus in history as one foretold by the Prophets (Isaiah 11:10-12, 49:6, and Ezekiel 39:25-29). Luke thus depicts Jesus as the Royal Messiah in the line and legacy of King David to reunite the scattered tribes of Israel and gather them into one nation. Given that he is the only Gentile Evangelist, that is an amazing feat through which Luke has prepared an artistic and spiritual masterpiece.

Saint Luke alone among the Evangelists recounts for us the Parable of the Good Samaritan (10:25-37), the Parable of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32), the Magnificat of Mary (1:46-55), the Benedictus of Zechariah (1:68-79), the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon (2:29-35), the Angelic Gloria (2:14) sung by the Angels on Christmas Night and in our liturgy to this day. And Luke is the sole source of the account that begins our story of Salvation: the Archangel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary.

No one really knows when or why tradition first places the Birth of Christ on December 25th, but the custom is ancient and it has a lot to do with the Annunciation, which also ties it into the events of Holy Week.

The first recorded mention of December 25 as the date of observance of the Feast of the Nativity was in a Roman document called the Philocalian Calendar dated as early as 336 A.D. Popular observance of the December 25 date of the Nativity, however, was at least a century older.

One obscure theory points to an early Roman Empire legend that great men are fated to die on the same date they were conceived. One tradition traced the date of Passover at or near March 25 in the year Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. If thus among some Romans it became popular belief that he was conceived on that date, then nine months to the day later would be December 25. However, it is impossible today to discern which came first, our belief in the December 25 date for the Birth of Jesus, or our belief in the March 25 date of his Crucifixion and therefore the Annunciation.

Spiritual Battle on a Cosmic Scale

The angels of TV-land usually worked out solutions to the drama of being human within each episode’s allotted sixty minutes. That’s not so with the angels of Scripture. Most came not with a quick fix to human madness, but with a message for coping, for giving hope, for assuring a believer, or, in the case of the Angel of the Annunciation, for announcing some really big news on a cosmic scale — like Salvation! What the angels of Scripture do and say has deep theological symbolism and significance, and in trying times interest in angels seems to thrive. The Archangel Gabriel dominates the Nativity Story of Saint Luke’s Gospel, but who is he and what is the meaning of his message?

We first meet Gabriel five centuries before the Birth of Christ in the Book of Daniel. The Hebrew name, “Gabri’El” has two meanings: “God is my strength,” and “God is my warrior.” As revealed in “Angelic Justice: Saint Michael the Archangel 
and the Scales of Hesed,” the Hebrew name Micha-El means “Who is like God?” The symbolic meaning of these names is portrayed vividly as Gabriel relates to Daniel the cosmic struggle in which he and Michael are engaged:

“Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me. So I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and came to make you understand what is to befall your people in the latter days . . . But I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth: there is none who contends at my side against these except Michael.”

— Daniel 10:12-14, 21

In the Talmud, the body of rabbinic teaching, Gabriel is understood to be one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham to begin Salvation History, and later led Abraham out of the fire into which Nimrod cast him. The Talmud also attributes to Gabriel the rescue of Lot from Sodom. In Christian apocalyptic tradition, Gabriel is the “Prince of Fire,” who will prevail in battle over Leviathan at the end of days. Centuries after the Canon of Old and New Testament Scripture was defined, Gabriel appears also in the Qu’ran as a noble messenger.

In Jewish folklore, Gabriel was in the role of best man at the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I found that a strange idea at first,  but then it dawned on me: Who else were they going to ask? In later rabbinic Judaism, Gabriel watches over man at night during sleep, so he is invoked in the bedside “Shema” which observant Jews must recite at bedtime in a benediction called the Keri’at Shema al ha_Mitah:

“In the name of the God of Israel, may Michael be on my right hand, Gabriel on my left hand, Uriel before me, behind me Raphael, and above my head, the Divine Presence. Blessed is he who places webs of sleep upon my eyes and brings slumber to my eyelids. May it be your will to lay me down and awaken me in peace. Blessed are You, God, who illuminates the entire world with his glory.”

In an older issue of Word Among Us, Louise Perrotta described Gabriel’s central message to Daniel:

“History is not a haphazard series of events. Whatever the dark headlines — terrorist attacks, natural disasters, economic upheavals — we’re in the hands of a loving and all-powerful God. Earthly regimes will rise and fall, and good people will suffer. But . . . at an hour no one knows, God will bring evil to an end and establish His eternal kingdom.”

The way He accomplishes that is personified in the unusual graphic atop this section portraying Mary bearing the Christ Child in cosmic harmony with the Angelic realm.

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East of Eden; East of God

The Book of Tobit identifies the Archangel Raphael as one of seven angels who stand in the Presence of God. Scripture and the Hebrew Apocryphal books identify four by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. The other three are not named for us. In rabbinic tradition, these four named angels stand at the Celestial Throne of God at the four compass points, and Gabriel stands to God’s left. From our perspective, this places Gabriel to the East of God, a position of great theological significance for the fall and redemption of man.

In a previous post I described the symbolism of “East of Eden,” a title made famous by the great American writer, John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for it in 1962. I don’t mean to brag (well, maybe a little!) but a now-retired English professor at a very prestigious U.S. academy who knew Steinbeck left a comment on my post comparing it to Steinbeck’s work. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Archangel Gabriel, but I’ve been waiting for a subtle chance to mention it again! (ahem!) But seriously, in the Genesis account of the fall of man, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the East (Genesis 3:24). It was both a punishment and a deterrent when they disobeyed God by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil:

“Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good from evil; and now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever,’ therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out, and to the east of the Garden of Eden he placed a Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every which way, to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”

— Genesis 3: 22-24

A generation later, after the murder of his brother Abel, Cain too “went away from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod, East of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16). The land of Nod seems to take its name from the Hebrew “nad” which means “to wander,” and Cain described his fate in just that way: “from thy face I shall be hidden; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14). The entire subsequent history of Israel is the history of that wandering East of Eden. I wonder if it is also just coincidence that the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the only source of the story of the Magi, has the Magi seeing the Star of Bethlehem “in the east” and following it out of the east.

In rabbinic lore, Gabriel stands in the Presence of God to the left of God’s throne, a position of great significance for his role in the Annunciation to Mary. Gabriel thus stands in God’s Presence to the East,  and from that perspective in St. Luke’s Nativity Story, Gabriel brings tidings of comfort and joy to a waiting world in spiritual exile East of Eden.

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Gabriel Appears to Zechariah

The Archangel’s first appearance is to Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth. Zechariah is told that he and his wife are about to become the parents of the one who would become John the Baptist. The announcement does not sink in easily because, like Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of Salvation History, Zechariah and Elizabeth were rather on in years. Zechariah is about to burn incense in the Temple of Sacrifice, as close to the Holy of Holies as a human being can get, when the Archangel Gabriel appears with news:

“Fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard, and your wife, Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John . . . and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah . . .’”

— Luke 1:12-15

This news isn’t easily accepted by Zechariah, a man of deep spiritual awareness revered for his access to the Holy of Holies and his connection to God. Zechariah doubts the message, and questions the messenger. It would be a mistake to read the Archangel Gabriel’s response in a casual tone. Hear it with thunder in the background and the Temple’s stone floor trembling slightly under Zechariah’s feet:

“I am Gabriel who stand in the Presence of God . . . and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things come to pass.”

I’ve always felt great sympathy for Zechariah. I imagined him having to make an urgent visit to the Temple men’s room after this, followed by the shock of being unable to intone the Temple prayers.

Zechariah was accustomed to great deference from people of faith, and now he is scared speechless. I, too, would have asked for proof. For a cynic, and especially a sometimes arrogant one, good news is not easily taken at face value.

Then six months later “Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1: 26-27). This encounter was far different from the previous one, and it opens with what has become one of the most common prayers of popular devotion.

Gabriel said, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” His words became the Scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, that and centuries of “sensus fidelium,” the consensus of the faithful who revere her as “Theotokos,” the God-Bearer. Mary, like Zechariah, also questions Gabriel about the astonishing news. “How can this be since I have not known man?” There is none of the thunderous rebuke given to Zechariah, however. Saint Luke intends to place Gabriel in the presence of his greater, a position from which even the Archangel demonstrates great reverence and deference.

It has been a point of contention with non-Catholics and dissenters for centuries, but the matter seems so clear. There’s a difference between worship and reverence, and what the Church bears for Mary is the deepest form of reverence. It’s a reverence that came naturally even to the Archangel Gabriel who sees himself as being in her presence rather than the other way around. God and God alone is worshiped, but the reverence bestowed upon Mary was found in only one other place on Earth. That place was the Ark of the Covenant, in Hebrew, the “Aron Al-Berith,” the Holy of Holies which housed the Tablets of the Old Covenant. I wrote of Mary’s identification with the most sacred artifact in all of Israel in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

But the story of Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary draws on elements from the Second Book of Samuel. These elements are drawn by Saint Luke as he describes Mary’s haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. In 2 Samuel 6:2, David visits this very same place to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant.  Upon Mary’s entry into Elizabeth’s room in Saint Luke’s account, the unborn John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is reminiscent of David leaping before the Ark of the Covenant in 2 Samuel 6:16.

For readers “with eyes to see and ears to hear,” Saint Luke presents an account of God entering into human history in terms quite familiar to the old friends of God. God himself expressed in the Genesis account of the fall of man that man has attempted to “become like one of us” through disobedience. Now the reverse has occurred. God has become one of us to lead us out of the East, and off the path to eternal darkness and death.

The Church honors with the deepest reverence Mary, Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the new Ark of the Covenant. Mary, whose response to the Archangel Gabriel was simple assent:

“Let it be done to me according to your word.”

“Then the Dawn from On High broke upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet on the way to peace.”

— Luke 1:78-79

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. It is also added to our collection of Scripture posts, The Bible Speaks.

You may also like these related posts:

Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Holy Week begins this year on Palm Sunday, March 29. We have collected a list of seven Holy Week posts from Beyond These Stone Walls. Together, they form a sort of personal Holy Week Retreat. We invite you to take part in it by visiting or revisiting each of its linked posts throughout the course of this coming week. You may access here Our Beyond These Stone Walls Holy Week Retreat.

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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 here to proceed 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.”

“What Shall I Do to Inherit Eternal Life?” (Luke 10:25)

The Gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time is the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a meaningful story on its face, but far more urgent in its depths.

Catholic writer Ryan A. MacDonald published a Letter to the Editor in Our Sunday Visitor some years ago (August 29, 2010) entitled “Priests Vulnerable to False Accusations.” His published letter included this paragraph:

“To paraphrase the Gospel parable, ‘this priest was beaten by robbers and left on the side of the road in our Church.’ A growing number of Catholics have been unwilling to pass him by no matter how sick we are of the sex abuse story.”

— OSV, August 29, 2010, p18

Ryan commended Our Sunday Visitor for its bold acknowledgment that Beyond These Stone Walls was selected as the “Best of the Catholic Web” in the category of Spirituality by OSV readers.

I was struck by the image Ryan conveyed. There is far more to the famous “Good Samaritan” parable of Luke 10:25-37 than meets the eye.

So I spent some time looking at its theological background and meaning because for some time I have wanted to add this famous parable to our collection of posts on Sacred Scripture under the heading From Abraham to Easter. I hope that you will visit this collection on occasion to mine the great theological depths of some of the best known passages of Sacred Scripture. I find in the Parable of the Good Samaritan an urgent summons to mercy. Every reader here knows this parable, but if you let me sift it a bit, it has layers that may surprise you.

A lawyer stood before Jesus “to put Him to the test” (Luke 10:25). The lawyer in this setting was an expert in the Mosaic Law handed down in the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, and specifically in the Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy. The lawyer’s intent was not to query Jesus for answers, but to trap Him in contradiction in the presence of his disciples. There are actually three intended hearers in Jesus’ telling of this parable — the lawyer, the disciples, and us, the readers — all bringing different world views to the scene.

The lawyer opened the dialogue with a question the answer to which he already knows: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Note the word “inherit.” The lawyer did not expect to earn or gain eternal life, but rather to inherit it as something due to him as an heir. The lawyer-expert in the Mosaic law finds the source of his due inheritance in the law itself.

So Jesus returned the opening volley with a question on the lawyer’s own terms, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer then goes on to quote the two highest tenets of the Law of Moses, the first from Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” Then the second, from Leviticus 19:18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In another setting (Matthew 22:36-40) Jesus told a Pharisee — perhaps even this same Pharisee — “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

But back to Luke 10. Jesus commended the lawyer for his insight. “You have answered rightly. Do this and you will live.” The encounter could have ended there, but the lawyer had not finished laying his trap. “And who is my neighbor?” he asked.

After all, the Book of Leviticus (19:18), in citing the second half of what Jesus called the “Greatest Commandment,” has a preface that could have been cause for debate between Jesus and this lawyer. “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the Sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So, for the Pharisee-lawyer, the identity of “neighbor” is arguably unclear. While laying his trap, the lawyer elicits from Jesus a parable that springs the trap, and cracks open a door to Eternal Life to be inserted into the lawyer’s sense of justice, and ours.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him, and departed leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”

— Luke 10, 30-37

The Questionably “Good” Samaritan

Note that the lawyer’s question is not “What shall I do to attain eternal life?” There is little we can do to attain it. The word “attain” implies merit. The lawyer’s question asks “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The key action term in the question is “inherit,” and the actor who will provide the inheritance is not the lawyer, but Jesus himself, the sole being who, through the will of the Father, has merited entry into Paradise. I described the scene in which that merit took place in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

The lawyer hearing the parable would form a spontaneous judgment about each of the three people who traveled that road to Jericho. The lawyer would be united in sympathy with the first two — the priest and the Levite — and not only with them but with their actions in the parable as well. The lawyer would readily see why the priest and the Levite who observe the beaten man left “half dead,” choose to pass by. They are simply observing the laws of ritual purity, in this case one set down in the Book of Leviticus 21:1-3, “None of them shall defile himself for the dead among his people except for his nearest of kin.”

The priest is descended from the priesthood of Aaron, a part of the priestly hierarchy that offers sacrifice on the peoples’ behalf according to the priestly code of Leviticus (Chapters 1-16). The lawyer would readily know that on his way to Jerusalem in the parable, the priest would risk defiling himself and his ritual sacrificial offering under the law if he touched the dying man. And the Levite is in the same boat. The Levitical priesthood was established when Moses, having received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, returned to discover the Israelites worshiping a golden calf in the Book of Exodus (32). Moses summoned the tribe of Levi for ministerial service to exact punishment upon the idolaters (Exodus 32:27).

Thus, within the tribe of Levi, the descendants of Aaron received the priesthood, and men of the tribe of Levi who did not descend from Aaron comprised a second hierarchical tier of the Levitical priesthood. The priest offered sacrifice while the Levites guarded and transported the Tabernacle and assisted the Temple priest (Numbers 1:47-54). The lawyer would surmise, as do we, that the priest and the Levite were on that road from Jericho to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice on behalf of their communities as required by Levitical law. The parable has a quality of verisimilitude. The road passed through lots of rugged territory where brigands and robbers were known to hide and ambush.

In the parable of Luke 10, the lawyer readily knows, both the priest and the Levite risked becoming defiled under the ritual laws of sacrifice if either one stopped to help the “half dead” man. The third traveler, the one from Samaria, is a whole other story for the lawyer and for the disciple-hearers as well. The term, “Samaritan” appears for the first time in the Second Book of Kings (17:29) where the people of Samaria are described as idolaters, the very type that the tribe of Levi was called upon to extinguish from the Israelites at Mount Sinai.

Jews saw Samaritans as the descendants of foreign colonists planted by the Assyrians. For their part, Samaritans insisted they were descendants of the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh who managed to survive the Assyrian destruction of Samaria. In the Gospel of John (4:9) a Samaritan woman was surprised that Jesus would even speak to her “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria.” The Gospel text of John went on to explain the obvious, that “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” In John (4:27) even the Apostles were shocked that Jesus would speak to a Samaritan woman.

Samaritans figured that the more recently unfaithful Judea, whose population was itself exiled to Babylon because of gross unfaithfulness and whose temple in Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, were consummate liberals. The Jews, thinking they themselves were most exact in their observance of the Law, however many loopholes they thought they found, were incriminated by the very existence of the ultra-conservative Samaritans. The Samaritans closely observed the Torah, the Law, accepting the first five books of the Law alone, but rejecting all the prophets and the writings as distraction. What irked the Jews especially was that the Samaritans added an eleventh self-referential commandment that worship should take place in Samaria, on Mount Gerizim only, not in Jerusalem. The last place the Jews thought they might find mercy is with the Samaritans.

In the end, both justice and the lawyer’s trap were turned on their heads when Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?” The poor lawyer, his head spinning, could not even bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan.” He answered, “The one who showed mercy on him.”

Then, in final response to the lawyer’s original question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus admonished him, “Go, and do likewise.” Be the one who shows mercy despite its cost to yourself, or your standing, or your Facebook “Like” score.

Inheritance

You might argue that unlike the Samaritan in this parable, you have never been given such an opportunity to be the instrument of the Mercy of God. The Gospel of Matthew (25:31-46) ends with this segment: “ ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This Gospel lays out “The Judgment of the Nations” and along with it the fulfillment of the law of inheritance:

“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

— Matthew 25:31-36

On that last point, you might argue that you have never come to one in prison. If you are reading this, you just did!

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post about one of the most popular and important parables of Jesus. You will also find this post in our Sacred Scripture collection, “From Abraham to Easter.”

You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek

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 here to proceed 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.”

To the Kingdom of Heaven through a Narrow Gate

The Gospel of St. Luke for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time is a summons to enter the Kingdom of God through a narrow gate, but it requires shedding some baggage.

August 17, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Readers of a certain age who grew up in the United States might remember “S&H Green Stamps.” The Sperry and Hutchinson Company first introduced them in grocery stores in 1896 as promotional bonus awards to promote retail purchases. By World War II, gas stations and other retail outlets caught on. By 1960, ninety percent of U.S. retailers were awarding Green Stamps. In 1962, S&H issued more stamps that the U.S. Post Office.

My mother was a dedicated collector. About once a month, when I was seven or eight, I was cajoled into sitting at our kitchen table to paste the month’s supply of Green Stamps into collection booklets. When enough books were accumulated, they were taken to a place that I thought then to be magical. It was called the “S&H Redemption Center” where Green Stamps of dubious value could be redeemed for something new. S&H published the world’s largest catalog of redeemable items. It had a whole page of skateboards which had become all the rage in 1962. Alas, my mother passed it by in favor of a boring toaster.

By 1982, the year I became a priest — having never broken a bone because I never had a skateboard — Green Stamps disappeared from the retail landscape of America and our collective consciousness. The Redemption Centers are gone now, but hope for redemption never left and must never leave. Losing that hope would be catastrophic for humanity. We express that transforming hope every day, even if we do not realize it, and it is far more than a marketing ploy.

What do you mean when you pray, “Thy Kingdom Come,” “Adveniat Regnum Tuum”? It’s the third subordinate clause of the Lord’s Prayer, the “Pater Noster,” also known by its first two words of address in English, the “Our Father.” You pray, “Thy Kingdom Come” once at every Mass. If you pray the Rosary, you say it at least six times. A core expectation of the Gospel is that “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:5). In Volume One of his great book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI described the implications for that statement:

“The core constant of the Gospel is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. A milestone is set up in the flow of time; something new has taken place, and an answer to this gift is demanded of man: conversion and faith.” (p. 47)

The phrase “Kingdom of God” occurs 122 times in the New Testament. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) it is found 99 times and 90 of them are from the direct words of Jesus. In the post-Vatican II world, some came to believe that this expectation of the Kingdom of God is fulfilled and made manifest primarily in the Church. That may be true, but it is not the only truth as Pope Benedict explains in this surprising analysis:

“Instead of the great expectation of God’s own Kingdom, of a new world transformed by God himself we got something quite different, the Church! And what a pathetic substitute it is … Is changing the subject from the Kingdom of God to the genesis of the Church really just the collapse of a promise and the emergence of something else in its place?” ( p. 48)

The Cross and the Kingdom of God

The answer to that question depends on how we understand “Kingdom of God” as Jesus meant it. As Pope Benedict asked: “Is Jesus just a messenger charged with representing a cause that is ultimately independent of him, or is the messenger himself the message?” In other words, is Jesus Himself the Kingdom of God?

In the Gospel, “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven” refer to the same destination. Heaven — which I always capitalize — is distinct from “the heavens” which refer to the material universe. “Kingdom of Heaven” is not uttered as a substitute for God, but is rather in respect for the Jewish tradition that the name of God was not to be uttered or written. This is why you may often see Hebrew scholars write G-d in place of God.

Among the Fathers of the Church, Origen, in his early Second Century treatise, On Prayer, wrote,

“Those who pray for the coming of the Kingdom of God pray without any doubt for the Kingdom of God that is contained in themselves. For in every holy person it is God who reigns and has dominion. So let God stroll in us as a spiritual paradise and rule in us with his Christ.”

The idea of that beautiful image is that the Kingdom of God is not found on any map. It is not the kingdom of a fallen world. It is Christ himself and the extent to which he lives in us. So even if there is doubt that the Kingdom of God somehow touches my life, at least there is always hope. Just like most of you, I, too, struggle with that hope.

I think that most of our readers have come to understand that I have had my share of hardship. To be falsely accused and cast into prison for the last 28 years and counting seems the equivalent of living on the wrong side of a rather famous parable. It is one of the parables that most represents life in the Kingdom of God as it exists in the here and now. It involves choices. Commonly known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it is more accurately called the Parable of a Man Beaten by Robbers and Left for Dead.

The parable, found in Luke 10:25-37, begins with a question posed by a lawyer/Pharisee, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer, an expert in Hebrew Scripture, already knows the answer but he poses his question “to put Jesus to the test.” So Jesus answers the famous question with one of his own. “What is written in the law?” The lawyer responds correctly by combining two verses from the Hebrew Scriptures which were very familiar to Jesus:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5) “and your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Elsewhere, in Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus called these two Scripture verses “the greatest Commandment,” the one upon which all others depend. The Ten Commandments and the 613 precepts of the Mosaic Law — all the dietary and ritual laws of purity in the life of Israel — are distilled into striving for these two. Love of God and Mercy to others are the towering rules of the Kingdom of God.

In the parable itself, the man beaten by robbers and left at the side of the road is simply passed over by a priest and a Levite. The lawyer hearing this understands well that their religious duty, written in the laws of ritual purity described above, requires them not to touch the body of a dead or dying man. The Samaritan, on the other hand, is already an outcast from the religious practice of Israel, and is thus the only one free to show mercy.

The lawyer/Pharisee hearing this Parable would find it painfully familiar. It recalls a very similar story from the Second Book of Chronicles (28:8-15). About 1,000 years before Jesus told this parable, a group of people from the Kingdom of Judah were assailed and captured by the Northern Israelite army. Four men from Samaria came upon the beaten captives. The four Samaritans clothed, fed, and, anointed them, and placing them upon their own beasts of burden, took them peacefully to Jericho. The fact that the parable had a precedent deep in the history of Israel would have crushed the lawyer’s resistance to the story of grace imparted by way of mercy.

The Narrow Gate

The question posed by the lawyer/Pharisee that opens the Parable of the Man Beaten by Robbers is very similar to one posed in the Gospel at Mass on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus had just described the Kingdom of God as being “like leaven.” Leaven used in dough is a rising agent. So what is it about the Kingdom of God that gives rise to it like leaven? He earlier refers to the kingdom as “like a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds that grow into great trees where birds may make their nests.”

Then a question was posed. “Lord, will those who are saved be few? (Luke 13:23) The response of Jesus that follows has been disheartening for many, but I believe it is misunderstood:

“Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter but will not be able.” He then went on to talk about weeping and gnashing of teeth and “seeing Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God and you yourself cast out” (Luke 22:28). Not exactly a hopeful narrative.

The place I turn to for context is one that I have written about before. It is the story of the only human being, at first glance a seemingly unlikely one, who was directly given salvation and eternal life in the Gospel. I wrote of the story of this man in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

In Jesus of Nazareth Volume II: Holy Week Pope Benedict XVI wrote of that same account: “Of the two men crucified with Jesus, only one joins in mocking him. The other grasps the mystery of Jesus.” To do so while in the middle of one’s own crucifixion is the most hopeful and encouraging image that I have found in all of Sacred Scripture. The crucified Dismas asks but one thing, and it is not deliverance from his cross. He asks only, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”

Clearly, while on the cross, the penitent Dismas realized that this powerless man beside him is a true king. He wanted to be at this man’s side in both crucifixion and in Glory. The simple response of Jesus recognized both the weight of this man’s cross and the depth of his conversion and transformation: “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43).

The Greek word Luke’s Gospel used in describing what this man will encounter that day is “Paradeisos.” It is used only three times in the New Testament and was first used in all of Sacred Scripture in Genesis 2:8 where it refers to the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man. There is no talk between Jesus and Dismas of weeping and gnashing of teeth, nor is there any mention of entering the Kingdom through the narrow door. Jesus promises to this repentant man nothing less than life in the eternal dwelling place of God.

There are hints for this through Scripture: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” (John 14:6-7). This conveys to me a truth that Dismas Crucified to the Right, came to see only from his own cross.

Jesus does not have a map to the narrow gate, nor is he a key to it. He is not even a ticket through it. Dismas discovers on his cross that Jesus is Himself the Narrow Gate to the Kingdom of Heaven, the only passageway from this life to eternal life. It could not be clearer.

So our only task is to follow Him, to imitate Him, and not even perfectly because He knows we can do nothing perfectly. What he seeks in us is mercy in our hearts, the knowledge that the measure with which we measure will be measured back to us. This is the leaven, the stuff that expands the Kingdom of God within us.

Strive to enter through the Narrow Gate.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post which will be placed in our Library Categories, Catholic Spiritual Life and Sacred Scripture. You may also want to visit — or revisit — these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found

The Measure by Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

Please visit our “Special Events” Page for ways to help us bring mercy to those left on the side of the road.

Courtesy of L’Obsservatore Romano

Saint Luke the Evangelist, Dear and Glorious Physician

The Church honors St. Luke the Evangelist on October 18. Author of a unique Gospel and Acts of the Apostles, Luke is the source of the most cited parables of Jesus.

In “February Tales,” an early post on Beyond These Stone Walls, I wrote of some of the books that captivated my imagination in childhood. Working today in a library, I have come across some of them decades later in adulthood and gave them a second look. It’s a testimony to growing up that most of the books I thought were masterpieces of Western literature in my youth are only laughable today. But a rare few have stood the test of time.

One of them is a book I stumbled upon at age 16. It was 1969 and I was in my senior year of high school. I wrote a short biography of what my life was like then against the backdrop of a culture in the early days of its long moral and social decline. You could find those biographical paragraphs early on in my recent post, “Where Were You When Neil Armstrong Walked on the Moon?”

Somehow in 1969, I discovered among the tattered paperbacks of the Lynn English High School Library a historical novel that would leave its mark on my mind and soul for decades to come. Though first published in 1959, it is a testament to its literary stature that its most recent hardcover edition was published over a half century later in 2012, twenty-seven years after the author’s death. The book is Dear and Glorious Physician  by Taylor Caldwell who described its long path:

“This book has been forty-six years in the writing. The first version was written when I was twelve years old, the second when I was twenty-two, the third when I was twenty-six, and all through those years work did not cease on this book. It was impossible to complete, as the other versions were impossible to complete, until my husband and I visited the Holy Land in 1956.”

Taylor Caldwell published forty-three novels to much acclaim in her literary career. Among them were some stand-out historical novels. Her most famous was Captains and the Kings  (1972) about the wave of Irish immigrations to America. It became an equally acclaimed television mini-series later in the 1970s.

Caldwell’s first novel was published in 1939. Her last, Unto All Men, was posthumously found and published by her grandchildren in 2012. At that time, they also republished Dear and Glorious Physician, Ms Caldwell’s labor of love that spanned decades in its writing. No other book of my youth has withstood the test of time with such power and majesty.

The author imagined the life of Saint Luke the Evangelist with such realism that it seemed as though she had followed him through it taking notes. It is impossible to know of the birth and upbringing of any of the Gospel characters. But where their life stories were absent, Ms Caldwell spent years, with the assistance of a Catholic priest and historian, researching life and culture in early First Century Antioch — which today is Southern Turkey, the world from which Saint Luke emerged.

She was also aided in this adventure by a wealth of legends about Saint Luke that surfaced in the first few centuries, some of them known to the early Church Fathers, from Antioch, Greece, and Egypt. Like many stories surrounding Biblical legends, some were built upon grains of truth. She was aided in this effort by a collection of these extra-Biblical legends surrounding Saint Luke in the possession of a Catholic nun living in Antioch during the years of her research. The end result is a remarkable volume described by Taylor Caldwell with shades of the pilgrimage of her own life:

“This book is only indirectly about Our Lord. No novel, no historical book, can convey the story of His life so well as our Sacred Scripture. The story of Lucanus, St Luke, is the story of every man’s pilgrimage through despair and life’s darkness, through suffering and anguish, through bitterness and sorrow, doubt and cynicism, rebellion and hopelessness, to the Feet and the understanding of God. The search for God and the final revelation are the only meaning in life for men.”

The Spiritual Legacy of Saint Luke

In the Roman Rite, the Church honors and remembers Saint Luke the Evangelist on October 18. At least some of the readers of Beyond These Stone Walls  may have gleaned from my posts that among the four Gospel writers, I have long been especially drawn to the work of Saint Luke. Many of my posts have been built upon Gospel passages that are unique to Luke alone. We will link to a few of the more important ones at the end of this post.

There are several factors that make Luke unique among the four Evangelists. He was the only Gentile author to compose a book in the Canon of Sacred Scripture. All others were of Israelite descent. Saint Paul hints at Luke’s Gentile identity and profession when he refers to him as “Luke the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14).

Luke is also the only Evangelist to have composed a sequel to his Gospel. The Acts of the Apostles is the second of a two-volume work that picks up immediately where Luke’s Gospel ends. It continues the Gospel narrative with a revelation of how, after the Ascension of Jesus, the Holy Spirit continued to work in the living community of Christ’s mystical body, the Church.

The early manuscripts of the third Gospel, all of which were composed in highly sophisticated Greek, had the title, “Kata Loukan,” meaning “According to Luke.” Though Luke was not an Apostle (nor was Saint Mark) this title serves as a signpost of apostolic tradition in the Gospel. There was no debate whatsoever among the early Christian Church that the author of this work was indeed Luke, the companion of Saint Paul.

Like Paul, Luke had never known Jesus directly, but rather experienced Him in His post-Resurrection presence to the apostolic community and its birth at Pentecost. The Church Fathers were unanimous as far back as A.D. 170 that Luke is indeed the author of both the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

The only professional disagreement among scholars is the time period in which the Gospel transformed from oral tradition to written form. Luke himself possessed highly refined Greek linguistic ability, and his Gospel clearly reflects it. So there is no reason to believe that Luke relied on anyone else to put his Gospel in written form.

Estimates of the date of authorship vary from about A.D. 60 to A.D. 80. There is much evidence, however, to hold to the earlier date because of the close connection between this Gospel and Acts of the Apostles. The latter, which was the second to be written, concludes with Saint Paul in prison in Rome in A.D. 62. There is no hint at all of the outcome of Paul’s trial or any subsequent activity.

In Acts of the Apostles, much attention is given by Luke to the interactions between the earliest Christians and imperial Rome. However Luke presents no apparent awareness of the open persecution of Christians later in the 60s, nor does he ever mention the late 60s martyrdom of his two central characters in Acts: Saints Peter and Paul. Luke’s writings also seem unaware of the events of A.D. 70 when Jerusalem was utterly destroyed by the Romans.

The Gospel According to Luke is also unique in its near complete absence of Hebrew terms. His one theme that towers above all others is his proclamation of universal salvation for all who embrace Christ. As a writer from Antioch steeped in Greek language and culture, Luke writes for Gentile believers.

This explains his lack of Hebrew terminology. However, he also displays a profound knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, and an ability to incorporate them into his Gospel narrative by way of inference. There are a multitude of examples, but here is one from my post “Waking up in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

In the Gospel of Luke (22:31ff ) Jesus is alone and apart from the others as He prays in agony in the face of death. “Father, if you are willing, remove this chalice from me, but Thy will, and not mine, be done.” For Hebrew ears, Luke’s account of Jesus at Gethsemane (referred to only as the Mount of Olives in Luke) is a mirror image in reverse of a scene that occurred at that very same site 1,000 years earlier.

It was a story of a son not obedient unto death, but of a son who betrayed his father. It was the agony of King David and his flight from his son, Absalom, who betrayed him:

“David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot.”

— 2 Samuel 15:30

The Magnificat and Two Powerful Parables

It seems clear that Luke had an awareness of the Gospel of Mark which he incorporates as a source, but he also had sources that none of the other Evangelists had. Luke’s Gospel is the sole source of the glorious Magnificat, the proclamation of Mary in her pre-Christmas visit to her cousin, Elizabeth. Many believe that Luke was given this by Mary herself (Luke 1:46-56):

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown strength with his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away. He has come to the help of his servant, Israel remembering his promise of mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

Women are especially honored throughout the Gospel of Luke. His portrayal of Mary the Mother of God is unparalleled in the New Testament. He is the sole source of the Archangel Gabriel’s declaration of Annunciation — “Hail, Full of Grace” (Luke 1:28), another example of the belief of many that Mary or someone close to her was one of his sources. Luke also pays close attention to the presence of Elizabeth (1:39-45), Anna (2:36-38), the widow of Nain (7:11-17), Mary Magdalene (8:2), Mary and Martha of Bethany (10:38-42), Joanna and Susanna (8:3) and others.

Saint Luke’s Gospel presents the sole account of the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, two of the most important stories and most reflected-upon moral lessons in the life of the Church. At the end of this post, I will link to some of the BTSW  posts that highlight popular parables unique to Luke’s Gospel. Those parables are held to be masterpieces of Catholic spirituality.

Saint Luke composed a two-part spiritual masterpiece for the ages. Taylor Caldwell would make no such claim, but by having brought Saint Luke to life some 2000 years later with such clarity, beauty and majesty, she deserves at least one not-so-coveted award to honor her accomplishment.  Beyond These Stone Walls’ Stuck-Inside Literary Award is presented posthumously to Taylor Caldwell for Dear and Glorious Physician.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae:  Please share this post on social media. It would also help the cause of justice if you Subscribe to Beyond These Stone Walls. 

You may also like these other tributes to the Gospel According to St. Luke:

To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

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

We invite you to visit our Sacred Scripture series called From Abraham to Easter category at the BTSW Library.