Zephaniah 3:14-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18
The prophecy of Zephaniah is perhaps rather easily overlooked; but as we glimpse from today’s first reading, it’s well worthy of our attention. Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah, active in the second half of the 7th century before Christ. By the time he was born, the Northern Kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist. Judah remained tenuously independent for now, but its Kings indulged in religious syncretism or outright idolatry; and with their pagan practices went also pagan morals, including much shedding of innocent blood (cf. 2 Kings 21:16). A new era seemed to dawn when in the year 622 the boy King Josiah launched his reform, rooted especially in the teaching of Deuteronomy. All that the holy Prophets of God had urged, Josiah enacted. But after a reign of only 13 years, Josiah was slain at Megiddo (2 Kings 23:29; 2 Chronicles 35:23). At once his sons undid all his religious reforms. Not long after that, in the year 597, Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon captured Jerusalem.
The Biblical book named after Zephaniah is short: only 3 Chapters. Compare Isaiah, which has 66 Chapters, or Jeremiah, which has 52, or Ezekiel, 48. So Zephaniah is conventionally numbered among the 12 Minor Prophets. In the Bible he comes sandwiched between Habakkuk and Haggai. There’s a feature which occurs frequently in many of the Hebrew prophets, but which is particularly notable in Zephaniah. That is, quite bewilderingly, the Prophet swings without warning between terrible threats of impending catastrophe, and euphoric promises of blissful salvation. It’s as if he terrifies us with images of hell, then immediately consoles us with images of heaven.
Zephaniah’s opening verses speak uncompromisingly of universal destruction. The Day of the Lord is coming, he says (1:15): it will be a Day of wrath, a Day of distress and anguish, a Day when sin will meet its due punishment from God. So many earthly Kingdoms that have practised wickedness will be completely destroyed, and among them all, also the Kingdom of Judah. A bit later Zephaniah holds out a small glimmer of hope, when he speaks of a small faithful remnant, the poor and humble of the land (cf. 3:12), who will escape the otherwise universal ruin. And then suddenly Zephaniah’s vision opens out in a Messianic oracle: a promise of salvation, purification, restoration, erupting in the exultant Song of joy we heard in our reading today.
Preaching both threat and promise; both catastrophe and salvation; coming terror and coming joy: we find the same feature in the New Testament: notably in the prophesying of St. John the Baptist. The wheat will be gathered into the barn, says John, but the chaff will go to everlasting fire (Lk 3:17). It’s interesting that those most prone to corruption were scared enough by St. John the Baptist’s warnings to offer to change their lives. Later in the New Testament, we read in the Apocalypse how terrible calamities, persecutions and sufferings are to come. Then at the end of time, there will be a final separation. For sinners, endless punishment; but for the Saints, an eternal share in the Lord’s glory. Allow me to mention in this context also the Marian apparitions: so many of them in the past century or two. Most of them have this same feature. Fierce condemnation of sin; terrifying warning of horrors to come; consoling assurance of Motherly love and closeness and protection. And through it all, of course, the urgent call to conversion, to repentance, to prayer.
This whole pattern foreshadows or illustrates its supreme expression in the central mystery of our Faith: the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. First, the apparent triumph of evil; sin coming to its fullest possible measure; goodness and innocence crushed; sorrow unendurable. But then: divine intervention; the great and miraculous reversal; the definitive victory of goodness, and life, and light; joy beyond measure and without end.
As a matter of historical fact, the temporal warnings of the ancient prophets always turned out to be true. Devastation came at the hands of Assyrians, then of Babylonians; then came subjection to the Persians; then more devastation from the Greeks; then occupation by the Romans, and finally, in 70 A.D., the total destruction of Judea and Jerusalem and of the Temple. Just to state the obvious: over all our heads nowadays hangs the threat of uncontrolled, uncontrollable war, using weapons of mass destruction. These weapons are multiplying all the time, and plenty of them are already in the hands of those whom no sane person would trust. Meanwhile, even as we sit here, our world is being devastated by so many wars, so much oppression. So much wickedness and folly are enthroned in high places; there is so much environmental destruction; and so many offenses are committed against God.
But today we hear Zephaniah joyfully singing of the Lord, the King of Israel who is in our midst; the Lord God himself coming into our midst, as a mighty one to save (3:15,17). And we see the fulfilment of Zephaniah’s Song in the Christmas mystery, and in Our Lady’s own Magnificat. Our faith teaches us that the Daughter of Zion always has cause to sing for joy, in spite of whatever affliction or calamity she has to endure. This Daughter Zion is Our Lady herself, or the Catholic Church as a whole, or any individual Christian soul. She sings of her wedding: the wedding between God and humanity. In principle this occurred at the Incarnation. Jesus came as a Bridegroom to his Bride, and in his coming is joy, and salvation, and victory; God’s astonishing answer to human sin, and the answer for us to the riddle of human life and human suffering.
Yes, sin continues on until the Second Coming, and we know that until then we have no security whatever on this earth. Nevertheless: we Christians understand the coming Day of the Lord not as something to fear, but as a thrilling fulfilment which we await in eager hope and expectation. So now we are preparing to celebrate his coming at Christmas, his coming into our own hearts and lives, and his coming in this holy Mass. For the Mass is a sacrament of the Lord’s presence here with us, here among us. The Mass is also a sacrifice of atonement, an efficacious intercession for pardon, through which we cry: Lord, spare your people! But then above all: Lord come to us! Lord, come and save us! Lord, come and heal us! Come, Lord, and take us to yourself.