God is First

Homily for Friday of the Fourth Week in Advent

I have always been fascinated by the form of the various Psalms that make up the Psalter of the Hebrew Scriptures. Sometimes that form has much to say about the message of the Psalm. Such is the case today as we use Psalm 25 as our responsorial.

Psalm 25 is an acrostic Psalm, which simply means that each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Curiously one of the letters is missing in this Psalm, and a final verse is added to the Psalm after the last letter of the alphabet. Consequently, the verses at the beginning, middle, and end of the Psalm begin with the letters that spell out the Hebrew word “aleph.” This word is the name of the very first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Carefully calculated forms such as the acrostic are characteristic of Israel’s wisdom literature. The message conveyed by the form is that every word, every letter, every tiny element of creation, leads to God who is first in the life of every child of Israel. The psalmist wishes us to understand that God is present “from A to Z,” in every grain of sand and in every created thing. God is the prime mover; God is first. There are other wisdom elements present in this Psalm – some proverbial sayings and an emphasis on God’s “way” or “path.”

The first reading taken from the prophet Malachi as well as the text from St. Luke’s Gospel speak to us of the messenger who will be sent before the coming of the Messiah. If we carefully examine the oracles of the prophets as well as the message preached by John the Baptist, we will find that like Psalm 25, they also ask us to put God first in our lives. In particular, we remember the figure of John the Baptist who pointed the way to Jesus and called out, “Behold the Lamb of God.”

Each day before we receive the Eucharist, the presider echoes the words of John and reminds us that Jesus has not left us orphans but remains with us and is present to us each and every day, from the first moment to the last moment of each day.