The Stump of Jesse

Homily for Tuesday of the First Week in Advent

One of the seven Great Antiphons chanted in the Church in the last days of Advent is, “O Radix Jesse.” O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples, before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer. Come and deliver us, and delay no longer. This ancient prayer addresses Jesus using a Messianic title found in the writings of the prophets of Israel.

Isaiah prophesies of the root of Jesse, as we just heard. On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. Jesse was the father of David, the king of Israel whom God described as a man after my own heart.

King David’s son Solomon succeeded him as monarch, but he fell away from the one true God, and God withdrew favor and protection from him. When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, inherited the throne, a Civil War broke out and the United Kingdom of Israel ended.

Jesse’s family – one that had once included the kings of Israel – was now a stump, cut off, and dead. One might think God’s promises to David would go unfulfilled. One would be wrong, of course, for God is never out done in generosity. Against the division that sin brings, God had promised to unite the kingdoms, and, “On that day, the root of Jesse, set up as a signal for the nation,” would come forth to reign over the reunited kingdom.

The root of Jesse is revealed in time to be Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. His genealogy, beginning with Abraham and recounted in Matthew’s Gospel, names Jesse. For 26 generations after Jesse, salvation history proceeds, and then comes Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.

We are blessed to be heirs of God’s promise. We are blessed, as Jesus says in the Gospel, to have eyes that see what we see, for many prophets and kings desired to see what we see, but did not see it, and to hear what we hear, but did not hear it.

God’s promise to be with us always is fulfilled in the Eucharist. We see Jesus, under the appearances of bread and wine, as food for our souls.