Living For The Praise Of God's Glory

Friday of the Third Week of Advent 2025

The Gospel we heard today is such a striking story, with angel, disbelieving Jewish priest, aged couple getting pregnant and the connection to Jesus and Mary dominating the narrative, that we might ignore other parts of the Scripture. So let’s just mention that Zechariah the priest must have been struck dumb in the brain by holding an archangel to be lying to him, and that God really can bring about miraculous births in every age and move on to the beautiful psalm and response.

“My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!” The liturgy puts these words in the mouth of Manoah’s anonymous wife, childless and barren and yet pregnant after the messenger of the Lord announced the Lord’s gift of a son, a Nazirite. This would be the Hebrew judge, Samson, who was tasked with lifting the oppression of the Philistines from the Hebrew people.

But for a moment let’s consider the refrain: “My mouth shall be filled with your praise, and I will sing your glory!” Is there ever a time when this prayer is inappropriate for a gathering of Christians? In Paul’s letter to Ephesus, we see him speaking of the Jews who first believed in the Resurrection of Jesus. He says they were chosen and predestined “so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.” Those of us who are alive and in God’s Church two thousand years later, are also task with living for the praise of God’s glory.

The psalmist and we ask Our Lord to be our rock of refuge, a stronghold to give us safety. Those of us living in a time of drone strikes and weapons of mass destruction may need to be reminded that back in the first century, the fastest warriors were moving at twenty miles an hour on horses, and most weapons were powered by human arms and legs. A fortress was any protected place that would provide an elevated platform to use your bows and arrows. Logically, fortresses would be built on high rocky ground—hills or mountains. Having such areas was the best way to be rescued from the hands of the wicked when they attack.

In the spiritual realm, our foes are not Philistines or Roman legions, but our own tendencies toward sin and humans and demons to tempt us to give into our sensual appetites. To fight these temptations, we need from birth to be dependent on God and thankful for His protection. The Church sees in the births of Samson and John the Baptist the workings of grace protecting them through all the years of their lives and even in their deaths.

Their mission in life, and ours as well, is to spread devotion to God in Christ through the world we inhabit. We must, like all the saints who came before us, be ready at all times to tell of the mighty works of the Lord in our life. Then we can say with the psalmist, “O God, you have taught me from my youth, and till now I proclaim your wondrous deeds.”