Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
When his tongue was loosed, Zachariah praised God for fulfilling his promises, specifically mentioning those made to Abraham and David.
He makes an interesting choice of words when he mentions the promise to Abraham, for he says, he promised to show mercy to our fathers, and John means the Lord is merciful.
Then he adds, and to remember his holy covenant, and Zachariah means the Lord has remembered.
Lastly, he alludes to his wife when he says, this was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, for the name Elizabeth is made up of the words for God and oath.
So it seems that prophesying inspired by the Holy Spirit, he realized the providential significance of the names of the three members of his family, including himself.
They indicate that this is the family in which God will begin to fulfill his remaining promises, that the fullness of time has come.
God made a threefold promise to Abraham and later confirmed it by oath.
He promised a land, a dynasty, and seed to a man who had none of these.
The fulfillment was a long time in coming, but with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
First came the promised land at the time of the exodus, centuries after the death of Abraham.
Then came the house of David after another couple of centuries, and now after yet another thousand years comes the promised seed in whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed, namely Jesus Christ, already present in Mary's womb and recognized by John.
Furthermore, Christ restores and elevates the first two promises.
Our promised land is no longer in Palestine, but in heaven, and Jesus is the son of David who will reign forever.
This brings us to the promise to David, which the first reading narrates.
He had conquered Jerusalem and brought the Ark of the Covenant into the city, but while the king had a palace of cedar for himself, the Ark was still under a tent, namely the mobile tabernacle that had been manufactured at Sinai.
It offended the king's humility to see himself in a better dwelling than God, so he wanted to build a house for God.
This intention was good, and this is why the prophet approved it, but God objected.
Building a temple for God means choosing the place where he will permanently dwell, the only place for God's worship until the time of the incarnation.
It is not for man to make such a choice.
David is not the master, but the servant of God.
Still David had chosen the very place that God had chosen from all eternity, Jerusalem, which prefigures Our Lady and the Church.
The place where the temple of stone would be built had to be chosen above all by God rather than man, because it had to prefigure the woman in whose womb Christ would build the temple of his body.
She was chosen by God from all eternity for this mission, and the members of the Church are similarly chosen to become temples.
But even though David had chosen the place God wanted, there was another problem.
David had shed too much blood to be the one who would build the temple.
It had to be built by an innocent and singularly wise man, Solomon, for the temple prefigures Christ as Solomon prefigures Christ.
In fact, Christ as God built the temple which is Christ as man.
As God, who is wisdom itself, and who builds the temple of his human nature, Christ was prefigured by Solomon.
As the human nature that was built, Christ was prefigured by the temple of stone.
Christ did not conquer by shedding the blood of others, but by shedding his own blood.
So he could not be fittingly prefigured by a man who had conquered by shedding a lot of other people's blood.
However, even though God didn't want David to do what he had planned, the king's intention was good, for he was a man after God's own heart.
Therefore, he rewards him.
Although God, or that is, although David must not build a house for God, God will establish a house for David.
This is the house of David, the dynasty into which the Messiah will be born.
And there is an odd phrase in this promise that the lectionary mistranslates as sprung from your loins.
That is what we would have expected God to say.
But instead of saying your loins, he said your womb or your belly.
The lectionary didn't translate that literally because your womb sounds odd in reference to a man.
But the word is no accident.
Also when Psalm 132 speaks of the promise to David, this very promise, it literally says, one from the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne.
God is making an important point.
In Hebrew, natural descendants are said to be sprung from the loins of their fathers and forefathers.
God is speaking of a man who will not spring from the loins of any man, because this son will be born of a virgin.
And so he says sprung from your womb, yours because it is the womb of one of your descendants, namely the Virgin Mary.
The fact that Christ will be born of a virgin is a sign, a great sign, as the book of Revelation says that his father is not a man.
Therefore God says I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me, because Christ is the natural son of God the Father and not the natural son of Joseph.
And so when Zachariah sings of the fulfillment of the promise to David, having all these things in mind, he knows that the Messiah will be born soon.
For his wife recognized him in Mary's womb when John leaped for joy at his presence, and she too was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Thus inspired, St. Elizabeth called the virgin the mother of my Lord.
Zachariah also had another way of knowing this.
For six months before the visitation, the angel had explained his son's mission to him.
Among other things, Gabriel said he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.
Zachariah was righteous and a priest.
He knew the scriptures well.
The prophet Micah had written that Elijah would come to fulfill precisely this mission before the coming of the Messiah.
So Zachariah understood that his son would be the Messiah's precursor.
Furthermore, when the angel told him that his son would go before him, that is, before the Lord their God, he implied the Messiah would be God.
Now Zachariah expressed these truths on which he had meditated during the nine months in which he was unable to speak.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, he now intoned the canticle we heard.
It is called the Benedictus from the first word in Latin, and it is recited or sung every day in the church's morning prayer.
In the first part of the canticle, Zachariah recognized God's saving action.
In the second part, he added that this action culminates in the coming of the Lord in person.
These two attributes of Christ, Savior and Lord, are the same ones that an angel will indicate to the shepherds after Jesus' birth when he says, Unto you is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
At the end, the canticle changes form, becoming an address to the newborn child.
He will act as a prophet and, as Malachi had announced, will prepare the way of the Lord so that the people will be able to receive the forgiveness of their sins.
The dawn from on high is Christ.
There is a double illusion here.
First, he alludes to Malachi's prophecy, The Son of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.
But the rising sun is anatole in Greek, a messianic title which is also translated as branch.
The title indicates something that rises, a branch rising from the ground or a sun rising from the horizon.
And in the context of Zachariah's canticle, a sun that rises from on high, because its origin is not human but divine.
It is a sun who has a sun who is not really a sun that gives light, but also the sun with no human father.
Today we conclude our preparation for Christmas, and so let's try to conclude it well.
The readings during these weeks of Advent have taught us or reminded us about many truths regarding God's plan of salvation, but one of the most fundamental truths is that we must prepare ourselves to receive that salvation by combating sin in our lives, whether our sins are big or small.
John the Baptist's mission is to invite to repentance so that we can receive all the graces won by the divine Son of the Virgin Mary.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.