Friday of the First Week of Advent

 Lectionary: 179

As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
“Son of David, have pity on us!” 

 O n that great day when Gabriel announced his good news to Mary, he told her, "the Lord God will give (your son) the throne of David his father." When the day arrived for his birth, Saint Luke tells us Mary's husband Joseph "was of the house and family of David." And the choir of angels joyfully announced the child's birth "in the city of David."

The Four Evangelists cite David thirty-six times, invariably in reference to the Lord's ancestor, King David. He was, like King Arthur of England, the "once and future king" who would return someday to restore the united kingdom of Judah and Israel. Gabriel's announcement and the song of the angels meant that day had come at last! 

But what does that mean to Christians and Catholics twenty centuries later? Why should we care that two long lost countries should be restored and reunited someday? Is it important that King David is the only David in the Bible, and is cited over a thousand times? 

First, the name reminds us that Jesus is a Jew and that Christians must be grateful heirs of the Jewish people. Mary's Son is a "light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel." The birth of David's heir is proof of God's fidelity to them, and of his unfailing forgiveness of their sins. 

Secondly, the scriptures remember King David also as one who committed the unspeakable crimes of adultery and murder. That his adultery was almost certainly with a reluctant Bathsheba and may be called rape; and that the murder of Uriah, Bathsheba's hapless husband, was carefully planned and executed only add deeper dimensions to the crime. 

Finally, we remember David as the author of the Psalms, and especially the Penitential Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143. The Redactor designated Psalm 51 as "A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone in to Bathsheba." 

If Christians are reluctant to claim their Jewish heritage it is almost certainly because the Jews, and King David specifically, gave us the gift and virtue of Penance. Virtually all of the books of the Bible mention innumerable sins of God's people, and his unfailing forgiveness. Even when many had not repented the prophets promised he would gather them again into his nation and his sacred assembly. 

From them and their records we learned to keep a careful record of our sins and speak of them frankly to one another; and, as Catholics, to our priest confessors. No other nation kept such records. Sin explains the trouble we explain in this world, rather than impersonal historical dynamics, or our imperfect human nature, or the violence that seems endemic to this stormy, evolving planet with its carnivorous plants and animals. If we suffer, grieve, and regret it's because of our sins -- which were never necessary in the first place. 

But sin is also, As Saint Augustine said, the felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem, ("O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer." as we sing during the Exultet of the Easter Vigil.) The Lord God in his unfailing mercy saves us through the Passion and Death of the son and heir of King David. No sacrifice less than God's only son could save us. 

On this first Friday of Advent, Saint Matthew invokes the prayer of the blind men which has also become our desperate prayer: 

"Son of David, have pity on us!"