December 23rd.
"O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Expectation and Saviour of the nations! Come and save us, O Lord our God."
(Is. vii. 14, viii. 8, xxxiii. 22, St. Jas. iv. 12).
1st. Prelude. Mary and Joseph in the temple at Jerusalem.
2nd. Prelude. Grace to worship with them.
Point I. Emmanuel, God with us.
On the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem lies Jerusalem and we may be quite sure that a happy event for Mary and Joseph on this long and tiring journey now nearing its end would be their visit to the Temple, near which Mary, and probably Joseph too, had spent most of her life. We may think, then, of Mary to-day taking her Son into His own Temple. We may think of the joy of the Angels as they lifted high the gates to let the hidden King come in. In the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple was the Ark of the Covenant, inside which were the Tables of God's law and upon which was manifested the presence of the All-Holy. But here kneeling in the Temple, in the women's court afar off, was the real Ark of the Covenant of which the other was only a type, hiding within her chaste womb the new Lawgiver Whose Presence was known only to the Angels who were worshipping round His Shrine, and to Mary and Joseph the only earthly worshippers in the Temple that day who understood.
Here was the Virgin with her Son, the prophecy was fulfilled—God with us. "His name shall be called Emmanuel."
Yet Mary and Joseph were not the only worshippers in the Temple that day—there was a Human Soul worshipping God as He had never been worshipped before. The Heart of Jesus now so near the end of the first stage of Its existence on earth was offering to God all Its homage and all Its love, offering to Him all the work that had been done during the nine months passed in the holy "Ark of the Covenant," all the humiliation and self-abasement, the silence and dependence, the suffering and patience, the satisfaction and merit. He had been doing all the time the things that pleased His Father, the things that He had made Himself man to be able to do. Now He is waiting—and the very waiting is another Act of worship—waiting for the moment to come when He can take the next step in His earthly journey, waiting with His Mother whose intense desire is only second to His Own.
O Emmanuel! God with us! I feel that I must go too to Thy Sacred Courts to-day and make one more worshipper before that Holy Shrine. Advent is nearly over, my time of preparation is well-nigh at an end. What have I to offer as I kneel in adoration? Feeble desires, broken resolutions, failure again in the thing I did so want not to fail in this Advent, good intentions, but little else. Dare I come and kneel there where all is so holy and so perfect? Yes, for He is Emmanuel, God incarnate for me. Let me hand Him through His Mother all my poverty and wretchedness and weakness and failure, together with my contrition and repentance and love, and in exchange He will hand me His forgiveness and the promise to offer my inadequate worship, together with His own Divine perfections, to His Father, Who will be satisfied. This is what Emmanuel means.
Point II. Our Lawgiver.
"The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King He will save us." (Is. xxxiii. 22).