19 December
Judges 13:2-7,24-25 | Psalm 70(71):3-6,16-17 | Luke 1:5-25
You will conceive and bear a son. From now on, take no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean. For the boy shall be God’s nazirite from his mother’s womb to his dying day. (Judges 13:7)
Just yesterday, Fr. Paul Goh exhorted everyone at Sunday mass to read the entire Bible in 2 years. It’s easy to believe that we already know all we need from the Bible, thanks to Jesus’ summary command to “love one another as I have loved you”, but by believing thus, we deprive ourselves of a fuller understanding of our faith.
For instance, did you know that all Christians are called to take on a form of the nazirite vow?
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The root word, after all, is the Hebrew nazir, meaning “consecrated” or “separated”, which should sound very familiar to us all:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)
We are called to live in this world, but not be of this world.
We exist in this mortal realm, but we should not be “infected” by the temptations and iniquities so prevalent around us.
We are exhorted, therefore, to be modern-day nazirites, dedicating ourselves to Christ, and sharing His abundant love with everyone we encounter, leading them to a deeper relationship with God, especially those who spend much time focused on their secular existence and personal profit.
The trick, of course, is to embody the loving discipline that Jesus taught us. Just as the ancient nazirites vowed to:
- Abstain from wine and grape products
- Let one’s hair grow and refrain from cutting it
- Avoid becoming ritually impure by contact with corpses and graves
so let us vow as modern nazirites to:
- Abstain from pleasures of the flesh
- Let our faith grow through prayer and study, and refrain from “dropping out” with God
- Avoid contaminating our thoughts with things that focus attention on our desires and away from spiritual union with the Almighty
We may not attain the lion-killing, jawbone-wielding prowess of Samson the Nazirite (the subject of today’s reading), but we can certainly take steps to purify ourselves, to be better reflections of Christ’s light for others. As St. Paul pleads with us:
Think of God’s mercy, my brothers, and worship him, I beg you, in a way that is worthy of thinking beings, by offering your living bodies as a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God.
Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. This is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do. (Romans 12:1-2)
Amen.
O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of hell Thy people save
And give them vict’ry o’er the graveRejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel