Feast Day: December 29th
On the road up to Bethlehem walked a wizened man. He was leading a heifer and had a horn of oil slung over his shoulder. As he entered the little village in the shadow of the pagan city Jerusalem, he explained that he was there to offer sacrifice. Later that day when the consecrated oil ran down the ruddy hair of the shepherd-boy, it would become evident that he was actually there to consecrate a new king. Fast forward one decade, and then another, and David found himself on the run. Saul pursued this rival king relentlessly, seeing only threat in his charisma, faithfulness, and talented leadership. David finally found respite in one of the many caves where he would often stop and pray, and a promise from his God took shape in his heart:
“Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
God would find a way through. God would establish his throne. God would defeat the darkness and violence and establish a kingdom where He could dwell with His people. If only David would sit next to God, place himself in the shadow of the Lord’s throne. Fast forward one decade, and then another one, and the promise seemed fulfilled: David was king of all the tribes, lord in his new capital city Jerusalem, dancing before the Ark of God, preparing to build a Temple to the true God. David being a man of blood, that great project would be the task of his son and heir Solomon. And so God’s promise became a psalm, proclaimed and sung by all of Israel:
A Psalm of David
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.” [Psalm 110:1]
The Ancient Hebrew has more punch to it: “The Lord” stands in for the unpronounceable name of God, YHWH. “My lord” is just the Hebrew word “adonai”, a master, leader, commander, or king, in this case David. Fast forward one century, and then another, and Israel – their hopes of victory and peace dashed, the Temple torched and empty – was forced to chant this psalm in exile. Eventually they would return, and rebuild, but the wound would be reopened, not by Philistines, or Babylonians, but by the Greeks of Alexander. It seemed the opposite of the psalm had come to pass: God’s people trampled underfoot, and yet it does mean that God’s people and His inspired words to them only thus began to spread throughout Alexander’s empire.
Fast forward one century, and another, and we find ourselves at another little cave near Bethlehem where an impoverished couple cares for their newborn son. Now it was not the Greeks, but the Romans, under whose heel the Hebrews suffered. We pause on the night when the troops of Herod ride out to seek the child’s life, and the angel of God directs Joseph to take his wife and son into exile in Egypt. In God’s providence, there is already a Jewish enclave outside of Cairo, from those previous exiles from centuries before. It was a long walk from Alexandria in whose great library the scriptures had been translated but it is close enough for them to hear in that synagogue the ancient promise: “The Lord said to my lord”, now rendered in Greek, with “Kyrios” speaking to “kyrios.”
If we fast forward a decade, and then another one, the carpenter, his wife, and their little boy had long returned to Nazareth. From there the carpenter’s son, as it was supposed, began to preach repentance, and forgiveness of sins, and that the scriptures – all of them! – were actually fulfilled in Him. All was fine as long as it was just the lame leaping and the blind seeing, but then Jesus strode up into God’s city Jerusalem and into God’s Holy Temple, and there he lays claim to one, final, extraordinary prophecy:
Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet””? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. [Matthew 22:41-46]
From here, the son of David would leave the city, would prophesy the coming destruction of the Temple (and everything else) because it had rejected the time of its visitation. He will then be anointed in Bethany, and Judas will begin scheming with the leaders in the Temple to betray Him. This claim, this argument, citing this prophecy directly precipitates Our Lord’s crucifixion. Why did Jesus do it? What was He claiming?
The full story (and to finally encounter our martyr St. Dominic) we will have to wait until next week. For now, let it suffice to say that Jesus is claiming to not only be a son of David, a lord with a lower-case “l”, but the son of God, the Lord, with every letter capitalized.
– Fr. Dominic had way too much fun taking 12 or 14 words from the Roman Martyrology all the way to a two-part saga spiraling up to St. Dominic. Goes to show how long God has been writing this story that we’re all part of!