Late Advent Weekday — December 18
Jeremiah 23:5-8  +  Matthew 1:18-25
December 18, 2015

“He shall govern your people with justice and your afflicted ones with judgment.”

The Responsorial Psalm at Holy Mass both on December 17 and 18 is from Psalm 72.  The first set of verses proclaimed each of these days is the same:                                            

O God, with your judgment endow the king,
and with your justice, the king’s son;
He shall govern your people with justice
and your afflicted ones with judgment.

The header of this psalm in the American translation of the breviary is “The Messiah’s royal power”.  The fact that the Responsorial on the first two “late Advent weekdays” comes from this regal psalm points to the mission for which God the Son was sent into our world.  Consider these four lines of Psalm 72:1-2 in reference to the Son of God.  The first two lines call for God to endow the king with God’s own “judgment” and “justice”.  The latter two lines foresee that the king will govern God’s people with “justice” and “judgment”.

Reflect more specifically on these four lines as speaking of the Son of God by reading them in light of Calvary.  As the Son of God, Jesus’ “judgment” and “justice” reflect His divine nature,  that from eternity He always has shared in God’s own nature.  But through His mission on earth, He spends Himself to “govern [God’s] people” as the Good Shepherd, who came into this world to seek the lost and lead them into the bosom of His own Father.  In this mission, which is why He was born at Bethlehem, we see the splendor of God’s “judgment” and “justice”.