Past, present, future in the Canticle of Zechariah.

I try, imperfectly, to pray at least some of the Divine Office every week. It suits me, and it doesn't, and that is probably good for me. I like the parts that change from day to day; I get tired of the parts that are the same day after day. I usually speed through the Invitatory at a quick mumble, unless it has been a few days since I have managed to pick up the breviary, and then it is like a cool drink of water. I don't mind the Canticle of Mary, because I don't get to Evening Prayer as often as I would like. I get very tired of the Canticle of Zechariah.

Jen Fulwiler at Conversion Diary once assembled a stable of bloggers to post about the Our Father, one word at a time, a series which turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself (I hammered out a meditation on "Earth" in about twenty minutes, and I rather like it). More recently another blogger, Sarah Reinhard, did the same thing for the Hail Mary.

These meditations are useful because they breathe a little new life into a prayer that we have all said so many times that it risks becoming empty, wasted, like exhausted soil. I am not the one to do this, at least not right now, but maybe those of us who pray the Divine Office could use a little of that for the 95th Psalm and the Canticle of Zechariah. Every day is just a little too often for me to keep getting something new out of these (and YES I have already noted the irony implicit in the 95th Psalm being about the stubborn Israelites complaining about the same old same old every day for forty years and their hearts going astray and all that).

Anyway, the last time I opened the breviary to the Canticle of Zechariah I did notice something somewhat new to me, so I thought I would share. Here is the text as it appears in the LOTH:

Blessed be the Lord,The God of Israel; He has come to His people and set them free.

He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour, born of the house of His servant David.

Through His holy prophets He promised of old that He would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy Covenant.

This was the oath He swore to our father Abraham:

To set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of our life.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our Lord the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Glory to the Father,and to the Son,and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, Amen.

 

This time, the structure of the canticle stood out to me, the way it speaks of past, present, and future. Check it out:

Present: this has to do with the stuff that is happening in the moment that Zechariah speaks.

He has come to His people and set them free.

He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour, born of the house of His servant David.

The Savior is still in utero at the moment, but the setting free has already begun.

Past: This has to do with the whole history of Israel, which is characterized here entirely as a promise by God to Israel (although you will note that the Covenant, which took two to tango, is mentioned, it is entirely in the context of mercy):

Through His holy prophets He promised of old that He would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us.

He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy Covenant.

This was the oath He swore to our father Abraham:

To set us free from the hands of our enemies, free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of our life.

Look at those promises: to save Israel from its enemies, from all who hate it; to show mercy -- at the same time as He remembers the covenant in which they made promises that they would keep only imperfectly. Also to set Israel free "to worship Him without fear," which could be characterized a couple of ways: it could mean that they are free from persecution from those enemies, so that it isn't dangerous to openly worship the God of Israel; or it could mean that even if there is persecution, that they can worship without "fear" of the persecution, perhaps firm in the knowledge that those enemies can destroy body but not soul, can strike at the nation but will not exterminate it; or it could mean that somehow they can worship God without fearing God. One or all of those is linked with a promise that the people will be "holy and righteous in his sight."

Future: This is the part that has not yet come to pass, and remains indefinite, as Zechariah moves from revelation of the present and rumination about the past to prophesying of the future. It is in two pieces.

You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Here we have the very specific prophecy aimed at the infant John the Baptist, followed by something further on. Note that "the dawn from on high shall break upon us" is presented as a future event, while the raising up of the Savior is presented as something that has just happened now -- so I am inclined to think that the breaking of the dawn does not represent the birth of Christ, but something else. The proclamation of the kingdom of God -- the central of the five Mysteries of Light -- seems to fit.

These three parts of the prayer -- past, present, future -- are bracketed by, shall we say, two timeless bits. The introduction is eternal:

Blessed be the Lord,The God of Israel;

...and the conclusion, which isn't part of what Zechariah said, of course, but we add it to the end of all the canticles, is, er, also concerned with past, present, and future, reminding us that the whole shebang is eternally the doing of the Three-in-One:

Glory to the Father,and to the Son,and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, Amen.

I am not sure why the overall structure jumped out at me just then, but it did, and I rather appreciate the canticle a bit more now. It seems a coherent whole: less a prayer to be mumbled through, and more a piece of poetry. Something composed.

Comments

[nancyo]

Thank you for these insights which break open the meaning and highlight the beauty of the canticle of Zechariah. I find the canticle to be quite poetic, but I can say that since I only attempt the LOTH on an annual basis, which isn't quite frequent enough to become old hat.

[MelanieB]

I don't think I'd consciously noticed that past, present, future structure before so as to label it as such; but I have noticed the sense of movement in time.

I go back and forth between the canticles seeming old and stale and then there will be a period when they seem always new and fresh.

I started listening to the Divine Office podcasts in part because hearing the canticles makes them seem much fresher. I especially love when they chant them.

I've always thought that "the dawn from on high" is Christ himself. One of his titles in the antiphons leading up to Christmas is "Oriens" which is often translated as "daystar" but which means dawn. In my mind that line is connected with the image of the Paschal candle and Easter Vigil. That moment when the dark church suddenly leaps into brightness from all the massed candles is one of my favorites in the whole year. Once I watched the sun rise from the deck of a ferry on the Adriatic going from Italy to Greece and the Easter vigil reminds me of that vigil, watching the sky go from full dark and how it took forever and then suddenly there was first the tiniest glimmer of light and then slowly the entire sky grew more and more pale and then there is was: the dawn!

[Bearing]

I agree that "the dawn from on high" represents Christ, but the act of "the dawn from on high shall break upon us" seems to be placed in the future, while the Incarnation is placed in the present from Zechariah's point of view. So the "breaking upon us" is something that Zechariah prophesies that Christ *shall* do -- it doesn't, I think, refer to the Incarnation ("God has raised up a savior.")