Lector's Notes

 To the home page

of Lector's Notes

First Sunday of Advent, Year B, November 27, 2005

First reading, Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7

The Historical Situation: Around 600 BC, the Babylonians took the Jews out of the promised land and kept them in exile (a.k.a. the Babylonian Captivity) for about 60 years. When Cyrus, a new emperor, took over Babylon, he sent the Jews home. This reading is set in that troubled period when Judah was trying to put itself back together after returning from Exile. To get the flavor of it, imagine how American Southerners might have felt during Reconstruction, or a contemporary family might feel when they return to a fire-damaged home.

Proclaiming It: The reading contains a pathetic mix of feelings: guilt, outrage at God alternating with praise of God, humility, anguish and hope. Read it to yourself one sentence at a time, naming the feeling captured in that one sentence. Then do the next sentence, and so on. Make a mental catalog (or even a paper list) of each feeling.

Then practice reading it aloud, making sure you pause wherever the feeling changes. This is a hard passage to read. It's even harder for a listener to understand if the sentences just tumble out rapidly. Give your listeners all the help you can.

Second Reading, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Our Liturgical Setting: We wait for Christ in two ways. The early Sundays of Advent always carry on the end-of-the-world theme, from the last Sundays of the preceding liturgical year. In this theme, we wait for Christ to come again in glory, to judge the living and the dead. The later Sundays of Advent celebrate a different theme, the coming of the Messiah in the flesh, when Jesus was born of Mary.

The Historical Situation: Today's second reading comes from an early letter of Saint Paul, written while he and his audience were sure that Christ's second coming was just around the corner.

Proclaiming It: To bring this out, when you read it, emphasize the phrases that appear here in bold print:

...Likewise, the witness I bore to Christ has been so confirmed among you that you lack no spiritual gift as you wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will strengthen you to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Several other commentaries on these passages. All are thoughtful, all quite readable, from the scholarly to the popular.
Links may be incomplete more than a few weeks before the "due date."
Lutheran pastor and college teacher Dan Nelson's notes for a study group. Dan explains the texts verse-by-verse, and sometimes word-by-word, with cross-references to other Bible passages. Especially useful if you're puzzled about the meaning of a word or phrase in the readings. Father Frank Cleary's 2002 column from the Saint Louis Review Bible Study pages of Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, Picayune, Mississippi.
This page gives a short history of the development of advent and a meditation on how the modern liturgy expresses its many meanings.
The Text This Week Links to Lectionaries of many churches, homilies, art works, movies touching scriptural themes, and other resources on the week's scripture Father Roger Karban's 2002 syndicated column about these readings,

Another of his columns, of date uncertain

and a third column 		Saint Louis University's excellent new liturgy site
This site posts its pages only a week before the given Sunday, and keeps its back issues posted for only about eight weeks.

The Lectionary selections in the frame at the left, if any, are there for your convenience. The publishers of the page in that frame have no connection, except for membership in the one Body of Christ, with the publisher of this page. Likewise the publishers of the pages on the links above.

Return to Lector's notes home page

Send email to the author.

Last modified: Sun Nov 6 16:48:50 CST 2005