By Michael Pakaluk
Whoever prays the Divine Office will say the Benedictus every morning, for it is the concluding hymn of Lauds (the morning prayer). It is also called “The Canticle of Zechariah,” the father of John the Baptist, who intoned the Benedictus (“Blessed be God”) when his newborn son was circumcised, on the eighth day.
More precisely, he sang it after the ceremony of the imposition of the name. If ancient Jewish practice was like the current one: first, the child was circumcised, an act understood as his entry into the covenant of Abraham. Then, his father declared the child’s name, which the parents would have kept secret until that moment.
The circumcision ceremony was a festive gathering of friends and relatives. Apparently, it was so evident to the crowd that the child should be called “Zechariah,” like his father, that they began to pronounce that name spontaneously, as if it were a done deal (Luke 1:59). Zechariah remained mute; therefore, it fell to the mother, Elizabeth, to contradict them: “No; he shall be called John” (v. 60, Douay-Rheims). It was an appropriate role for her, for she had been the one who believed the angel’s words.
And yet, it was the father who had the final authority over the name (as when Joseph would later name Jesus). Therefore, they turned to Zechariah.
On this, Luke writes curiously: “And they made signs to his father, to know what he would have him called,” which has puzzled commentators. After all, it was Zechariah who was mute: why did they need to make signs to him? The best answers are that Zechariah was punished with deafness as well as muteness; or that the crowd committed the very human error of supposing they needed to communicate with him “in his language.” If the latter, how endearing that Luke preserves this little detail, clearly remembered by all those present as a sympathetic blunder!
There was a writing tablet at hand. And in this there is a lesson, because the tablets of that time were like our notepads now. They were always available, and therefore apostles like Matthew, who was a scribe by trade, would have been writing on them continually. But those wax and fine wood tablets were fragile and have not survived from classical antiquity except in unusual circumstances, for example, if they remained in cold, dry caves.
Thus, Zechariah takes the tablet and writes: “John is his name.” Luke says that the crowd “marveled” at this. They marveled; they were perplexed; they were amazed. In the Gospels, wonder is the typical reaction of a superficial and unreflective crowd when they encounter something strange.
Just then, however, Zechariah recovers the ability to speak. And, significantly, his first words are not “John is his name,” but he blesses God. And now the crowd responds with fear, because they recognize that some numinous power is at work there, in their midst.
This new fear has infused some sense into them, because they see that the miracle was performed not so much by the father, but to point to the newly named son: “What then will this child become?” they ask one another.
Zechariah answers their question, and that is his Canticle or Hymn. He uttered those words as prophecy, being “filled with the Holy Spirit,” as Luke writes.
One might think he composed the Hymn in advance, during his long months of silence, in the hope that one day he might sing it. But Luke’s words rule out that interpretation. What the Spirit inspires someone to say is precisely what is not prepared in advance (“the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say,” Luke 12:12). And yet, if it was inspired in the moment, could those words have been recovered afterward with exactness? Even without the help of the Spirit, in an oral culture, with the whole crowd working on it (“all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea”), yes.
For the Hymn itself, I recommend the Douay-Rheims translation (here), which closely follows the Greek and the Vulgate, and preserves all its striking imagery:
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us (v. 69).
Yes, it is like the virile power of a strong ram with its horns. The Savior is a warrior, mighty in battle. “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle” (Psalm 24:7-8, RSVCE).
And then:
Through the tender mercy of our God.
The “tender mercies” are the place where we feel the passion of mercy. A pure spirit has no tender mercies or similar passions. The phrase may be metaphorical, of course, and yet it points to the Incarnation: “And seeing the multitudes, he had compassion on them [literally, felt mercy in his tender mercies], because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). After all, Zechariah says: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” “for he has visited his people.” He dwelt among us (John 1:14).
From this divine mercy,
The Orient from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
The Orient is the morning star, which precedes the rising sun. The expression might simply refer to Mary, who had visited Zechariah and whom all would later call Stella Matutina, the Morning Star. (Remember: it is the Spirit who speaks through him.) Or “the Orient” may mean the dawn, as in the antiphon: “O Oriens —brightness of the eternal light, sun of justice.” And then it points to a time of Advent.
We search our streaming services for an Advent hymn comparable to our beloved Christmas hymns: the Spirit has given us the best of all.
About the author
Michael Pakaluk, specialist in Aristotle and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is Professor of Political Economy at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their children. His collection of essays, The Shock of Holiness (Ignatius Press), is now available. His book on Christian friendship, The Company We Keep, is available from Scepter Press. He contributed to Natural Law: Five Views, published by Zondervan last May, and his most recent book on the Gospel came out with Regnery Gateway in March, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel. You can follow him on Substack at Michael Pakaluk.