We don’t often give enough attention to the Old Testament reading in our Sunday liturgy.  I was reminded of this during the week when I was preparing for Sr Joan Mack’s funeral Mass.  Sr Joan was a Sister of Our Lady of Sion, a much loved member of the Congregation and a humble and quiet contributor to the work of justice and peace.  Her funeral Mass was celebrated last Thursday, 6 July.

The Sion Sisters were founded to “witness in the Church God’s faithful love for the Jewish people and to work towards the promises of justice and peace which were proclaimed by the prophets and Jesus Christ for all humankind”.  The name chosen for the Congregation by the founder was Notre Dame de Sion (Our Lady of Sion) indicating the significance of Mary, the first daughter of Sion, who lived to the full the faith and hope of her people.

We can sometimes forget the strong and deep roots that Christianity has with the Jewish witness to God’s enduring covenant with God’s chosen people.  And the First Testament is replete with discourse and discovery as to who the God of Israel is and who that God is calling the chosen people to be.

The first reading for this week’s Sunday liturgy comes from the prophet Zechariah (chapter 9:9-10).

The Lord says this:
‘Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion!
Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem!
See now, your king comes to you;
He is victorious, he is triumphant

In these first four lines Zechariah is capturing the attention of the reader!  This is great news.  Finally God is sending them a King who will ride victoriously through the towns and fight off the enemies and show the world that Israel is the strongest of nations, not to be reckoned with.  However, the following lines must have stopped them short.  Zechariah continues:

Humble and riding on a donkey.
On a colt, the foal of a donkey
He will banish chariots….and horse…the bow of war will be banished.
He will proclaim peace for the nations.

The prophets again and again dash the expectations of people that God will send a warrior King to save them and hold them up as great.  The vision of God is for a world in which nations live together in peace and harmony.  It is a vision for non-violent means of resolving differences and living together in peace.  It is a vision that continues, it would seem, to elude much of the world.

However, it is the constant call of the prophetic voices of the Old Testament and it was the way of Jesus Christ himself, who rejected force and violence even when it led to his own death.

Sr Joan was a humble person who, in small ways, visited the sick, advocated for the poor and worked for justice.  She was indeed a Sister of Our Lady of Sion.  She shared in the mission and vision of our God for a just and peaceful world.  She understood that the biblical message of peace was not just meant for Israel, or for the followers of Christ, but for the whole of humanity.

She left us a good example of how delving deeply into the Jewish-Christian tradition can lead to living a life dedicated to non-violence and the building of a better world for all.

Hopefully our own contemplation of the Jewish-Christian Scriptures can lead us down the same path.

By Fr Brendan Reed