ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 2nd of December
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
ST HABACUC, PROPHET
Saint Habacuc [Habakkuk], the eighth of the Minor Prophets, probably flourished towards the end of the seventh century B.C.
Of this prophet’s birth-place, parentage, and life we have no reliable information. The fact that in his book he is twice called "the prophet" leads indeed one to surmise that Habacuc held a recognised position as prophet, but it manifestly affords no distinct knowledge of his person.
WAS HE A LEVITE?
Again, some musical particulars connected with the Hebrew text of his Prayer may possibly suggest that he was a member of the Temple choir, and consequently a Levite: but most scholars regard this twofold inference as questionable.
Hardly less questionable is the view sometimes put forth, which identifies Habacuc with the Judean prophet of that name, who is described in the deuterocanonical fragment of Bel and the Dragon, as miraculously carrying a meal to Daniel in the lion’s den.
In this absence of authentic tradition, legend, not only Jewish but also Christian, has been singularly busy about the prophet Habacuc.
LEGENDS
It has represented him as belonging to the tribe of Levi and as the son of a certain Jesus; as the child of the Sunamite woman, whom Eliseus restored to life; as the sentinel set by Isaias to watch for the fall of Babylon.
According to the "Lives" of the prophets, one of which is ascribed to St Epiphanius, and the other to Dorotheus, Habacuc was of the tribe of Simeon, and a native of Bethsocher, a town apparently in the tribe of Juda. In the same works it is stated that when Nabuchodonosor came to besiege Jerusalem, the prophet fled to Ostrakine (now Straki, on the Egyptian coast), whence he returned only after the Chaldeans had withdrawn; that he then lived as a husbandman in his native place, and died there two years before Cyrus’s edict of Restoration (B.C. 538).
Different sites are also mentioned as his burial-place. The exact amount of positive information embodied in these conflicting legends cannot be determined at the present day.
THE BOOK IS DIVIDED IN TWO PARTS
Apart from its short title the Book of Habacuc is commonly divided into two parts: the one reads like a dramatic dialogue between God and His prophet; the other is a lyric ode, with the usual characteristics of a psalm. The first part opens with Habacuc’s lament to God over the protracted iniquity of the land, and the persistent oppression of the just by the wicked, so that there is neither law nor justice in Juda: How long is the wicked thus destined to prosper? Yahweh replies that a new and startling display of His justice is about to take place: already the Chaldeans - that swift, rapacious, terrible, race - are being raised up, and they shall put an end to the wrongs of which the prophet has complained. Then Habacuc remonstrates with Yahweh, the eternal and righteous Ruler of the world, over the cruelties in which He allows the Chaldeans to indulge, and he confidently waits for a response to his pleading. God’s answer is in the form of a short oracle, which the prophet is bidden to write down on a tablet that all may read it, and which foretells the ultimate doom of the Chaldean invader. Content with this message, Habacuc utters a taunting song, triumphantly made up of five "woes" which he places with dramatic vividness on the lips of the nations whom the Chaldean has conquered and desolated.
The second part of the book bears the title: "A prayer of Habacuc, the prophet, to the music of Shigionot." Strictly speaking, only the second verse of this chapter has the form of a prayer. The verses following describe a theophany in which Yahweh appears for no other purpose than the salvation of His people and the ruin of His enemies. The ode concludes with the declaration that even though the blessings of nature should fail in the day of dearth, the singer will rejoice in Yahweh. Appended to chapter 3 is the statement: "For the chief musician, on my stringed instruments."
DATING THE PROPHECY OF HABACUC
Owing chiefly to the lack of reliable external evidence, there has been in the past, and there is even now, a great diversity of opinions concerning the date to which the prophecy of Habacuc should be ascribed.
Clement of Alexandria says that "Habacuc still prophesied in the time of Sedecias" (B.C. 599-588), and St Jerome ascribes the prophecy to the time of the Babylonian Exile. Some recent scholars. Others refer it to the time of Joakim (B.C. 610-599), either before Nabuchodonosor’s victory at Carchemish in B.C. 605; while others, mostly out-and-out rationalists, ascribe it to the time after the ruin of the Holy City by the Chaldeans. As might be expected, these various views do not enjoy the same amount of probability, when they are tested by the actual contents of the Book of Habacuc.
In the composition of his book, Habacuc displays a literary power which has often been admired. His diction is rich and classical, and his imagery is striking and appropriate. The dialogue between God and him is highly oratorical, and exhibits to a larger extent than is commonly supposed, the parallelism of thought and expression which is the distinctive feature of Hebrew poetry. The Mashal or taunting song of five "woes" which follows the dialogue, is placed with powerful dramatic effect on the lips of the nations whom the Chaldeans have cruelly oppressed. The lyric ode with which the book concludes, compares favourably in respect to imagery and rhythm with the best productions of Hebrew poetry. These literary beauties enable us to realize that Habacuc was a writer of high order.
THE CHAMPION OF ETHICAL MONOTHEISM
Most of the religious and moral truths that can be noticed in this short prophecy are not peculiar to it. They form part of the common message which the prophets of old were charged to convey to God’s chosen people. Like the other prophets, Habacuc is the champion of ethical monotheism.
For him, as for them, Yahweh alone is the living God; He is the Eternal and Holy One, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, Whose word cannot fail to obtain its effect, and Whose glory will be acknowledged by all nations. In his eyes, as in those of the other prophets, Israel is God’s chosen people whose unrighteousness He is bound to visit with a signal punishment.
THE ROLE OF THE CHALDAEANS
The special people, whom it was Habacuc’s own mission to announce to his contemporaries as the instruments of Yahweh’s judgment, were the Chaldeans, who will overthrow everything, even Juda and Jerusalem, in their victorious march. This was indeed at the time an incredible prediction, for was not Juda God’s kingdom and the Chaldean a world-power characterised by overweening pride and tyranny? Was not therefore Juda the "just" to be saved, and the Chaldean really the "wicked" to be destroyed?
The answer to this difficulty is found in the distich which contains the central and distinctive teaching of the book. Its oracular form bespeaks a principle of wider import than the actual circumstances in the midst of which it was revealed to the prophet, a general law, as we would say, of God’s providence in the government of the world: the wicked carries in himself the germs of his own destruction; the believer, on the contrary, those of eternal life.
"THE EARTH SHALL BE FILLED WITH THE GLORY OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF YAHWEH"
It is because of this, that Habacuc applies the oracle not only to the Chaldeans of his time who are threatening the existence of God’s kingdom on earth, but also to all the nations opposed to that kingdom who will likewise be reduced to naught, and solemnly declares that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahweh, as the waters cover the sea".
It is because of this truly Messianic import that the second part of Habacuc’s oracle is repeatedly treated in the New Testament writings as being verified in the inner condition of the believers of the New Law.
[He is also commemorated on January 15.]
(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)
[Names of people and places spelled as they are written in the Douay Rheims Bible]
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