My Family Prayer Book

   2026-10-18 Twenty-ninth Sunday in ordinary time Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 Isaiah prophesied through the reigns of Hezekiah through Manasseh, so about 740 to 700 BC, whereas Cyrus became King of Persia around 559 BC and conquered Babylon around 539 BC and and issued the decree allowing the Jews to return home in 538 BC. Therefore there is a gap of 160 years or more before the prophesy and the event. Modern scholars now believe Isaiah chapters 40-55, including 45:1, were written during the Babylonian exile, around 540 BC, when Cyrus was already on the rise. If one goes with this view, then the author lived only a few years before Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon. Psalm 96 Psalm 96 is one of five psalms in Book Four (90-106) of the Psalter classified as pure exultation/enthronement psalms to Yahweh as the divine King.      By singing a new song that looks to the future     By confessing his greatness     By glorifying him (doxology).     By worsh...

   2022-Jan-16: Second Sunday in Ordinary Time   Isaiah 62:1-5 The situation in the passage from "third Isaiah" grew out of the frustration between promise and reality.  The Jewish faithful had abandoned their God and as a result their land was laid waste by  Nebuchadnezzar who not only destroyed the Temple but took many into slavery to Babylon. Some 50 or 60 years later, the Persian King Cyrus in  539 BC proclaimed an end to captivity, and allowed the Jews to return back to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple (allegedly he gave back some of the Temple treasures and provided some funds for the rebuilding).  The change in name from forsaken/desolate to myDelight/Espoused indicates a change not only in name but also in status, as name changes often did in scripture (Jacob/Israel, Abram/Abraham).  But the returning Jews came back to a desolate landscape -  they were still subjects of foreign rulers — first the Persians, then Greeks, and finall...