Today we are starting a New Liturgical season, the season of the Glorious Birth of our Lord, Christmas, the Eastern-Maronite version of the Western-Latin, “Advent”.  As we travel in this season during the next Seven weeks, we will encounter people and experience events that changed lives 2000 years ago and are still changing lives today. We are going to meet an elderly couple a teenage girl and a middle aged man, a young Prophet... They are going to teach us a life altering and world changing truth, that it is: Never Too Late, and it is Never Too Early. 
   Before we look at today’s long Gospel reading Luke 1:5-25 (the longest of the year), we need to take a brief moment and look at some words from the prophet Malachi, written 400 years before Jesus is born, the sovereign God of the universe says, “I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me”. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Hosts. – Malachi 3:1,2.  Then Malachi – ends his book saying the following about John the Baptist: “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers…. – Malachi 4:5,6
   AND THEN - there are 400 years of silence. No book of the Bible is written, no prophet speaks. Some begin to wonder if God’s provision has left the nation. One generation to the next becomes a little more stiff necked, hard hearted, and cold. People aren’t walking with God as they ought and as they should anymore . Yet – there is a remnant, a few who are seriously devoted to the Lord. But, it’s still 400 silent years.  
   AND THEN - Zechariah whose name means God has remembered. God has remembered the promise to reward faithfulness. God has remembered the promise to hear prayers. But, especially, God has remembered the promise of Genesis 3:15 that the savior of all of creation, the Messiah will come, that sin will be defeated, that Satan will be crushed, the created order will be glorified. The angel of the Lord is standing at the "right" side of the altar of incense. The right side. This is no accident. Jewish angelology regarded the left side of the altar as the place for angels; only God used the right side. So tradition suggests to Zechariah that he is seeing God. Now, ever since man has sinned, no man can see God and live (Ex 33:20). So Zechariah is terrified! Which is why the angel says, "Do not be afraid" (Lk 1:13).
   Everything begins to change in Luke 1:5. An environment that is almost desperate for God’s intervention, Zechariah who also is desperate is chosen to lift the prayers to God. In him all the despair and doubt is symbolized, awaiting Salvation from God, for whom it is never too late for the old Zechariah and never too early for the young Mary.