15 November 2026 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Syro-Malabar Rite · Latin Rite · മലയാളം
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” Luke 1:13
The season of Suboro, the “good news”, opens not in Nazareth but in the Temple of Jerusalem, with an old priest burning incense. Zechariah and Elizabeth were “righteous before God”, yet they had no child, and they had grown old. God's first announcement in the New Testament is given to people who had prayed for years and seemed to have received no answer.
The Old Testament readings prepare us. Abraham and Sarah were given a son when it was humanly impossible; Abraham even laughed (Genesis 17:17). Hannah, barren and mocked, poured out her soul before the Lord in the sanctuary (1 Samuel 1:15) and became the mother of Samuel. Isaiah hears God say: “Do not fear, for I am with you.” The God of Israel brings life out of barrenness.
Zechariah's question is very human: “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man.” He asks for a sign, and he receives one: silence until the promise is fulfilled. St Paul shows the opposite attitude in Abraham, who “hoping against hope… believed” and “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God” (Romans 4:18, 20). Faith is not certainty that we can see; it is trust that God can do what he has promised.
John's mission is to go before the Lord “with the spirit and power of Elijah… to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:17). Suboro is that preparation for us: a season in which the Church, like Zechariah in the Holy Place, waits, prays and lets God speak.
Theme: “God hears our prayers, even when we have stopped hoping.”
The season of announcements begins with an old priest and his wife who had prayed for years for a child. Their story is the story of every family that waits, prays and is tempted to give up.
“I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD.” 1 Samuel 1:15
“Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children.” Luke 1:6–7
Apply: Bring to God again the prayer you have almost stopped praying.
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?”” Genesis 17:17
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” Luke 1:13
Apply: Do your daily duties faithfully; God often speaks in the middle of them.
“Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you.” Isaiah 41:10
“With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children … to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:17
Apply: Restore family prayer this week, even for ten minutes each evening.
The God who heard Zechariah hears us. His timing is not ours, but his promise does not fail.
Let us wait like Elizabeth, listen like Zechariah, and prepare our homes for the coming of the Lord.
Take-home resolution: Each evening this week, pray for one couple waiting for a child or for one family in sorrow.
Dear brothers and sisters, today the season of Suboro begins, the season of good news. And where does the good news begin? In the Temple, with an old priest named Zechariah, burning incense while the people pray outside.
Zechariah and Elizabeth were good people. St Luke says they were “righteous before God”. And yet they had no child, and now they were old. How many years they must have prayed! And perhaps they had stopped asking. Then the angel says: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.” God had not forgotten. God's answer came late, but not too late.
Zechariah could not believe it at once. “How will I know this? I am an old man.” And God gave him a strange sign: silence. For nine months he could not speak. That silence was a school. When John was born, the first thing Zechariah did with his freed tongue was to praise God.
Perhaps some of us here carry a prayer that God seems not to have answered: for a child, for a job, for a son who has gone away from the Church, for healing. Do not stop. Like Abraham, who “hoped against hope”, keep trusting. And use this season to prepare your heart, as John prepared a people for the Lord. Amen.
Children, do you like waiting? No! Waiting is hard. Zechariah and Elizabeth waited many, many years for a baby.
Then an angel came and said: “God has heard your prayer!” And God gave them a baby called John. John grew up to tell everyone: “Jesus is coming!”
When you pray, God always listens. Sometimes we must wait. Let's say together: “God hears my prayer!”
Lord God, you heard the prayer of Zechariah and Elizabeth and gave them a son to prepare the way of your Christ. Hear the prayers we have carried for so long, strengthen our faith when we cannot see, and make us a people prepared for the Lord. Amen.
Today the Syro-Malankara Church begins the season of Suboro, the “good news” or Annunciation. The first good news of the New Testament is not given in Nazareth but in the Temple of Jerusalem, to an old priest at the hour of incense. The Evening Gospel (Luke 1:1–17) already opens the scene with Luke's preface and the angel's promise.
The four Old Testament lessons all speak of God at work where human hope has run out. Sarah, too old to bear, is promised Isaac (Genesis 17). Ruth the Moabite binds herself to Naomi and to Naomi's God (Ruth 1). Hannah, barren and mocked, pours out her soul at the sanctuary (1 Samuel 1). Isaiah hears God say to a weak people, “Do not fear, for I am with you” (Isaiah 41). The Catholic Epistle (2 Peter 1:3–11) reminds us that God's promises make us “participants of the divine nature”.
We study three readings closely: Genesis 17:15–22, the Old Testament lesson that stands closest to the Gospel and to the Epistle; Romans 4:13–25, where Paul reads that same story as the school of faith; and Luke 1:5–25, the message to Zechariah. The key words are promise, barrenness and believing.
Setting.
Genesis 17 is the chapter of the covenant of circumcision. Abraham is ninety-nine years old (17:1). God changes his name from Abram to Abraham, “father of a multitude” (17:5), and gives circumcision as the sign of the covenant (17:9–14).
Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, is already thirteen (17:25), and Abraham seems to have settled on him as his heir. Today's verses make the promise sharper than ever before: the son of the promise will come from Sarah herself. Chapter 18 tells the same promise again, heard this time by Sarah at the tent door, where she too laughs (18:12) and the Lord asks, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (18:14).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”” (17:17)
Two gestures together: Abraham bows in worship and laughs in disbelief. God does not reject him. He takes the laugh and turns it into the child's name.
“God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac.” (17:19)
God's “No” to Abraham's smaller hope is a “Yes” to something greater than he dared to ask. Many unanswered prayers are of this kind.
“As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous;” (17:20)
The name Ishmael means “God hears” (16:11). Even when God chooses another path, he hears the father's prayer for his son.
How the Church reads it.
The New Testament reads Sarah's motherhood as the fruit of faith (Romans 4:19; Hebrews 11:11). The Catechism names Sarah among the holy women of the Old Covenant whose mission prepared for that of Mary: against all human expectation God chooses those who seemed powerless, to show his faithfulness to his promises (CCC 489). The angel's word to Mary, “nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), is the answer to the question asked at Abraham's tent.
Setting.
In Romans 1–3 Paul shows that all, Jews and Gentiles alike, need God's saving justice, and that it is given as a gift through faith in Christ (3:21–26). Chapter 4 brings Abraham as the proof from Scripture: “he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
In 4:9–12 Paul has noted that Abraham was counted righteous in Genesis 15, before he was circumcised in Genesis 17. So Abraham is the father both of the circumcised and of the Gentiles who believe.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (4:17)
Two titles of God: he raises the dead and he creates from nothing. Abraham's “dead” body, Sarah's barren womb and the tomb of Jesus are three places where this God has acted.
“Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,”” (4:18)
“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” (4:19)
A note on the text. Many later manuscripts read “he did not consider his own body”, as in older English Bibles. The oldest manuscripts, followed by the NRSV and the POC, say that he did consider it. Faith here does not close its eyes to the facts; it looks at them squarely and still trusts God.
“who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.” (4:25)
The words “handed over” echo the Greek of the Servant song (Isaiah 53:12). The Resurrection is not only proof of salvation; it belongs to salvation itself.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents Abraham as the model of the obedience of faith and quotes Paul: “hoping against hope” he believed (CCC 145–146). It cites Romans 4:25 to teach that the Paschal mystery has two sides: by his death Christ delivers us from sin, and by his Resurrection he opens the way to new life, which is above all justification (CCC 654). The Council of Trent called faith “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification” (Session 6, chapter 8). Catholics and Lutherans set out their shared understanding of this teaching in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999).
Setting.
Luke opens with a careful Greek preface for Theophilus (1:1–4, read at the Evening Gospel), then changes style and tells the story in the language of the Greek Old Testament. “King Herod of Judea” is Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC.
The priests were divided into twenty-four courses (1 Chronicles 24); the course of Abijah was the eighth (24:10). Each course served in the Temple for a week, twice a year. Incense was offered every morning and evening on the golden altar inside the Holy Place, and the priest was chosen by lot. Later Jewish tradition (the Mishnah) says that only priests who had never offered incense took part in that lot, so for Zechariah this was the hour of his life.
In that culture childlessness was felt as a public disgrace (1:25). Luke insists that it was not a punishment: both were “righteous before God” (1:6).
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” (1:13)
Which prayer? Perhaps the old prayer for a child, which he may have stopped praying; perhaps the priest's prayer for the redemption of Israel. In John both are answered at once.
“With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children,” (1:17)
The angel quotes Malachi 4:5–6, the last words of the prophets in our Old Testament. “Before him” means before the Lord God (v. 16). As the Gospel unfolds, the Lord whom John precedes is Jesus.
“But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.” (1:20)
The silence is both discipline and sign. When the child is named, Zechariah's mouth is opened and his first words are praise (1:64). The priest who could not bless the waiting people (v. 22) foreshadows the end of the Gospel, where Jesus lifts up his hands and blesses his disciples, who return to the Temple praising God (24:50–53).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism calls John the Lord's immediate precursor, sent to prepare his way, “more than a prophet” (CCC 523), and teaches that in him the Holy Spirit completes the preparation of the people for the Lord; he was filled with the Spirit even from his mother's womb (CCC 717–718). St Ambrose, commenting on Luke, praises Zechariah and Elizabeth as righteous in both priestly and married life (in substance). St Ephrem contrasts the priest who doubted and was made silent with the Virgin who believed and conceived the Word (in substance).
Mary also asked “How?”. Why was only Zechariah made silent?
Zechariah asked for proof: “How will I know that this is so?” (1:18). Mary asked how it would happen, since she had no husband, and then gave her full consent (1:34, 38). Elizabeth's words sum up the difference: “blessed is she who believed” (1:45).
Did Abraham lack faith when he laughed?
His laugh mixed wonder and doubt, but Paul can still say he “did not weaken in faith” (Romans 4:19), because Abraham obeyed and held on to the promise. Faith is not the absence of every question; it is trust that keeps walking with God.
Does Romans 4 mean good works do not matter?
No. Paul says that justification cannot be earned; it is God's gift received in faith. The same Paul says that what counts is “faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6). Good works are the fruit of grace, not the price of it.
Suboro opens the Malankara cycle of the Annunciation Sundays: the message to Zechariah, the message to Mary, the Visitation, the birth of John the Baptist, the revelation to Joseph, and the Sunday before Christmas. In the West Syriac tradition incense accompanies the great prayers of the priest, such as the Sedro, while the people stand and pray, just as the people prayed outside at the hour of incense in Luke. At every Holy Qurbono we stand where Zechariah stood, but we receive more than a promise: the One whom John announced comes to the altar in his Body and Blood.