The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today provide a
meditation on the both/and involvement of the Plan of God and human decision in
the history and present living of the Children of God. A first glance at the genealogy
of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew may not be enough for us to appreciate the
construction of this passage which makes it more than a linking of Jesus to the
line of David, which would be extremely important for the Jews and Jewish
Christians to whom Matthew addresses this Gospel. Friar Jude Winkler points out
the pattern of 14 repeated 3 times as the proclamation of Jesus as the
superlative “David”. Matthew does not detail the “yes” of Mary, in this account
of Jesus birth, yet Mary is an unusual, unexpected choice of God to be Mother
of Jesus. Friar Jude points out that the “maleness” of this genealogy of Jesus
makes reference to unusual women who made choices which were crucial in the
path of the Divine Plan. The challenge of praising “predestination”, as Paul
does in the passage of the letter to the Romans while celebrating the “choice”
of Mary (and the decision of Joseph to keep Mary from the traditional ‘stoning’)
is the edge or boundary where we faithfully acknowledge that God is Lord even
of time and the linear, “perfect” path of a human oriented revelation and
predictability is not the Way of God, who uses and redeems frail human nature
to accomplish the Plan.
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