The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, invite us to contemplate our personal and corporate history to discover the Presence of God in our story.
Present in Community
The reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans declares God’s indomitable Love in Christ.
* [8:28–30] These verses outline the Christian vocation as it was designed by God: to be conformed to the image of his Son, who is to be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom 8:29). God’s redemptive action on behalf of the believers has been in process before the beginning of the world. Those whom God chooses are those he foreknew (Rom 8:29) or elected. Those who are called (Rom 8:30) are predestined or predetermined. These expressions do not mean that God is arbitrary. Rather, Paul uses them to emphasize the thought and care that God has taken for the Christian’s salvation.1
Psalm 13 is a prayer for deliverance from enemies.
* [Psalm 13] A typical lament, in which the psalmist feels forgotten by God (Ps 13:2–3)—note the force of the repetition of “How long.” The references to enemies may suggest some have wished evil on the psalmist. The heartfelt prayer (Ps 13:4–5) passes on a statement of trust (Ps 13:6a), intended to reinforce the prayer, and a vow to thank God when deliverance has come (Ps 13:6b).2
The Gospel of Matthew presents the Genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, and describes the birth of Jesus.
* [1:1–2:23] The infancy narrative forms the prologue of the gospel. Consisting of a genealogy and five stories, it presents the coming of Jesus as the climax of Israel’s history, and the events of his conception, birth, and early childhood as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. The genealogy is probably traditional material that Matthew edited. In its first two sections (Mt 1:2–11) it was drawn from Ru 4:18–22; 1 Chr 1–3. Except for Jechoniah, Shealtiel, and Zerubbabel, none of the names in the third section (Mt 1:12–16) is found in any Old Testament genealogy. While the genealogy shows the continuity of God’s providential plan from Abraham on, discontinuity is also present. The women Tamar (Mt 1:3), Rahab and Ruth (Mt 1:5), and the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba (Mt 1:6), bore their sons through unions that were in varying degrees strange and unexpected. These “irregularities” culminate in the supreme “irregularity” of the Messiah’s birth of a virgin mother; the age of fulfillment is inaugurated by a creative act of God.3
Susan Naatz recalls from her parenting experience an opportunity to remember that we are all called by God in ways that we may not have imagined. We won’t know how our next call may come but she hears God whispering, trust in me.
Adoption has been an incredible gift. We continually pray for the women who gave birth to our two adopted sons and entrusted them to us. We will be forever grateful and humbled. Those women are always in our hearts as we have loved, encouraged, and been inspired by these amazing young men as they have grown into adulthood. They were eventually joined by our third son who was another improbable surprise — God’s call also included a biological baby that we never thought would happen.4
Don Schwager quotes “Jesus' humanity revealed in the genealogy,” by Severus of Antioch (488-538 AD).
"One must bear in mind therefore that the Evangelists, or rather the Spirit speaking through them, took pains to ensure that their readers believed that Christ was truly God and truly human. Because of what they wrote, no one could possibly doubt that he is God by nature, beyond all variation, mutation or illusion, and that according to the ordered plan of God he was truly human. This is why John could say, on the one hand, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' John immediately adds, 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:1-2,14). Hence Matthew wrote appropriately, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.' On the one hand he is not able to be counted simply from natural generation among families, since it is written, 'Who shall declare his generation'? (Isaiah 53:8) "He is before the centuries and of one substance with the Father himself, from the standpoint of eternity. But by this genealogy he is also numbered among the families of humanity according to the flesh. For in truth, while remaining God, Christ became man without ceasing to be God, unaltered till the end of time. This is why there is also mention of the ancient patriarchs in the lineage, the narrative and observation of the times and vicissitudes that are indeed proper to human history. Through all this Matthew made it clear that Christ participates in our human generation and in our nature. Otherwise some might claim that he appeared in illusion and in imagination only, rather than by becoming genuinely human. Think of what might have been said if none of this had been written?" (excerpt from CATHEDRAL SERMONS, HOMILY 94)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 1:1-16, 18-23 comments that if Joseph and Mary had been able to see how their choices would affect the world, would it have been easier for them to say yes to God? Probably. But that makes it all the more remarkable; they made their choices in the dark, without knowing how everything would turn out.
Mary and Joseph were human, and like us, their understanding of what God would do through them was limited. But they went forward in trust, and God used them powerfully in his plan of salvation. In the same way, every time we say yes to God, we can trust that his plans for us are always bigger—and better—than our own. “Lord, help me respond to you with the same trust that Mary and Joseph showed.”6
Friar Jude Winkler explores Micah and Romans to share revelation about God’s plan. Matthew uses numerology based on the consonants in David to portray Jesus as the “Davidest”. Friar Jude reminds us of the Spirit acting in Matthew’s choice of the Greek translation of Isaiah to convey the virginity of Mary.
Nicholas King SJ, Tutor and Fellow in New Testament Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, comments that we may well lament: ‘where is God?’ The characters we meet in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus help us to answer that question. He relates their ordeals to assure us that God is in every story.
There are many other stories where we might go looking for the presence of God; but look at this, the end of the genealogy: ‘Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, the one called Messiah/Christ’. At this point we know that God has been at work, for the genealogy had started with these words: ‘the Book of the Genesis of Jesus Messiah/Christ, son of David, son of Abraham’. Not only that, but Matthew now produces a series of angels in four dreams to Joseph. We know that God is in the story, as first Joseph accepts Jesus as his son (1:24); then, secondly, at 2:14, Joseph takes his child and its mother to Egypt (of all unlikely places!); the third dream (2:19-20) brings them back to ‘the land of Israel’; and we know that God must be in the story when as a result of the fourth dream (2:22-23), Joseph gets to Galilee, and to an unheard-of village called Nazareth, from which the Messiah is ultimately going to emerge. This story, you may say, is filled with God.7
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, believes the proclamations of Paul were far too huge to be carried by the individual person. He is trying to find words and categories, searching for ever-new language to describe the corporate, historical, larger-than-life body and participative phenomenon we’re all caught up in, which he calls “the Body of Christ.”
We cannot easily be told that we, on our own, are evil, bad, sinful, or responsible. We’ll block it or deny it. But we cannot deny that we are a part of a species that has killed one hundred million people in wars within the last century. We don’t find ourselves resisting that quite as much because, somehow, we’re carrying this together. There is a level of acceptance as we move toward social accountability and social responsibility. We’re all participating in the evil of unjust systems and it’s at that level that we can and must carry the pain and hear that we are sinners. More positively, we must carry what seems like the complete opposite, that we are saints. Both are true at the same time, and believe it or not, “in Christ” they don’t cancel one another out! They include one another.8
Our ancestors in the faith present us today with the assurance that God is with us on our journey.
References
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