Appreciating Jesus' Earthly Ancestors

Back when I was studying scripture in seminary, a common approach to the "infancy narratives" (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2) was to see each as in some sense a summary of or introduction to its particular Gospel's themes. In a famous commentary (The Birth of the Messiah, 1979), Raymond Brown sought simultaneously "to point out their common tendencies and emphases" and "to show how each fits into the theology if its respective Gospel," indeed how "each is the essential Gospel story in miniature." Brown was well aware "that people who know little of Jesus, beyond his death on the cross and his resurrection, are often acquainted with the Christmas story, which accordingly offers a channel through which the Gospel can be made intelligible to them." 

Today, one might go even further and suggest that the Christmas story is likely more widely known than either Jesus'  cross or resurrection (especially the latter) and may offer not just a channel but almost the only channel through which the Gospel may be made intelligible to many!

For several years I tried to make it an annual Advent practice to review Brown's commentary in the days and weeks prior to Christmas. Then in 2012 Pope Benedict XVI came out with his own wonderful volume of meditations on the infancy narratives, a "dialogue with the texts," that asks the essential questions: "is what I read here true? dies it concern me? If so, how?" So, since then I have made it an annual Advent activity to re-read - with great profit - the Pope Emeritus' Jesus of Nazareth:The Infancy Narratives. 

The first text Benedict treats is Matthew's account of Jesus genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17), which he treats together with Luke's alternative account (Luke 3:23-38) and with John's familiar Prologue (John 1:1-18). The latter is, of course, the Roman rite's Gospel for the principal Mass on Christmas, a text (that is, its first 14 verses) which also used to be regularly read at the end of every Mass - until the tragic abolition of that edifying practice by Pope Paul VI.

Not quite so tragic - but unfortunate nonetheless - is the omission of Matthew's genealogy of Jesus from the Sunday lectionary. As best I can tell, the only occasion when its reading is obligatory at Mass is today, December 17, this year the Saturday before the 4th Sunday of Advent. 

(The intriguing question of what is omitted in our ostensibly expanded Lectionary is one which has begun to get more attention. See, for example, Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table  of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite, compiled by Matthew P. Hazell, 2016.)

Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, with its long list of unfamiliar foreign names, is obviously a challenge to read and probably appears boring to today's depleted attention spans. All the more reason, then, to engage the text seriously and carefully - for understanding who Jesus is, where he comes from, remains fundamental to any commitment to Christian discipleship. And Jesus' Jewish descent from Abraham and David is an essential component of who he is and where he comes from. God's choice of Abraham, who himself entered the biblical account at the end of a long genealogy (Genesis 11:26), represented a decisive turning point in salvation  history, as God covenanted with one particular family and the nation that descended from it in order to save the whole human race. At the same time, Matthew's account also - through the jarring inclusion of the names of four Old Testament women - heralds the Church's eventual mission to the Gentile world, the final fulfillment of the promise that through Abraham all the world would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).  In Pope Benedict's words, "through them the world of the Gentiles enters the genealogy of Jesus - his mission to Jews and Gentiles is made manifest." Finally, the account concludes uniquely with the mention of Mary, whose virginal conception of Jesus identifies her as "a new beginning" and jesus as "a new creation."

In this, as in so many matters, we would do well to learn from the Eastern Churches, with their tradition of celebrating the "Forefathers" of Jesus on the Sunday before Christmas. 

We celebrate today the memory of the ancestors of Christ. sing with fervor a hymn of praise to Christ the Savior who magnified them among all  nations. He is the Lord who does wondrous deeds because he is powerful and mighty, and who shows us his strength through these Ancestors. The greatest of them all is Mary, the immaculate maiden of God, the undefiled one. From her Christ came forth to give life to all: eternal salvation and paradise without end. (Byzantine Vespers of the Forefathers of Jesus)

(Photo: two panels of a 12th-13th century "Jesse Tree" window, Canterbury Cathedral)

OL of Guadalupe

These past six years, for the first time in my priestly career, I have served in a parish which lacks a Latino community. So the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe comes and goes for me each year without the overwhelming attention I used to experience elsewhere. But the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and its particular prominence in the liturgical calendar in the United States speaks directly to the demographic destiny of the Church in the United States and to the multiple pastoral challenges facing the future for the Church in this country. For these and for reasons even more fundamental, this patronal feast of the Church on this American continent is an occasion which must not pass unnoticed. 

The most fundamental reason, of course, the reason the vision on the hill of Tepeyac was the decisive event in this continent's history, is the story itself and what it reveals about God's presence and action in our world. At a time when the Native American population in Mexico was defeated and dispirited, having lost their gods and temples and compelled to build churches for an apparently alien European God, when the good news of Christ came apparently camouflaged by the bad news of conquest and cultural destruction, Saint Juan Diego received the heavenly command to build a church, and in the process Christ's Church began to be built up on this continent, through the encounter of European and Native cultures so dramatically symbolized in the iconography of the image Our Lady imprinted on Juan Diego's tilma. This 16th-century building up of the Church in America echoed the earlier experience of Saint Francis of Assisi, commanded to rebuild a ruined local church as the symbolic starter for reinforcing the tottering structure of late medieval Christendom. These stories celebrate the perennial power of the Gospel to be planted and built and rebuilt - evangelization and re-evangelization rooted not in the tearing down but in the building up of institutions in and through which God's great love, compassion, help, and protection may be continually revealed and experienced, as Our Lady promised to Saint Juan Diego.

Today, as Saint Juan Diego's spiritual heirs face frightening new threats and challenges, the Church in America continues to struggle to achieve that fullness of encounter that may bring the Church's building and rebuilding on this continent to its fulfillment.

Patience and Joy

Be patient, says the letter of James, until the coming of the Lord. For many of us, patience can be a challenge at any time. For most of us, it is especially so during this annual holiday season. It is one of the many paradoxes of our peculiar modern way of life that we manage to be busiest precisely at the very time of year when everything in nature is telling us it is time to slow down. Winter is nature’s way of slowing us down.  Note, for example, James’s reference to the farmer, who waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it, until it receives the early and the late rains. Back before modern technology made us think of ourselves as so superior to and separate from the natural order of things, everything naturally slowed down in winter. All sorts of activities came to a halt. Outdoor work - and even wars - stopped for the season. Of course, modern technology has made all these activities possible even in winter and, in dangerously changing our climate, may actually be in the process of largely eliminating winter - and lots more as well.

Popular folkloric customs like our Advent Wreath remind us that when winter was really winter, people paused. The Advent Wreath originated in the common practice of removing the wheels from carts at the beginning of winter. The peculiar custom developed of decorating a wheel with branches and candles. If the light of the candles came to signify the bright light of Christ, coming to penetrate the dark night of our present world, the wheel itself signifies our readiness to slow down enough to be able to see the light despite the winter dark.

It may or may not have been winter, but John the Baptist was certainly in the dark. Confined in Herod’s prison, he too was looking for light and so sent his disciples to Jesus to ask: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?

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John’s problem (besides being in prison) was whether or not his life’s mission had really made sense. John had confidently proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom and had forcefully challenged people to repentance. Just how successful he was is hard to gauge, but he obviously had made an impression.

He had also acquired enemies – enemies powerful enough to put an end to his preaching and put him in prison. He had, however, also made disciples, whom he now sent to evaluate Jesus.

Jesus’ (somewhat indirect) answer was meant to reassure John, by recalling the biblical prophecies in which they both believed. Look, Jesus seemed to be saying, the things that are supposed to happen when the Messiah comes really are happening. What more evidence do you need? “Go, and tell John what you hear and see.” In other words, the reality of the kingdom is happening – happening here, happening now!

The Gospel gives us no record of John’s reaction to Jesus’ response. He leaves the scene with his question. But it’s a question that the world keeps asking: Are you, Jesus, the one who is to come, or should we be looking elsewhere? There are, after all, a lot of other places one could look, a lot of other places where people do in fact look. We may rush through the world at an increasingly fast pace. But it is a world full of confusion and chaos, of broken hearts and broken lives, haunted, as yet another year comes to an end, by so many painful memories, lost opportunities, unfulfilled longings, and ruptured relationships. On top of that, we now live in a deeply divided country of bitterly angry people, polarized almost evenly along ethnic, racial, educational, generational, and geographical lines, while anxiety rather than hope seems to be the dominant feeling for so much of the contemporary world.

So John’s question cannot just go away – unless, of course, one is prepared to give up and abandon hope entirely.

That John was not willing to do, and people generally have not been willing to do. That is why Christmas is so important, now maybe more than ever. In the dark winter night, full of fear, worry, and anxiety, in this long night of the present, Christmas comes in answer to John’s question – and our question.

Today’s rose vestments tell us to be joyful. Rejoice, Saint Paul tells us, the Lord is near. In the words of the familiar Sussex Carol, Then why should men on earth be so sad, Since our Redeemer made us glad? But it seems that joy can be just as challenging as patience!

Christmas, of course, commemorates an historical event – the birth of Jesus, some 2000+ years ago. Our celebration of Christmas, however, is only in part about remembering an event in the past. It is also – and primarily – about the future for which the coming of Christ into our world makes it possible for us to hope, even now in the present.  As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, 10 years ago in his encyclical On Christian Hope: “If we cannot hope for more than is attainable at any given time, or more than is promised by political or economic authorities, our lives will soon be without hope. It is important to know that I can always continue to hope, even if in my own life, or the historical period in which I am living, there seems to be nothing left to hope for.”

It was as the historical spokesman for our hope – the perennial hope of men and women of every time and place – that John in prison posed his question, a powerful question, a question the world keeps on asking.  To us, as to John, Jesus challenges us to pay patient attention, and so to hear and see the signs – the powerful signs – of God’s presence and action in our lives and in our world, enabling us - and inviting us - to live in hope. And because it is we (who continue Christ’s life and mission in the world as his Church) who are now the voice of Christ for the world to hear and the face of Christ for the world to see, it is we who are being asked John’s question and we who must answer it by the witness of our own hope – hope for ourselves and hope for the whole world.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 11, 2016.

Godspeed, John Glenn

Another marker of the end of an era came yesterday when Mercury Astronaut and 4-term Democratic US Senator from Ohio, John Glenn (1921-2016) died at 95. After Sputnik in October 1957 and Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first-ever orbit of the earth in April 1961, the US desperately needed and wanted first to catch up to - and then to surpass - the Soviets in space. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn flew "Friendship 7" to become the first American astronaut to orbit the earth and immediately was transformed into a national hero, the likes of whom we have scarcely seen since. 

I am sure all of my generation remember that flight well. We remember the words he was sent into space with, "Godspeed, John Glenn," which in a sense became the entire country's words to him then and since. Six days later, the new national hero gave an admirable address to a Joint Session of Congress (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZPzewFpvpg).

John Glenn, the heroic astronaut, was a down-to-earth midwesterner, who married his childhood sweetheart in 1943 and remained happily married for 73 years. He was a kind of poster boy for how America wanted to see itself in the Cold War. For 24 years, as a 4-term Democratic Senator from Ohio, Glenn attempted to apply the values of that "New Frontier" American Dream to the challenges of his day, and in his retirement he promoted Civics Education, something so sadly lacking and sorely needed in America today.

Compared to today's alternative America of polarization, divisive identity politics, and malevolent fake news, John Glenn was the real deal, whom all of us could identify with and admire. He represented the values we have lost because we so carelessly let them go.

Godspeed, John Glenn!

Full of Grace

It was 30 years ago, but I can recall it as if it were yesterday. My very first phone call, my first day at my first assignment after leaving the seminary, was a call from someone wanting my advice because the devil was throwing things at him.  For a moment, I was at a loss as to how to answer.  Nothing in my seminary training had, so it seemed at first, quite prepared me for this conversation. Eventually, however, as we talked, the right answer came to me, which is, of course, that Christ has already decisively defeated the Devil, for God is more powerful than Satan or sin.

And that is essentially what today’s celebration is about.

Early in 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a poor, rather sickly girl in a riverside grotto in an off-the-beaten-track town in southern France named Lourdes, and identified herself with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” At the time, the young visionary, Bernadette Soubirous, did not understand at all the meaning of those words. She certainly did not know that intellectuals, in fact, had argued about their meaning for centuries, or that, in 1497 the University of Paris had decreed that no one should be admitted to the University without swearing to assert and defend the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Imagine if that rule were still in force today! Only four years before the events in Lourdes, in 1854, had Blessed Pope Pius IX dogmatically defined the essence of the Church’s belief about Mary’s Immaculate Conception – that, thanks to the salvation accomplished by her Son, Jesus, Mary was preserved from all sin from the beginning of her earthly existence and thus came into the world completely holy.

She is, as the English poet, William Wordsworth famously called her:

Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast.

That was one of my 8^th grade teacher’s favorite quotes. She often used that title for Mary - Our tainted nature's solitary boast - and never more so than when referring to the Immaculate Conception.

Why any of this matters, what it means for us, here and now, is what today’s celebration is all about.

The scripture readings we have just heard suggest a comparison, first popularized by the Fathers of the Church, between Eve, the mother of all the living, and Mary, as the New Eve,” mother of Jesus and mother of the Church.

The passage we just heard from Genesis highlights the damage we sinful humans have done to ourselves - and to the whole rest of the world. It illustrates the seriousness of sin and our resulting alienation from God and one another. Mary, however, Immaculate Mary, represents the effect of God’s much greater power – and his powerful plan to save us from ourselves.

Calling Eve the mother of all the living celebrated the fact that, in spite of sin, human life continued – the very first sign that God would never give up on us. Of course, the serpent still lives and continues his mischief, but his doom is already certain.

God’s plan for our salvation, the mystery decided upon from all eternity and hidden for centuries, has been realized in Jesus Christ and is now revealed in the life and mission of the Church, as St. Paul explains in his letter to the Ephesians from which we have just heard.

Mary’s holiness at the very beginning of her earthly life, thanks to the salvation accomplished by her Son, represents the Church’s holiness at its beginning and invites us to look forward to the Church as it will one day be in the perfect holiness of God’s kingdom - and to our place in that kingdom, thanks again to the salvation accomplished by Mary’s Son.

Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 8, 2016.

(Photo: Stained glass window celebrating the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the apse of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Knoxville TN.)