The Book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Matthew provides the genealogy to situate Jesus as a concrete historical figure, not a myth, not the result of poetic imagination. But this gives rise to the scandal of particularity. Why would the messiah be born at one moment and not another, at one place and not another? There is too much here to penetrate entirely, but of this mystery Paul said:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (see Galatians 4:4-5).
We see the genealogy especially acknowledges the ties of Jesus to Abraham, since through him the promises God made to Abraham would finally be realized, and to David, since Jesus was the new son of David, through him the promises made to David would also be unleashed. We know that part of the reason Jesus didn't come immediately after the fall of Adam and Eve was because God desired first to prepare a people for his coming, to set them apart, and to help them come to understand their need for a Messiah. Hence it made sense that genealogy included those who were, far from perfect, known for their sinfulness, for Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. In including Gentiles in this family tree God revealed his desire to bring the blessings of Abraham to all nations.
Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.
When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,
but before they lived together,
she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.
But what if one of the reasons the fullness of time was there and then at that specific moment in Bethlehem was because God himself was waiting on Mary? We know that in many ways God took the initiative in preparing Mary, bestowing on her a fullness of grace. But all of this may have been a result of the fact that he foreknew the way she would fully commit all of her graced freedom back to him in speaking her fiat.
Today we celebrate the birth of Mary, for it was indeed through her above all that God desired to give Jesus to the world. It is true that others in the genealogy were sinners and that this did not inhibit the coming of the Messiah through them. In them and in the Gentiles we see demonstrations of whom God would gather around Jesus. But in Mary we see perfectly demonstrated how correspondence to the gift of grace looked in a human life. And this is not at odds with his desire to welcome sinners. For Mary too, being so close to the heart of Jesus, welcomed all whom her son would welcome. Rather than sinners finding Jesus inapproachably distant because of his divine origin, they could see that God was able to perfect even mere mortals who would cooperate with his grace.
In the birth of Mary the fullness of time had come. The one who would welcome all those whom her son desired to save had been born. She too was untarnished by sin, through the merit of her son, in order to help all people to have a firm ground for hope in him.
For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.
We might wonder why such a figure didn't come after Jesus, rather than before him. But perhaps this was precisely so we could hope that Jesus could in some way also be born in us. After all, Jesus shared his mother was us so that she would be our mother as well. How else would we dare to hope that God would come so close to us? If he had simply forced his way into an unreceptive humanity that distance would in some way still remain. But he came through the willingness of his handmaid.
All this took place to fulfill
what the Lord had said through the prophet:
Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,
which means "God is with us."
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