NOTES for Mat 1:1-25
Today at the liturgy we read the whole first chapter of Matthew's Gospel, including Christ's genealogy and the account of His Nativity in Bethlehem. The entire structure of this chapter is shaped by a distinctive movement of the narrative from Adam, the first of Christ's ancestors according to the flesh, to the moment when Joseph gives the newborn Child the name Jesus. On the feast day itself, we will once again read the account of the Nativity from this chapter, followed by the account of the Magi's adoration. Today, however, it is important for us to see this entire human history contained in the long list of names from Adam to Jesus.
With his characteristic desire to arrange the information he presents systematically, the evangelist Matthew offers us a rather conventional outline of history's course, dividing it into three periods of fourteen generations each. Clearly, the numbers he gives are symbolic rather than literal. In its details, Matthew's genealogy differs from Luke's because of the particular features of the Jewish system of kinship and fatherhood. Yet these details are not what matters to the evangelist. Strictly speaking, he gives the genealogy of Joseph, Mary's husband, who accepts the Child born to her as his own and protects and serves Him until the end of his life. To a certain degree, this is the calling of each one of us.
In speaking of the Nativity, the evangelist Matthew leaves the Annunciation outside the scope of his account and directs our attention above all to Joseph's faith. By believing the Angel, Joseph rises above human weakness and limitation and becomes a participant in God's saving action. In Joseph, and later in Christ's disciples, all humanity receives the Christ Child. For the Nativity is the culmination of the entire history of falling away from God and seeking paths of return, of resisting God and of salvation. All human loneliness, powerlessness, and mortality come to an end for us in the cave at Bethlehem, where the One is born who will remain with us always, to the close of the age.