NOTES for Mat 1:1-25

Compared with Mark's Gospel, which we have already read, this Gospel brings completely new information: Jesus did not come from heaven already grown and immediately begin preaching; He was born into this world just as every human being is born. The Son of God truly became human, taking human flesh upon Himself in exactly the same way we receive it. That is precisely why everything He will later do will concern all of us, because everything will be done in human nature. And His name, Jesus, means God's salvation for all humanity. To illustrate and explain this absolute humanity of Christ, the apostle Matthew gives His genealogy, built from several sevens, the number of fullness, and placing Him in the context of all sacred history, the whole chain of Covenants between God and humanity. And the quotation from Isaiah completes it, and with it, all the Old Testament prophecies.

Does origin matter for spiritual life or not? At first glance, the answer is obvious: of course not. Indeed, when we are talking about a person's relationship with God or with a neighbor, how important is it who his parents are and what nationality he is? Everything here is determined only by these relationships themselves. And the Kingdom is open to everyone who is ready to receive it, regardless of race, nationality, or religion.

And yet the evangelist gives a detailed genealogy of Jesus, beginning with Abraham. Of course, what matters here first of all is precisely that it begins with Abraham: the history of the people of God begins with Abraham. But on the other hand, through Abraham, according to the word of God, "all the clans living on the earth will be blessed." The Messiah was born a Jew, becoming the One through whom the promise God gave to Abraham was fulfilled.

And here the question of origin becomes precisely a spiritual question, not because God has favorites, but because someone must take responsibility for being God's helper in carrying out His purposes, and someone had to be born as the Messiah so that the Kingdom of God would become a reality. One people, one Messiah - for the salvation of all and of each person. And here origin turns out to matter: it obligates. It obligates one to take part in carrying out God's purpose. And to stay on the path that leads to the Kingdom.

From the very first line, faced with the need to enter into a list of relatives, we can be puzzled: why do we need this? After all, if Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnate on earth, what do Abraham or David have to do with it? And in general, for the consciousness of the modern person, torn out of the bond between times, the need for genealogies has faded away.

But they are important, and not only because they bind centuries and generations together. After all, God, by being born as a human being, entered into kinship with His creation, and therefore accepted a human genealogy. He accepts human flesh as it has become over many generations, with its heredity and the traces of centuries of transgressions. Yes, He Himself was born sinless; He will take the sins of the world upon Himself later, in the opinion of many interpreters, when He accepts John's baptism. But from the very moment of His birth Jesus accepted into His body human genes bearing information about the brokenness of human paths. Remaining sinless, He rejected this brokenness, but He did not avoid the consequences of sin and shared them with us. And therefore His acceptance of an earthly genealogy became one of the steps toward Golgotha.

And there is another important meaning of genealogies: thanks to them we see that the Lord entered into unity with all humanity by becoming incarnate in one quite specific people. The unity of the eternal and the temporal, of the universal and the unique, was manifested here as well.

As a rule, the Church celebrates not a person's birthday, but the day of his or her ascent to God. There are only three exceptions to this rule. First of all, there is the Nativity of Christ, and this is understandable because the Incarnation of God is an altogether unique moment in the relationship between God and humanity. Second, there is the Nativity of John the Baptist—the only human birth celebrated in the New Testament, and one connected, as we should note, with the Nativity of Christ. The third feast is today's, and the passages we read also connect it with Christ's Nativity. In this way the Church bears witness that the birth of the Most Holy Mother of God is sanctified by God's grace and that, in some mysterious manner beyond our understanding, this sanctification proceeds from the later overshadowing by the Holy Spirit and the indwelling of the Son of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. On this day we glorify God and thank Him for Her Whom He chose as His Mother and ours.

The readings before the feast of Christmas return us to the incredible and impossible event that has become ordinary and routine for us. God became man and walked the path appointed for each of us. When we speak about Christmas, the brightness and contrast of this event are too often blurred against the background of the rest of history. The human mind tries to fit the incomprehensible inside itself by simply treating the Incarnation as an ordinary thing. The best thing to do in this situation is to imitate Saint Joseph. That means accepting what is impossible for human beings but possible for God, and at the same time not treating God's incarnation as something self-evident.

Today we celebrate a special service, the so-called Royal Hours or Hours of the Eve of the Nativity of Christ. At the Royal Hours we read several passages from the Old Testament, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the accounts by the evangelists Matthew and Luke of the Nativity. The most important thing in this unusual service is its emphatically Paschal character. In essence, it is almost an exact copy of those Hours that are celebrated on the day of Christ's death on the Cross, on Great Friday.

The Royal Hours both of Great Friday and of the Nativity of Christ were composed by Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem (d. 644) in the first half of the seventh century; their deep similarity is meant to mark the beginning and completion of God's saving action — the Nativity of Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross. These events reveal to us God's design as God's saving passage through our world, which is completed in the triumph of the Cross and the Resurrection.

And about why the Nativity takes place, St. Sophronius writes this: "As one descended from the line of David, Mariam was once being registered in Bethlehem with the elder Joseph while carrying in her womb the seedless Fruit; but when the time of the Nativity came, there was no place to stay, and the cave appeared to the Queen as a beautiful palace. Thus Christ is born in order to raise up His image that had fallen before." This means that the Nativity is the beginning of the way of the Cross, and this is exactly how the Church approaches it.

Matthew, recounting the Annunciation, reveals to us this incomparable event through the person of Joseph, leaving Mary as if in the background. What moved the evangelist: only the patriarchal mindset characteristic of Israelites at that time, or was the less detailed account of Mary prompted by a delicacy that is hard for us to appreciate after many centuries of deserved glorification of the Mother of God? In any case, while giving thanks to the One who became the Mother of our Savior, let us not forget the one who was protector and provider: Joseph.

The account of the Annunciation lets us see that one can memorize the literal wording of an important text and still not understand its real meaning. For those who awaited the coming of a savior with the name Emmanuel, the sound of the name became more important than its meaning. Yet the meaning of the name Emmanuel, God with us, was revealed with the coming of the One whose name sounded different. Here we see one example of how, by being immoderately concerned with observing the form, one can miss the essence. This, however, does not cancel the importance of properly observing the form.

Many of us often simply fail to notice Joseph the Betrothed. Sometimes we pray to him together with Mary, the Mother of God. And we understand that, since he was the foster father of Jesus Christ, he is of course a saint, yet we may never consider why he is a saint.

There is one thing that is hard not to notice: he listens to God and hears Him. This means that Joseph is constantly ready to obey God, wants to do His will, and prays a great deal, listening in prayer to what God will tell him. He takes Mary into his home, although doing so is shameful and dangerous, for people may think that she conceived a child by another man and was unfaithful to him. He agrees to the name Jesus, although the father usually chooses the name. He continually goes wherever God directs him.

We can ask Saint Joseph the Betrothed to teach us the listening prayer of a disciple, obedience, and trust in God, for he knew how to practice them.

Having learned that Mary was pregnant, Joseph decides to release her quietly so as not to disgrace her. He does not disclose her secret, does not accuse her, but seeks to protect her. He is so sensitive to other people and their needs that his ear was able to discern the voice of the angel saying that "that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." Hearing this, Joseph obeyed and took Mary into his house, even though she was expecting a child.

Addressing Joseph, the angel speaks in words from Isaiah: "Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son." Perhaps it was precisely these words from Holy Scripture that finally convinced the saint to heed God's messenger. Words of prophecy that lived in his heart, that had taken root in him beforehand, became support at the necessary moment in making a decision.

Sometimes, when making a decision, we want an angel to come and show us what to do and how to do it. But if we are not deeply rooted in Holy Scripture, in what language will he speak to us?..

Today we read about perhaps the most terrible moment in the life of Saint Joseph. The girl whom he loved, whom he considered the purest and most beautiful - this girl is pregnant by someone unknown... For Joseph this had to become a catastrophe.

Joseph does not wish Mary harm; he understands perfectly well what will happen to Her if anyone else learns about this (in Israel adultery carried a terrible punishment, stoning). Therefore he wants to give Her some chance to hide what he, undoubtedly, cannot help considering a sin. It must have taken Joseph enormous effort to make any decision at all.

And what a shock the Angel's words must have been for him! It is astonishing that Joseph accepts such incredible news. It would be foolish to suppose that he had little idea where children come from, and therefore the revelation that Mary's Child is from the Holy Spirit sounds to him even more absurd and incomprehensible than it does to us: we have all heard this story from childhood, while Joseph could remember only one single prophecy, which the Angel reminds him of. And so great is Saint Joseph's trust both in God and in Mary that he believes what he has heard without hesitation.

Each evangelist describes the Nativity, setting the emphases in his own way. Matthew pays special attention to Joseph. It would seem that in this case Joseph's role is more that of an observer than of an active participant. But that is only at first glance. And it is not only that he had to accept what was happening as part of his own life. The point is that on earth he was to become, in effect, the adoptive father of the Messiah. He did not become, and could not become, His father by blood. But every child, even one born as the Messiah was born, needs a father. Not only the heavenly Father, but also an earthly father. If not a biological one, then an adoptive one. After all, the Messiah had to grow up as a Man. It is not easy for a boy without a father to grow up as a man with a capital M, even when we understand that capital letter in human terms.

If the Messiah had been meant to grow up less a Man than anyone else, perhaps He would not have needed an earthly father at all. But He had to grow up more truly Man than any of us. And therefore an earthly father was absolutely necessary for Him. Only such a father had to be one who could in no way and by nothing harm Him, who could not even inadvertently introduce into His human nature anything incompatible with the fullness of God that the Messiah bears within Himself from the very moment of His conception.

There is little hope in flesh and blood here, not because they are nature, but because in humanity's present condition they are fallen nature. And until the complete transfiguration of the human person, this cannot be corrected. The spiritual life of a person is different: here, even in the fallen state, much can be achieved. A person's soul is more easily corrected than his body. And if it does not become ideal, it is at least possible to make sure that its sinfulness does not poison the life of one's neighbor.

This is, of course, not simple. Direct help from God and effort from the person himself are needed, but a result can be achieved here. Therefore the adoptive father remained the only option in the case of the Messiah, whose human nature had to remain free from sin. And Joseph's consent to this path was required. By taking his wife, he gives God that consent. And he becomes the earthly father of the Messiah. Adoptive, but no less real for that.

What is family life? What is each spouse's share in it? Different people answer this question in different ways, and it is hard to find two completely identical families. So much psychological and religious literature has been written about family relationships that by now one could drown in it. Meanwhile, family problems do not appear to have become fewer.

Perhaps this is because in these books, and often even in religious books, marriage is discussed as a union of two people. In fact, it is never a union of two. It is always a union of three. It is a union in which God participates as the third, whether or not the spouses think about Him. Even whether or not they know about His participation. In this respect family life resembles human life in general: we become human beings because of the breath of life that God breathes into us at conception, but we can live our whole life without remembering God even once. God does not force Himself on us. He will not remind us of Himself if we ourselves do not want to remember Him.

And if we do remember Him, we will have to think about how much room in our life we are ready to give Him. This applies fully to family and married life, just as it does to life in general. The more self-will there is in our life, the less room there is for God with His plans and designs. And, accordingly, the less He can influence our life. God can do something in our life only with our consent. There are also things that only He Himself can do in it. In that case all that remains for us is to step aside, yielding the field of action to Him. This applies fully to the birth of the Messiah. He had to be born free from the power of the sin that entered the world with the fall.

Human nature, if it had been directed even a little by human will, could only have spoiled the matter here. It had to be given entirely into the power of God's will. Only He Himself could solve this supremely difficult task. From Mary only one "yes" was required, after which her body was no longer under her own control: it became the place where that breath of God acted, the breath to which everything is subject, even original sin.

And from Joseph, the Messiah's adoptive father, only one thing was required: to be near and not interfere with this action. Such is every conception: God always participates in it, revealing His presence and His action as much as the future parents allow Him to. It depends on the parents how much their child will belong to God. The Messiah had to belong to God absolutely. And the possibility of His birth into the world turned out to be connected not only with the "yes" Mary said to God, but also with the "yes" Joseph said to God's angel. Joseph, who through this "yes" became the Messiah's adoptive father.