Sunday of Week 4 of Advent (Year A)

Commentary on Isaiah 7:10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

We are now on the eve of the birth of Jesus.  In today’s Gospel, Matthew tells us how this came about.  His account is totally different from that of Luke.  The only thing in common with both accounts are the central ideas that:

—Jesus is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and
—Joseph and Mary are the parents of Jesus.

In both accounts there is an angelic appearance: in one case to Mary and in the other to Joseph.  Mary is told—in Luke’s Gospel—that she is to bear a son.  When she says that she is still a virgin, she is told that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and her child will be the Son of God.  In Joseph’s case, he is told—in Matthew’s Gospel—not to be afraid to take Mary home as his wife because the child with whom she is pregnant is from the Spirit of God.  The stories are different, but the central message is the same.  Mary is the mother of the Child, but Joseph is not the father.

Jewish weddings
Jewish weddings involved three stages. First, there was the engagement.  This was often prearranged by the parents or a matchmaker while the couple were still young children.  Marriages were primarily seen as the union of families and the continuing of the family line.  They were not primarily unions of love, as we expect today.  Of course, in the course of time husband and wife could become deeply bonded by a genuine love and caring for each other.  But it was procreation, especially the bearing of sons, that was the first priority.  So we see in Old Testament times how cursed women felt who could not bear sons for their husband and his family.

Love might or might not come later—it was secondary.  And it was only relatively recently that the Catholic Church itself put the two ends of marriage—love and procreation—as equally important.  It took quite a while in the Church for the idea that a deep Christian love could be expressed through sexual relations, that it involved a deep mutual giving of one’s whole self to the spouse and that it was not just a regrettable, but unavoidable means to procreate.

Joseph’s dilemma
Later came the betrothal.  This was a legally binding relationship lasting for one year.  During this period the couple lived apart and had no sexual relations.  If either party did not want at this stage to go through with the marriage, there had to be a divorce.  And the penalty for having sexual relations with a betrothed virgin was stoning to death for both.  The third stage was the marriage itself.

We can see then Joseph’s serious dilemma, not to mention his feeling of shock, when he found that his betrothed was already pregnant and not by him.  It seemed an open and shut case of adultery.

And imagine the feelings of Mary herself in this position!  How was she to explain that she was pregnant by the power of God?  Who would believe a story like that?  If Joseph felt outraged and betrayed, one would understand.  Most men would have planned vengeance at such an insult to their manliness and the possibility of becoming the laughing stock of the other men in the village.

But Joseph was not an ordinary person.  He was a “righteous” man.  And he must have seen Mary as more than an ordinary person too.  He did not want to expose her openly.  To do so would have made her liable to the severest punishment.  But at the very least, the Mosaic law required a man to divorce his wife under such circumstances.  This was Joseph’s duty and he was going to observe it.

But compassion for his bride (extraordinary in the circumstances and in that culture) led him to want to break off the engagement quietly that is, before a minimum of two witnesses and without pressing charges.

The angel’s message
Just then the angel appears to him telling  him to go through with the marriage.  The child has been conceived by the power of God’s Spirit.  No other man is involved.  The son is to be called ‘Jesus’, which means ‘Saviour’, because his mission is to save his people from their estrangement with God.

As a descendant of David, Joseph will become the legal father of Jesus the Messiah.  And Jesus will be called later in the Gospel, “Son of David”.  As Paul puts it in the Second Reading today: he, Paul, is preaching the gospel:

…concerning [God’s] Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

In many ways, Joseph is a reflection of Joseph in the Hebrew Old Testament, the son of Jacob who was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers.  He was also a righteous man, influenced by dreams and forced into exile in Egypt.

Fulfilment of scripture
Eleven times altogether in his Gospel, Matthew indicates how events in the life of Jesus are fulfilments of Old Testament promises.  Here he quotes the prophet Isaiah (using the Greek Septuagint text):

Look, the virgin [Greek parthenos; Hebrew alma, young girl of marriageable age] shall become pregnant and give birth to a son…

The child will be called Emmanuel, which Matthew explains as meaning “God with us”.  Jesus will be the very presence of God the Father in our world.  As John says in his Prologue:

And the Word became flesh and lived [literally, ‘pitched his tent’] among us, and we have seen his glory… (John 1:14)

God is with us and is one of us.  And this presence does not end with the Resurrection.

Before Jesus leaves his disciples at the Ascension, his last words in Matthew’s Gospel are:

…I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:20)

Right down to the present, Jesus continues to be Emmanuel.  And that is why we continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus more than 2,000 years on.  Through his Body, the Church—the Christian community—Jesus continues to be visibly present in word and action.  This Eucharist is our sacramental celebration of that presence, a presence in every single one of us here.

The effectiveness of that presence depends on our conscious union with Jesus and with the vision of his gospel lived out in our daily lives.  Let Jesus be really re-born in each one of us this Christmas.

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20 December – First Reading

Commentary on Isaiah 7:10-14

The Gospel today (Luke 1:26-38) will describe the fulfilment of the prophecy spoken of in today’s First Reading from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking to King Ahaz of Judah. Among a number of bad kings, King Ahaz of Judah comes out as particularly bad. He revived the barbarous custom of human sacrifice:

He even made his son pass through fire [burnt his son as an offering], according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel. (2 Kings 16:3)

He followed other religious customs of the neighbouring idolatrous religions. When the king of Syria attacked Ahaz’s capital of Jerusalem, he appealed to the Assyrians:

I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me…
(2 Kings 16:7)

He then took treasures from the Temple, and sent them as a gift to the Assyrian king. He also made an exact copy of an altar he saw in Damascus, set it up in the Temple, and moved the bronze altar of the Temple to one side. On this new altar, he made offerings in the Assyrian manner, which included throwing blood on the altar.

Ahaz’s reign lasted 16 years and he was succeeded by his son Hezekiah, whom the Bible speaks of as being one of the best of the kings. His reign lasted for 29 years, but it was a very trying period for the Jews. During it, the famous Sennacherib “came down like a wolf on the fold” and laid siege to Jerusalem, but his whole army was suddenly decimated by some highly contagious epidemic which swept right through it killing, according to the Bible account, more than 100,000 soldiers. The siege had to be called off.

All of this, of course, is only indirectly connected with today’s reading, but it does give some idea of the context in which the prophecy was made. The reading begins with the Lord (through the mouth of Isaiah) urging Ahaz to ask for a sign either from God or from Sheol, the place of the dead. Ahaz, however, declines because he does not want to put his God to the test. Nevertheless, although God (and especially his prophet, Isaiah) is clearly not pleased with this rejection of the Lord’s offer, Ahaz will be given a sign anyway.

The statement is a prophecy, and is very positive in meaning. It denotes God’s blessing on the Kingdom of Judah and on God’s people. It is also seen as a messianic prophecy. It promises a king and an heir to David who will bring salvation to God’s people, who, at this time, are being attacked by the Syrians on one side, and by the Assyrians on another.

Even though it seems that Isaiah is immediately thinking of a successor to Ahaz, namely, his son Hezekiah, the formal nature of the prophecy and symbolic name given to the future heir indicates he was speaking about a more decisive intervention by God and the establishment of a messianic kingdom.

The prophecy reads:

Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.

This is clearly meant to be an encouragement to Ahaz about the future of the kingdom now under siege from so many sides. The original text does not say explicitly that it is a virgin who will give birth. The Hebrew word almah simply means a young girl.

However, in Genesis (24:43), ‘almah’ refers to a young woman about to be married (and hence still a virgin). The pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint and made by Jews, translates ‘almah’ as ‘virgin’. It is this version that Matthew uses, and reads it as indicating that Mary is a virgin when she conceives Jesus.

And of course, from the time of the Gospels, especially with Matthew who quotes from today’s passage, the prophecy has been understood as pointing to the birth of Christ, who is Immanuel, ‘God-is-with-us’. And Matthew will emphasise this at the very end of his Gospel when, just before leaving his disciples, Jesus in his final instructions promises:

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:20)

This Child does not only give us God’s blessings, and miraculous and divine liberation, but through him, God becomes present among humankind and the promises heard so many times come true:

…I will be your God, and you shall be my people. (Jer 7:23)

We see the beginning of the fulfilment of all this prophecy in the Gospel, which speaks of Mary’s being invited to be the Mother of the Saviour who will be both God’s Son and hers. Even Isaiah is not likely to have dreamt of the implications of all this—when the Word was made flesh and lived among us as one of us.

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