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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Monday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Romans 1:1-7

Today we return to the New Testament and begin reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  This is one of the most important of his letters and one of the key books of the New Testament.  It is listed first among the Pauline letters not only because of its importance, but because it is also the longest (the Pauline letters are listed according to their length and not in chronological order). 

We will spend the whole of the next four weeks on this letter, up to the end of Week 31. The letter seems to have been written in Corinth or nearby Cenchrea (in southern Greece) about the year 57 AD.  By this time, the Christians in Rome were mainly Gentile with Jewish Christians in a minority.

Apparently, Paul was planning a missionary journey to Spain (then a Roman colony) with the intention of using Rome as his headquarters.  He had not yet been to Rome, but must have been informed about the Christian situation there and he must have been known to them. The principal theme of the Letter is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, a question which is also dealt with in the Letter to the Galatians.  While there is a more urgent tone in the Galatian letter, the Letter to the Romans treats the question in a more measured way. 

Paul was a strong advocate of the freedom from the Law which Christianity brought, and constantly opposed the efforts of some Jewish Christians to re-impose the requirements of the Law, including circumcision.  It is under this heading that the great issue of “justification by faith” is discussed and whose interpretation became the great dividing issue during the Reformation.

In the usual way of the time, the letter begins with greetings—with Paul identifying himself and the church to which he is writing.  But as is usual with Paul, his words are always much more than the banalities that normally accompany the beginnings of letters (including our own).  The very opening words are almost a battle cry: 

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God…

• As a “servant” (Greek, doulos)—The word literally means a ‘slave’, someone who belongs completely to his owner, but it also means ‘servant’, someone who willingly chooses to serve a master.
• As someone “called to be an apostle”—The word ‘apostle’ means someone sent on a special mission. It is used in the Gospel narratives for the Twelve followers Jesus chose to continue his mission.  Paul regarded himself as an Apostle because, like the Twelve, he had seen the risen Christ (on the road to Damascus), and had been given a special mission to bring the gospel to the Gentiles.
• As someone “set apart for the gospel”—His mission was not something he had decided on himself.  Jesus had specially chosen him for a special mission to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom.  Every one of us is called in this way.  How would I describe my vocation?

In a way, every baptised Christian can say the same in some degree. We are all servants of Jesus, putting ourselves totally at his disposal for his work.  We are all called to be apostles, in the sense that each of us has a mission in our own particular way to proclaim the gospel message. We have all been set apart for the gospel of God, that is, the euanggelion, or “good news” that God brings to the world through Jesus Christ and through each one of his members.  How would I describe my unique vocation?  In what way can I share the gospel with others?

It is interesting that Paul uses the word “gospel” because the four Gospels in the form in which we know them were not yet in existence.  But the idea was already present.  The ‘Good News’ about Jesus was already being proclaimed.  It is a gospel, as Paul implies, which did not just drop out of the sky, but which had long been prepared for by the prophets and teachers of the Hebrew Testament (remember the words of Jesus to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus as he explained the Old Testament to them). In his opening greeting Paul often adds in his own Christian point of view and even anticipates some of the themes of his letter.  In Romans, these themes are:

• God’s freedom to choose his people;
• the connection between faith and being made ‘holy’;
• salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection;
• the harmony of the two Testaments—the Old and the New.

He now describes the gospel he is going to write about:

…the gospel concerning his 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…

Here we have the elements of the Incarnation described and the link between Old and New Testaments.

In human terms, Jesus was born a descendant of David, but because God raised him to life through the Holy Spirit, Christ is established in glory as Lord (Kyrios), and meriting in virtue of his work as Messiah-Redeemer King the name he had from all time—the “Son of God”.

And it is through Jesus Christ that:

…we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name…

To be with and under Christ is both a ‘grace’, a totally unmerited gift, and a responsibility to be partners with Jesus in bringing peoples everywhere to faith and personal commitment to Christ and the gospel he proclaims.  This is where life in its truest form is to be found.

The Christians of Rome, to whom Paul is writing, are included among these ‘graced’ ones called to live and proclaim the gospel because:

…for the sake of his name…you who are called…belong to Jesus Christ…

Our mission, too, is to spread his name to all those who do not know him, inviting them to submit themselves in faith and trust to Jesus as Lord, as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Then there comes the end of the initial salutation:

To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In calling them God’s “beloved” people and “called to be saints”, he is saying that they are ‘holy’, not that they are ready for canonisation.  The word ‘holy’ (hagios) really means ‘set apart’ and is applied to the Christians in general.  All Christians are ‘saints’ in that they are ‘set apart’ by God and are experientially being made increasingly holy by the Holy Spirit working in them.  This ‘setting apart’ is not to be understood as removing themselves from surrounding society; on the contrary they are to be fully inserted in society as Jesus was. 

Only in this way can they be the “salt of the earth” or “the yeast in the dough” or “the light of the world”. And Paul wishes them “grace” and “peace”—grace and peace that only God and his Son can give.  “Grace” can be understood as the tangible experience of God’s love in my life and “peace” is that inner sense of wholeness and harmony with God, with other people, with oneself and one’s whole environment. Could one have more precious gifts or could one wish more precious gifts on another person?

Let us remember today our calling as servants, as apostles and as a people set apart for a very special work, witnessing to Christ and his gospel through the particular circumstances of our lives.

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