By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily while celebrating Mass for the Miami chapter of the Catholic group Legatus at UM Catholic Center in Coral Gables, Dec. 17, 2024.
One week from tonight is for many of you “Noche Buena” with its “caja china” and “lechón asado”. How we celebrate Christmas often depends on our cultural roots.
If some celebrate with a Christmas eve dinner with “lechon”, for Polish people, it is the Vigilia, a meatless multicourse meal (Christian Eve in Poland was a day of abstinence, that began with the sharing of “oplatek” when the first star was sighted with a place at the table reserved for any unexpected guest.
The Gospel reading today offers a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Genealogies have been somewhat popularized on the PBS series starting Henry Louis Gates “Finding your roots.” We are interested to know who we are and where we come from. To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source or a tree without a root.
Henry Louis Gates’ task has been assisted thanks to DNA testing as well as painstakingly examining the archives of public records. DNA testing wasn’t available to Matthew – but since Matthew is establishing Jesus’ “family tree” through Joseph, a DNA test would not have been helpful since Jesus was born of a Virgin “who did not know man.”
Nevertheless, in a very concrete yet poetic way, Matthew gives us Jesus’ family tree. This presentation of Jesus’ “family tree” gives a kind of telescopic view of God’s redemptive work that would culminate in the Birth of the Word made Flesh.
Jesus’ family tree – no doubt like our own do – has quite a few secrets and surprises. Like they say, if you shake a family tree watch for the nuts to fall.
Even a passing familiarity with Jesus’ ancestors remind us that life can be messy. Look at King David, just to cite one of Jesus’ ancestors: He was the slayer of Goliath, a great king, the recipient of a great promise from God but he also was an adulterer and a murderer. Perhaps it is no wonder that Jesus could feel “at home” with sinners and tax collectors.
Matthew does not “airbrush” anybody out of the picture of Jesus’ ancestry. Jesus’ family tree, like our own, is a mix of holy and unholy characters or characters that are sometimes holy and sometimes, not so much.
Matthew’s listing of Jesus’ genealogy might seem to some boring, but it does remind us that our Christian faith is not about an idea, an ideology, or a philosophy; our Christian faith is not merely a moral code we bind ourselves to; our Christian faith is about an event that occurs in time and space, our Christian faith is about an encounter, an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ.
This event affects our entire lives – and fully transforms them. For in Christmas, we too find our “roots” and discover who we are, where we came from – and more importantly, where we are going.
This encounter with Jesus Christ, of course, demands from us a response – it is a response that is given in faith at baptism and lived out in friendship with Jesus Christ.
Our Christmases can be “bittersweet” as was that first Christmas when Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn. Nevertheless, the angels proclaimed on a cold winter’s night: “Joy to the World.” The secret of that joy is found in knowing that God is near and that we are loved by the Lord. This joy is not diminished but grows when we make our lives gifts that for the love of God we share with others.
