BISHOP GERALD’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 2011
I n our Byzantine Catholic Church, we begin thestory of Christmas on the Sunday Before Christmaswith the reading of theGospel of St. Matthew, Chapter1, verses 1 – 7, called theGenealogy of Jesus. It mightseem strange to us today thatSt. Matthew chose an extraordinarilyboring way in whichto begin his Gospel, i.e. withsuch a long list of names towade through. But to a Jew ofthat day and age, this was themost interesting way to beginthe story of any person’s life:the story of his ancestry.The reason for this interestin “The Family Tree’, as wecall it here in America, wasthat the Jews set the greatestpossible price on the purity of a person’s ancestral background.If, in any person, there was the slightest mixtureof foreign blood, he lost his right to be called a Jew and,
therefore, could not be considered a member of the Peopleof God.King Herod the Great, who tried to kill the ChristChild, was always despised by the pure-blooded Jews because
he was half Jewish and half Edomite. We can see the importancethatevenHerod attachedtothesegenealogiesfrom the fact that he had the official registers destroyed
so that no one could prove that he wasn’t a pure-bloodedJew. So, the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel mightseem to us to be an uninteresting passage, but to the Jews it
was a most impressive matterthat the Family Tree ofJesus could be traced back toAbraham, the Father of theJewish Race.Since the publication ofAlex Haley’s book “Roots”,which was later made into aTV mini-series, we Americanshave become interestedin our own “Roots”. Andso, every now and then wewill hear people claiming
to be descendants of one ofthe Pilgrims who arrived inAmerica on the Mayflower,or a descendant of one ofthe early Presidents of theUnited States. Among the Slavic people here in America,we might hear an older person brag how his or her grandfatheror great grandfather was the head coachman forthe Tsar of Russia, or a member of the household of theEmperor Franz Josef of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Isuppose if any of you had a famous ancestor, you probablywould brag about it as well. St. Matthew in his Gospel wasbragging about all of the famous people in Christ’s ancestry.It is to be noted that this Family Tree in the Gospel ofOutdoor Nativity Icon at St Stephen Cathedral, Phoenix, AZ
St. Matthew is meant to prove that Jesus was not only thedescendant of Abraham but also of King David.Why was Christ’s descent from King David so important?King David in his lifetime made Israel a strongand great nation. When David died, the nation began tocrumble and grow weak. Never again was Israel to be sostrong. But, the Jews were a “waiting people”. They neverforgot the glory days under King David. They never forgotthat they were the Chosen People of God. Althoughthe history of the Jews was one of a long series of disasters,they never forgot their destiny. It was the dream of the
Jews that into this world would come a descendant ofKing David who would lead them back to the glory theyhad under him and, which they believed, was their right.
This descendant of King David would be called “The Messiah”,which in the Greek language is rendered “Christos”,which means “the anointed one” because in Judaism a personbecame a king through a ceremony of anointing. St.Matthew, by showing that Jesus’ ancestry included KingDavid, wanted to prove that Jesus Christ was the long
awaited Messiah, the King of the Jews.So, from this genealogy, we can see that Christianityis indeed the fulfillment of Judaism, because we believethat the Jewish Messiah was Jesus Christ who was born inBethlehem of Judea about 2011 years ago.