Dear Friend 

Reflection by Gregory Glazov, D.Phil. (Oxon.)

Let us behold the wondrous things proclaimed in our readings today: Jer 23:5-8, Ps 72, Mt 1:18-25, and find its themes of hospitality to help us prepare for Advent.

The first reading from the prophet Jeremiah announces the coming of the Messiah from the line of King David.  Our text here calls him “a righteous shoot to David,” but the usual translation of the term for “shoot” is “Branch,” as this becomes a title in the prophets for the Messiah, as we can see in Jeremiah 33:15, Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12. However, in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible performed by Jewish scribes in the third and second centuries B.C., the title is translated as “the East" with the connotation of “a star rising,” evoking the great messianic prophecy of Balaam about the “star coming out of Jacob” (Num 24:17), all texts that are important to Matthew’s presentation of Jesus’s birth.  Our present text announces that as the Lord brought the children of Israel out of the captivity of Egypt, the Lord will, through this Branch, save the people of Judah and Israel from their present exile.

Psalm 72 describes the future Messiah by echoing these prophecies and other prophetic descriptions of him (e.g. in Isaiah 11, 45 and Zechariah 9), but especially by announcing in a verse omitted from our reading, Ps 72:17, that he will fulfill the prophecy that drives the entire Old Testament, the prophecy to Abraham that all the nations of the world will be blessed through his seed (see Gen 12:3 and 22:17).

Matthew builds on all these prophecies, especially the Septuagint’s version of Isaiah 7:14, interpreting the great sign there as involving a virgin conceiving and giving birth to a son to be named Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.”  This description of Jesus helps to structure Matthew’s entire Gospel as at its very center Jesus tells us that “he will be with us whenever two or more of us will be gathered in his name” (18:20) and at its very end that “he is with us always” (28:20).  This of course is a theme of hospitality indicating that, as Christ is really present in our midst whenever we gather in His name, we are to welcome Him, as the great “I AM with you,” in our neighbor.

The story which the Gospel presents to us today contains the story of the virgin birth, for believing in which I have been mocked so often, for many reasons, most revolving around the charge that it is “something that only men who know nothing about biology could invent!” In my experience, the story makes or breaks what it is to be a Catholic and explains why I am one.

The key hospitality theme in the story pertains to the angel’s words to Joseph: “do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.”  The common interpretations of Joseph’s fear quash the criticism that the story is written by someone ignorant of biology.  But I have a different and I believe deeper interpretation of Joseph’s fear, which comes to me from reading St. Luke’s interpretation of Jesus’ birth, and from my belief that St. Luke knew and helped us to understand St. Matthew.  According to this interpretation, Mary is “the Ark of the  Covenant made flesh,” whereby Joseph’s fear of taking her into his home is analogous to the fear of David about taking the Ark of the Lord into his home (2 Sam 6:9), a fear and wonder that Luke reads into Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary (cf. Luke 1:43).

Joseph was vacillating about taking Mary in on account of his righteousness and he needed angelic discernment. The story ends by stating that he played a role in giving Jesus the name that identified his self with his saving work: “the Lord saves.”

Believing this story enables us to believe that marriage is a sacrament and an eschatological sign, like consecrated celibacy, of communion between people and God. It tells us that we must welcome our children and know that they are not just our own but have their God given vocations which we are to discern and nurture. Being true, it fits awesome phenomena in the universe that help us to celebrate it and this season, such as Mary’s apparition at Guadalupe.

Many years ago, I asked Fr. Henry Wansbrough, OSB, the editor of the Jerusalem Bible: “If a marriage proposal comes in the spirit of freedom, would it have been a sin for Mary to have said “No” to the angel?”  I expected him to say “No,” but he said: “Yes.  For us in the Benedictine order, hospitality means that love must never say no to a relationship.”  I think of that answer very often, and always when I am confronted with someone knocking on my door in the name of God.  

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Gregory Glazov, D.Phil, (Oxon.) is Professor and Chair of Biblical Studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, earned M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in Jewish Studies in the Graeco-Roman World from Oxford University in 1989 and 1993, respectively, the former on a Rhodes Scholarship. He specializes in Old Testament Studies and in the Jewish writings of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov.