Fourteen Generations Each of Patriarchs, Kings, and Unknowns

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

Curiously, the Gospel passage for today's Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mother drops one verse from the familiar genealogy in the opening verses of St. Matthew's Gospel. That verse reads: Thus the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:17) I am not sure why the verse is dropped. Perhaps someone felt that it was just a detail that doesn't matter in the record of the family tree.

To paraphrase verse seventeen, the total number of generations in the ancestral family tree of Jesus includes fourteen generations of patriarchs from the Torah, fourteen generations of kings from the history books, and fourteen generations of unknowns from the remnant of Israel. I dare say that most of us might be able to name a goodly number of the patriarchs from memory, that most of us would at least recognize a goodly number of the names of the various kings of Israel, but that most of us would have absolutely no idea of who the people in the final fourteen generations were or what they accomplished. Yet, they are perhaps the fourteen generations which are the most important in the list, for it was they who kept the Jewish faith alive after the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and after they were released from the captivity of the Assyrians in Babylon. When Jesus burst upon the scene over two thousand years ago, it was their faith that he found waiting for him. Indeed, if it had not been for them and their quiet, unassuming, and quite ordinary keeping of the faith of Israel, Jesus would have found a completely different Israel upon his birth.

As we celebrate the birth of Mary, the most important of the leftovers of the remnant, it is good to reflect on the ordinariness of our own lives and the fact that, like our ancestors of old, it is our task to keep the light of faith burning until Jesus returns again.