Message of Abbot Paul - Friday 17th December
Message from Fr Paul for Friday, 17th December 2021
Today we enter into the second part of Advent, in which each day has a name which is taken from the beginning of the Magnificat Antiphon of the day, words that can also be sung at the Alleluia before the Gospel at Mass. They are known as the Great Advent Antiphons or simply the ‘O’ Antiphons. Each one is a name or title by which Jesus is known and show that he is the Messiah, God incarnate, and derive from the Old Testament, mostly from the Prophet Isaiah. They first appear in Italy probably before the 6th century. Today, then, is “O Sapientia” and here is the traditional English translation. “O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things. Come and teach us the way of prudence.” You can hear the antiphons sung at Belmont each evening at Vespers if you watch our live streaming on the Abbey website and you can find many more recordings on YouTube. For many of us, they are the highlight of the Advent liturgy, what really makes Advent for us and announces that Christmas is near.
During these days the Gospel is taken from the Nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke, today the genealogy of Jesus as found in Matthew, (Mt 1: 1-17). Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham, considered to be the father of Israel. In fact, the first verse reads, “A genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” He shows Jesus to be the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel, tracing his ancestry back through King David to the Patriarch Abraham, directly connecting Jesus to some of the greatest men in the history of Israel and to some of the greatest rogues. Women, too, are mentioned. Likewise, he ends his genealogy with these words, “The sum of generations is therefore: fourteen from Abraham to David; fourteen from David to the Babylonian deportation; and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation to Christ.” Throughout his work, Matthew presents Jesus as the kingly Messiah promised from David’s royal line, so he is called Son of David, but Matthew not only connects Jesus to David, he goes back further to Abraham. Jesus is the Seed of Abraham in whom all nations would be blessed. Jesus was the legal son of Joseph, but not the blood son of Joseph. He did not contribute any of the “blood” of Jesus, but he did contribute his legal standing as a descendant of the royal line to Jesus. Mary’s line – the blood line of Jesus – did not go through Solomon, but through a different son of David, named Nathan. So, what is the value of this genealogy and what is the point of reading it? To quote the Dominican theologian Herbert MacCabe, Jesus did not belong to a wealthy or well-placed Jerusalem family, rather “he belonged to a family of murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers, and liars—he belonged to us and came to help us, no wonder he came to a bad end, and gave us some hope.” Jesus really was a human being like you and me, nothing special, a poor man from Nazareth in Galilee. If ever there was an Incarnation, this is it.
