Dear Friends,
With today's Liturgy we enter into the last stage of the Advent journey, which urges us to intensify our preparation, to celebrate the Lord's Birth with faith and joy, welcoming with deep wonder God who makes himself close to human beings, to each one of us.
The First Reading presents to us the aged Jacob who gathers his sons to give them his blessing. It is an event of great intensity and emotion. This blessing is like their seal of fidelity to the Covenant with God; but it is also a prophetic vision that looks ahead and indicates a mission. Jacob is a father who, on the paths of his own history that have not always been straight, achieves the joy of gathering his children round him and predicting the future of each one and of their descendents. Today, in particular, we heard the reference to the tribe of Judah whose royal power is exalted, represented by the lion, as well as the monarchy of David, represented by the sceptre, by the ruler's staff that alludes to the coming of the Messiah. Thus through this duel image, the mysterious future of the lion that becomes a lamb, of the king whose ruler's staff becomes the Cross, is the sign of true kingship. Jacob has gradually become aware of the primacy of God, he has realized that his journey is guided and sustained by the Lord's faithfulness, and cannot but answer with full adherence to God's Covenant and plan of salvation becoming in turn, together with his own descendants, a link in the divine plan.
The Gospel of Matthew presents to us the "genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Mt 1: 1), underlining and further explaining God's fidelity to the promise that he puts into practice not only through human beings but with them, and, as for Jacob, sometimes in tortuous and unexpected ways. The awaited Messiah, the subject of the promise, is true God but also true man; the Son of God, but also the Son born of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth, the holy flesh of Abraham in whose descendants all the peoples of the earth would be blessed (cf. Gn 22: 18). In this genealogy, in addition to Mary, four other women are recalled. They are not Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, or Rachel, that is, the great figures of the history of Israel. Instead, paradoxically they are four pagan women: Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Tamar, who seemingly "cloud" the purity of a genealogy. Yet, in these pagan women who appear at crucial points in the history of salvation, also appears the mystery of the church of the pagans, the universality of salvation. They are pagan women in whom appears the future, the universality of salvation. They are also sinful women, and thus the mystery of grace appears in them: it is not our works that redeem the world, but rather the Lord who gives us true life. They are sinful women, yes, in whom appears the greatness of the grace that we all need. Yet these women reveal an exemplary response to God's faithfulness, showing their faith in the God of Israel. And thus we see through the Church of the pagans, the mystery of grace, faith as a gift and as the way to communion with God. Matthew's genealogy, therefore, is not merely a list of generations: it is history brought about first by God, but with humanity's response. It is a genealogy of grace and faith: it is precisely on the absolute fidelity of God and on the sound faith of these women that the fulfilment of the promise made to Israel is founded.
[Pope Benedict, homily at the Aletti Centre, 17 December 2009]
