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“To fulfill the prophets”
Typically people come to church on Christmas expecting to hear the story
of the angels and the shepherds, but this particular narrative is found
only in Luke’s Gospel. Both Matthew and Luke begin their Gospels with infancy
narratives (stories surrounding Jesus’s birth and early days), but because
they were writing for different audiences and had access to different sources,
their stories diverge in many details.
Some of the things we read in both infancy narratives include the following:
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Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
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His mother is Mary.
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Mary is a virgin betrothed to Joseph but not married to him when she conceives.
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Jesus’s conception is attributed to the initiative of God; he is not conceived
in the usual way.
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His birth is announced in advance by angelic visitors.
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After he is born, he is visited by strangers (magi in Matthew, shepherds
in Luke) who came to know of his birth in an unusual way (heavenly signs
or heavenly visitors).
In Luke, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth, their hometown, to Bethlehem,
where Jesus is born in a manger. After Jesus is born, he is visited by
shepherds who receive news of his birth from angels.
In Matthew, the details differ. In speaking of a house that the magi
visit, he gives the impression that Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem
already (2:11). Nazareth enters the picture only after the child’s life
is threatened by Herod and the Holy Family is forced to flee to Egypt:
after Herod’s death, the family returns from Egypt and settles in Nazareth
(v 23), in fulfillment of the Scriptures.
Matthew emphasizes Jesus’s connection to Judaism and the prophecies
of the Old Testament. The opening verses of his Gospel present us with
a genealogy of Jesus, pronouncing him “the son of David, the son of Abraham”
(1:1). This establishes Jesus as the promised Davidic Messiah, whose coming
was expected to bring a fulfillment of the promises God made to Abraham,
the father of Judaism. As the generations proceed from Abraham to “Joseph
the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born” (v 16), we come to see how
all of salvation history, nearly 2,000 years, leads up to the coming of
Jesus. For Matthew and his church, the birth of Jesus is the fulfillment
of God’s promises to Israel made throughout the prior generations, beginning
with Abraham and elaborated and expressed over and over through the prophets.
Joseph plays a prominent role in Matthew’s text. While Matthew’s text
does not have an annunciation to Mary, the evangelist tells us that Joseph
was told by an angel in a dream that the child in Mary’s womb “is from
the Holy Spirit” (v 20). So Joseph, “being a righteous man” (v 19), took
Mary as his wife, obedient to the angelic directive. Later, following the
command of the angel, he gives the child the name Jesus. Joseph’s obedience
and righteousness, along with the revelation through a dream, are examples
of Matthew’s text having its background in a Jewish world, as these are
common Old Testament themes.
For Matthew and his community, Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us.” Many
of the events in this infancy narrative fulfill what was spoken by the
prophets long ago: Jesus’s birth to the virgin Mary and his role as Emmanuel;
Bethlehem as the place of the birth of the Messiah; the Holy Family’s flight
to Egypt and their subsequent settling in Nazareth.
When Joseph names the child Jesus, he is in effect adopting him as his
own son, thereby making Jesus a member of the house of David. In biblical
Israel, lineage is traced through the father. The Scriptures are silent
on Mary’s background; only in apocryphal texts do we hear of her parents
and her ancestry.
Something many Christians fail to realize is that messianic expectations
in Jesus’s day varied. While many were hoping for the promised Messiah,
they did not all agree on what this Messiah would be like. The first Christians’
experience of the risen Lord confirmed that Jesus was God’s “anointed one,”
and scholars tell us that those early Christians accumulated collections
of Old Testament texts that they believed came to be fulfilled in Jesus.
These testimonia included not only passages previously associated
with the Messiah but also some that had not been previously associated
with the promised Messiah. They associated these with Jesus’s suffering
and death, because there is no evidence that anyone expected a “suffering
Messiah.” This helps us understand why many people rejected the early believers’
claims that Jesus was the Christ.
As church we celebrate Christmas not only to remember what happened
nearly 2,000 years ago. Christmas is a celebration of the fact that God
embraced our nature so that we might receive the divine life. In Jesus,
God’s promises to Israel are fulfilled in that Jesus is truly “God with
us.” As we celebrate the Word made flesh, may our lives be living witness
to God’s presence to the world as we strive to be the presence of Christ
to the world. ML
Bruce Janiga, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, N.J., teaches
Scripture studies at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange, N.J. He is the Sunday
assistant at St. Cassian's Church in Upper Montclair, N.J.
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