Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Typhoon Yolanda did not only
destroy properties. It also took lives. Officially, the body count has already
reached the 6,000 mark and bodies are hurriedly buried in mass graves. What may
seem to be merely numbers in statistics to many are actually human beings, each
with a name and a distinct history. Oftentimes, we forget that human beings are
persons, each of them with his own unique and unrepeatable history.
As we listen to the genealogy of
the Lord Jesus, we usually fall into the same temptation of failing to see
beyond the list of names of people. To us, these are mere names of faceless
people we do not even know. And so, we forget that what we have just made was
to travel through thousands of years of human history. Many forget that each
name mentioned is a story of a lifetime. Each of us here is a unique story
which makes a contribution to the wonderful story of humanity. When we make a
survey of the social networks, we realize that every picture posted has a story
behind it. And these stories are intertwined. It takes a little faith to
recognize the Divine hand that sews all the stories together.
And so we look at names. We look
at the stories behind the names. When we make an effort to recognize the thread
that connects all the events to one another, we discover that the thread is
none other than Jesus himself. The life of each person in this genealogy led
humankind closer to Christ. Abraham and his sons, David and his clan, the
generations of the post Babylonian exiles - all of them contributed to
humanity’s journey toward Jesus the Redeemer. Each story was a movement of
history towards the fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation to all humanity.
The genealogy of the Lord Jesus
tells us that salvation did not happen at the snap of the hand of God. The
genealogy is a beautiful story of real people who may have not been aware of
the fact that they were part of the preparations which the Father made for the
Incarnation of his only begotten Son. The House which the Father is building
for His Son, the Kingdom which He is establishing in His Son, is made up of living
stones. The ancestors of Jesus are these living stones. You and I are also
these living stones built on top of each other. We are all being built up into
a spiritual edifice. How wonderful is it to know that our stories are
intertwined. How wonderful is it to know that my life and yours are intertwined
with that of the life of Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God.
“The
salvation which God has wrought, and the Church joyfully proclaims, is for
everyone. God has found a way to unite himself to every human being in
every age. He has chosen to call them together as a people and not as isolated
individuals. No one is saved by himself or herself, individually, or by his or
her own efforts. God attracts us by taking into account the complex
interweaving of personal relationships entailed in the life of a human
community.” (Francis, Evangelii Gaudium,
113.)
God has
found a way to unite himself to every human being in every age. We look at
history and we look at our own stories and we realize that God is gathering all
of us in His Son. He is reconciling all of humanity together to himself through
the death and the resurrection of His Son. May we never see our lives as
unconnected to each other. May we see our stories as part of that one great
story of how God gathers all people into his Son. Jesus said, “When I am lifted
up, I will gather all people to myself.”
Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee
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