Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 17, 2019
An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
Lines. They are the necessary evil of the “commercial Christmas” season. What’s more, they are everywhere. There are lines at the register to purchase Christmas presents, to get the holiday specialty drink at Starbucks, and to take the kids to see Santa at the mall. We tolerate lines because we have to, but they are not the sort of thing that make our day.
Lines aren’t all bad, though. Brian Kelly stands in a solid line of head football coaches who have won national championships for Notre Dame. At Moreau Seminary, there’s a wall with pictures of every priestly ordination class since 1969 on it, so our priests can see the line of men in whose footsteps they follow. The lines we stand in actually say a lot about who we are, what we’re capable of, and where we’re going.
In today’s Gospel, St. Matthew makes sure that we know the line that Jesus, our savior, stands in. The temptation for us, of course, is to get bogged down by the sequence of names and to treat the genealogy as one more line to “get through.” In fact, though, the genealogy can be exciting if we take some time getting to know the people Jesus throws his lot in with. They include kings and refugees, virgins and prostitutes, war heroes and cowards, Israelites and Gentiles, sinners and saints.
Matthew’s point in outlining these forty-two generations, each of which represents a human story no less true than our own, is that Jesus stands with us. He comes from the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer, and instead of abandoning it, he embraces it, identifies with it, heals it, and raises it to right relationship with God. There is nothing—no human life and no human situation—that God cannot enter into and transform, if only we allow it.
What would all of these names be worth without those last two, Mary and Jesus? Mary’s “yes” to God’s invitation to bear Jesus not only stamped these lives with eternal significance, it also opens this lineage up to successive generations of believers. All of this “so-and-so became the father of so-and-so” becomes “Jesus called John, and John called Polycarp, and Polycarp called Ignatius,” right down to the present day.
We ourselves stand in a great line of men and women who have let their lives be penetrated by the love of God and thereby transformed the world around them. What lines are you standing in right now? They make more difference than we realize.
Prayer
Lord our God you bless us with a holy history. Today the Gospel recalls for us the names of our ancient ancestors who have passed on to us the story of your divine love. Unbroken is the line of that descendance, beginning with the life of our father, Abraham of Ur of the Chaldeans, and ending with our brother, Jesus of Nazareth. Teach us to be worthy of such a divine call until our hope is finally realized in the eternal kingdom of your Son, who lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Olympias was at the center of the political scene in ancient Constantinople, and she gave all her power away—along with her immense fortune—to love God and serve the poor. As a result, Olympias became friends with several great Turkish saints of the late fourth century.
Olympias was born around the year 361 AD to an influential family of Constantinople. Her parents, Seleucus and Alexandra, died when she was still a child, and she was put under the care of her uncle Procopius. Procopius was a pious Christian as was her nanny, Theodosia. Theodosia, who was like Olympias' second mother, raised her to be a holy Christian woman, instructing Olympias in the Christian faith and encouraged her to pursue virtue. Her nanny introduced her to Gregory of Nyssa, who became a spiritual father to Olympias. Olympias grew up to become an intelligent and good woman. She was also attractive and had inherited a fortune, so her uncle had little trouble arranging a lucrative marriage for Olympias with a wealthy man.
Just over a year after the wedding, her husband, Nebridius, died, leaving Olympias even richer than before, as she inherited Nebridius' vast and profitable estates. Given that she was now the lady of a great deal of valuable land, Olympias became a highly desirable widow, who caught the attention of Emperor Theodosius. Emperor Theodosius put great pressure upon Olympias to marry again—the emperor suggested his cousin Elpidius (a convenient match that would bring all that land into the imperial family). Olympias flatly refused. She resolved to become a consecrated widow in the Church and give her entire life and livelihood to her fellow Christians. “Had God wanted me to remain a wife,” Olympias purportedly said, “He would not have taken my husband away.”
In response to her stubbornness, Emperor Theodosius seized Olympias' wealth and put it under the direction of an official until she was thirty, unless she agreed to marry his cousin. Undaunted, Olympias wrote to the emperor thanking him, saying that she was glad to be free of the worry about her fortune, and asked him to do her the favor of simply giving half of it to the Church and the rest to the poor. Emperor Theodosius was impressed by her spunk and her fortitude—her parrhesia—and he restored her estates to her, which Olympias then promptly donated to the Church. In 398, Olympias founded a monastery in one of her palaces in Constantinople. She became a sort of abbess of the community that gathered there. The community grew until around 250 women living there as monastic sisters. When she was thirty, she was ordained a deaconess by the archbishop of Constantinople.
In 398, St. John Chrysostom was elected bishop of Constantinople, and the fiery preacher and Olympias quickly became close friends. They were both devoted to an ascetic lifestyle and to caring for the poor. One of Chrysostom's biographers wrote: "There was no one in Constantinople with whom he was to have a deeper or more sympathetic understanding, no one with whom he was to feel more at ease or to whom he was to pour out his heart more unreservedly."
Although he shunned dinner parties, John Chrysostom would eat the simple meals that Olympias brought him. He collaborated closely with Olympias and her companions. The women built an orphanage and a hospital next to their house.
She had long been friends with St. Gregory Nazianzen, and being at the center of the Church in Constantinople, she befriended many other holy people, including St. Gregory of Nyssa.
In 404, John Chrysostom was exiled after he got on the wrong side of Empress Eudoxia. Olympias was persecuted because of her close association with him and her loyalty to him as the true Archbishop of the city. Her opponents slandered her and John and her community fell apart. Due to these trials, Olympias went into a sort of self-imposed exile and definitively left the city she had lived in for so long and given so much to and lived her final years in Nicomedia. She continued to keep up her spiritual mission of care for the poor.
During John's last days, he wrote many letters to Olympias, from his arduous journeys during his exile. These letters are poignant testimonies to the depth of suffering he and his friends were experiencing, and the spiritual friendship these two saints shared. As Olympias' letters (now lost) were written while she was being persecuted back in Constantinople, they are filled with her feelings of despondency and depression. John continues to encourage her to lift up her heart and to try to brighten her spirit. In one of the last letters he wrote:
"Nothing, Olympia, is so worthy of consideration as patience in the midst of pain and grief. For this is the queen of good things, the perfection of crowns, and just as it surpasses other virtues, so this particular form of virtue especially surpasses the others in brilliance."
John encourages her to be a "great athlete of patience," like Job. His letter is a beautiful encouragement from one who is finishing his own race (2 Tim 4:7) to a fellow runner, admonishing her to stay strong in the final laps ahead of her. St. Olympias died from illness in 408.
St. Olympias, deaconess of Constantinople and lover of the poor—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Olympias is in the public domain. Last accessed November 21, 2024 on Wikimedia Commons.
