THE SON OF DAVID

 THE SON OF DAVID

Today’s Gospel is not meant to entertain us.  It’s not one of those nice, easy-to-read stories of one of the events in our Lord’s life.  Instead, it’s more like reading an Israeli telephone directory, and on the face of it, about as interesting.  But there’s a reason for including it in today’s Mass nevertheless, as it contains a lesson just as important as anything else we read in the Gospels.

 

It is what we call a genealogy, the documented family tree, in this case, of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is the historical record tracing Christ’s ancestry back to King David, thereby demonstrating our Lord’s royal roots and providing the world with further evidence that he is the King of kings.

 

The genealogy begins by pointing out that David was the son of Abraham.  Not literally his son, that’s not what it means.  David was simply the descendant of Abraham, and the genealogy that connects these two men is documented elsewhere in Holy Scripture.  Let’s not forget that it was to Abraham that God spoke, promising him that salvation would come from his lineage.  Our Blessed Lady reminded us of this in her Magnificat, which we sing at Vespers every evening, that God, “remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel,
as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.”

 

So we follow the seed of Abraham, first jumping to King David, and then throughout the generations until we come to St. Joseph.  When the Roman Emperor Augustine called all the men of the occupied Holy Land to return to the city of their ancestry to be counted for the census, St. Joseph had to make the journey all the way from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem of Judea.  This was the town where David had been born, and was known therefore as David’s Royal City.  Here it was that St. Joseph’s spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary, gave birth to the Child who was both Son of God and Son of David.

 

The genealogy does not mention, nor does it need to mention the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The Jews were not accustomed to chronicling the pedigrees of women, but rather of the menfolk.  However, they were forbidden to marry outside their own tribe, and so it follows that Mary was of the same tribe of David as her spouse St. Joseph.  It was the royal blood of King David that both Joseph and Mary inherited, and which she passed on to her divine Son.