A few months ago, my wife and I were asked to be a sponsor couple for a young engaged couple here in our parish that are getting married next summer. Over the course of 5-6 meetings, we meet with the couple and discuss various topics with the intent to foster communication and help them prepare for marriage, especially as it pertains to our Catholic faith. During our last meeting, we talked about family-of-origin where the couple shared and reflected upon memories, experiences, and details from their childhood growing up. They were asked to share things about their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. They talked about experiences about their home growing up – the environment, family habits and traditions, good memories and bad memories. It’s all these experiences that blend together to make us who we are as a person, and its all the more important for young couples to know and experience this about themselves and each other prior to marriage. But it’s a classic example of how our families and past experiences tell a story about us, and define who we are and who we have become. It’s all in the family.
This is exactly what the readings are about today. Both the reading from Genesis and the gospel reading from Matthew talk about Jesus’ lineage – His family tree. Sure, Jesus is fully divine, but He is also fully human. He was a person, in a family, who was part of a community, who experienced the human condition, and His experience on this earth was a product of those who came before Him. The list of names in the gospel reading may seem annoyingly long and you may ask what’s the point? Why do we have to read all of those names? But the thing is, before we learn about Jesus the Son of God, we must first understand Jesus the man. Not a lot was written about Jesus before His ministry, but we simply need to look at His family tree and we can learn a little more about Jesus the man. His story was a story 42 generations in the making.
Every one of those people named in the gospel reading served a purpose in the formation of Jesus. Every one of those people contributed in some way to the man that Jesus would become. In Genesis today, Jacob saw the future for his children and knew that Judah would play an important role, with his “tribe” reigning supreme throughout the land. Among Judah’s descendants would be one named David, who would become a great king, and a man after God’s own heart. While David did severely sin, his mistakes lead to his son Solomon whose line continued on down to “Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.”
Jesus’ earthly family was not perfect. Well, I suppose Joseph and Mary were pretty close. But His ancestry was lined with sinners, and scandal, and doubt all the way back to Abraham. Surely there were many black sheep throughout all those generations who had no clue who their descendent would be. Yet they all played a part. The decisions they made all contributed to the man that Jesus was to be. They impacted the way He spoke, His mannerisms, His home environment and the customs and traditions they followed. Surely the experiences Jesus had in His home and community shaped the stories, and parables, and lessons he would teach in the last years of His earthly life. The same is true for each of us, in our own families.
Our families define many things about us – good things and not so good. Every single one of us have traits we love about our families, and those we don’t love so much. There are people in our family trees that we strive to be like and admire a great deal, and others that we may choose to forget. There are people in our families that make choices that we may not agree with, or those who may not agree with the choices we make, or the things we believe. We may choose to shun them, or maybe we’re the ones being shunned. We each have experiences and memories about our families and home life growing up that we love and will always want to remember. And we all have some memories that we would like to forget.
No family is perfect. But it’s the family that defines us, at the core, and who we are inside. Those memories, good or bad, are hardwired into our consciousness, and we’ll always remember the good in our lives, but unfortunately the scars as well. I think Jesus the man probably experienced this too. This is why we can look to Jesus as our brother. He knows what it’s like to go through life as a person and experience the good and bad of this world.
These experiences define us, but they don’t have to drive us. We make our own choices. Every choice, every decision we make has an impact. It has an immediate impact in our life and the lives of those around us. And it has an impact in the lives of those to come. How we raise our children and the choices we make in how we teach them, punish them, talk to them, pray with them, and engage life and treat others all have a lasting impact. How we treat our spouses, our personal families, or strangers on the street has an impact that our kids will imitate, and will last generations. Jesus the man was formed by the generations before Him, but fortunately for us, Jesus the Son has impacted the generations since.
Everyone has a role to play and a purpose to fulfill. We each have weak links in our past that may have led to issues we have had to deal with or are currently dealing with in our lives. But we can’t let those faults or hurts ruin our integrity and who we can become. We can choose to be better people. We can choose to try to raise our kids to be better people. Ultimately they will be responsible for their choices, just as those in Jesus’ family tree were. And some made bad choices. Our kids will make bad choices. We will continue to make bad choices. But if we can raise them with a foundation of Christ while growing up, He’ll be the family member that will never disappoint, that will never leave them, and the One who they can always come back to. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit is our true family-of-origin, our true lineage, and the family members we should truly imitate.
