Incarnating the Father
Jesus' Coming occurs in many ways. One way he comes to us is through the family. It is crucial that we realize this point during the Advent season. As we gear up for more family time, let us pay special attention our role as fathers. (Go grab your Bible).
Jesus does not come to Earth alone, he is born into what Catholic's call the "Holy Family." Our salvation is not only an individual encounter, but begins with being brought into the world through the family. God's very nature is family. The Godhead consists of three persons, and in the infancy narratives we find the number three again: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Jesus' birth bring us into communion with the family and we are given a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is like. In the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, we are given Jesus's genealogy. In the genealogy we are given how Jesus' lineage aligns with David through Joseph, and how through four women and their unusual stories, God's grace prepares the way for Mary's and Joseph's profound "Yes."
In his book on the Infancy Narratives, Pope Benedict made the point on reflecting on John 1:12, he said:
"Just as the genealogies break off at the end, because Jesus was not begotten by Joseph, but was truly born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, so it can now be said of us that our true "genealogy" is faith in Jesus, who gives us a new origin, who brings us to birth "from God."
Archbishop Fulton Sheen elaborated on this idea, too, when he said:
"When we say that God became Man, we do not mean that the Godhead was cut down to human dimensions; it means, on the contrary, that a human nature was taken up into the Person of God and made One with Him."
READ: Ephesians 3:14-21
Note that in verse 14 and 15 that the term family and father occur. Did you know that family and father in the Greek are similar words? You cannot have a family without a father. Fatherhood is the source of all being, it is what gives order to everything from Creation to the Church. In St. Jerome's commentary on this passage, he said that God allows the term Fatherhood to be given us to indicate that we are derived from God "as the only good One, he makes others good."
As a father, are you bestowing Goodness in your family?
This Advent let us daily mediate on Ephesians 3:14-21 and pray that we can be Christ bearers not just through intellectual assent but emulating Mary's Profession of Faith and St. Joseph's Demonstration of faith in action. This is how salvation was born into the world, and this is how salvation will continue to be born and come into the world.
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