Daily Reflection Monday of the Third Week of Advent

After today and into Christmas day a week from now, all the Gospel readings at the daily liturgies will be from Luke’s infancy narrative. This is the only passage from Matthew’s infancy narrative we will hear until the feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28. The most remarkable thing about the two infancy narratives we have in the gospels is how they differ almost completely. The only things they agree on are Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem and the virgin birth (though Luke is far more explicit concerning that). Matthew’s gospel begins with his genealogy of Jesus. Luke also has a genealogy but his does not appear until the end of chapter 3. Both are actually the genealogy of Joseph, but Matthew’s starts with Abraham and works forward whereas Luke begins with Joseph and works back all the way to Adam. They agree on little, not even on who was Joseph’s father (Heli in Luke and Jacob in Matthew).

Whereas the Virgin Mary is at the center of Luke’s account, in Matthew it is St. Joseph who is entirely front and center with the Blessed Mother remaining primarily “offstage” as it were, except when the Magi later find her with the baby Jesus. In Matthew, the angel appears to Jospeh (although in dreams) not to Mary as in Luke. Today’s passage from Matthew is all he says concerning the Lord’s birth. The rest of his infancy narrative concerns the visit of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the return to Nazareth, and the Holy Innocents. Other than the story of the Magi (which has become the only beloved Christmas story from Matthew thanks largely to St. Francis of Assisi and his popularizing of the creche scene), Matthew’s infancy narrative is decidedly an “also ran” if truth be told. It does not (other than the citing of Isaiah 7:14) lend itself to romanticization as does Luke’s, which is far more dramatic (there’s a reason the lights dimmed and Linus, spotlit, recited Luke 8-14 and not anything from Matthew!). 

We do not know what the sources were for these two very different infancy narratives. We must assume that the Blessed Mother was never asked about it since then it would seem they would have agreed more in their details. We must conclude that the purpose of the two evangelists’ infancy narratives (written long after those events occurred) was not a historical one but rather one of a theological and spiritual nature. Like the accounts of the resurrection which also differ substantially among all four gospels, the birth of Jesus and the two accounts we have of it (which are all we know of Jesus’ birth) are attempts to speak of a great mystery: how Almighty God became Emmanuel, “God with us.” How the Word became flesh (to put it in its Johannine context). No mere history could tell us that deep mystery. As the Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?” alludes to, Jesus’ birth was unlike any other and not just because of Mary’s virginity. For Jesus is unlike any other human being. What Christmas celebrates is not simply the birth of this child, as beautiful as it is portrayed (especially in Luke) and as epochal as it was (all history before it lead to Bethlehem and all history since has proceeded from that singularly unique and blessed event), but more something of John 3:16 where Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” It also seeks to answer Jesus’ eternal question to his Apostles (and therefore to all of us), “And you, who do you say that I am?” The answer to that question makes all the difference and the mystery of the Nativity and Christmas itself is central to our answering it with the help of the Holy Spirit.