THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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A good Sunday to all.

When we hear talking about the announcement of the birth of Jesus, our thoughts turn immediately to the announcement to Mary made by the archangel Gabriel. The text of today’s Gospel does not present the announcement to Mary but the announcement to Joseph, narrated by the evangelist Matthew. Listening to and reading these two episodes, leads us to ask ourselves some questions since we would like to have much more information about what has happened and we would like to know how exactly the events developed.

And to satisfy our legitimate curiosity we are always tempted to bring the two narratives together as if they were interviews of two journalists where one completes the information that the other gives. If we do that we will make a serious mistake because the two evangelists have not narrated two pages of chronicle but two pages of theology. And their goal is not to give us detailed information of how the events developed. We will never know this.

What the evangelists want to tell us is who the son of Mary, Joseph’s wife, is. And this is very important because it affects our life: knowing who this Jesus of Nazareth is; what model of humanity he presents; and what is the point in following his proposal. This is decisive for our life.

To understand the message that Matthew wants to communicate to us in today’s text, we must keep in mind what the expectations of the people of Israel were. Almost ten centuries before Christ, the prophet Nathan had promised David—already advanced in years— that his dynasty would last forever. And he assured him that the Lord would give his son a universal, eternal kingdom, that would never end.

Through the centuries the prophets always kept this prophecy alive in Israel, waiting for this son of David. In the darkest moments of their history they have always waited that one day the Lord would send the messiah that would radically change the history of his people and of the world. In Jesus’ time, everyone was waiting for this messiah since things did not go well. But the different groups, the different philosophies—as they were called—imaginedin a very diverse way.

For example, the Sadducees, who were the priests of the temple and were rich, expected a priest to perfectly follow the temple cult by renewing it and improving it. The Pharisees, whom we know very well, said that the messiah would be a rigorous observer of the Torah;and that the messiah would distinguish the good from the bad—those who accept God’s law and those who reject it. And naturally the messiah would do a good cleansing.

The Essenes: shared a little the ideas of the Baptist and they maintained that the messiah would make the wicked, the children of darkness, disappear and that he would be the guide of the children of light. Then there were also the Zealots who sought to free their nation from Roman power; for them the messiah would be a warrior like David was. This was the kind of messiah that different groups expected.

All these groups will get a big surprise, even the Baptist, since Jesus will not correspond to any of the expected messiahs. This will be the surprise of God. Jesus will reject violence, he will not have political ambitions, he will not be the righteous person announced by the Pharisees and even less the priest of the temple as the Sadducees expected.

Jesus will purify the temple. This will not be the religion, the relationship that God wishes to have with his people. The gospel of Matthew, attributed to this apostle, has followed Jesus during the three years of his public life and when Matthew writes his gospel, he knows everything that has happened, all the revelation that Jesus came to bring to the world. He knows what Jesus has taught, he knows what his proposal of a man was, Matthew knows Jesus’ life; he knows that in the eyes of the world Jesus has finished badly, but he has also made the Easter experience. So, when Matthew narrates the announcement to Joseph he already has the whole story of Jesus’ life in mind.

Let’s hear how this announcement is presented.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.

In Jesus’ time, marriage was celebrated in two stages. The first, “kidushim” or “eusim”was the formal exchange of consensus. It was the contract between the couple, made in front of their parents and of two witnesses. The dowry was presented, called “wetting” and, normally, this contract could last several days. At the end of this contract, the couple went under the tent, the “chupppah” and there the marriage contract was signed, the famous “ketubah”. At the end of the ceremony, the man would take the ‘tallit’, the shawl for prayer, put it on the wife’s head and said: “Now you are my wife.” And the wife replied: “And you are my husband.” Since that time both were husband and wife, but they did not go to live together immediately.

Generally, they let a year go by … why? First, because they were very young. Generally, the marriage was carried out when the young woman was about 13 years old and the young man 16 or 17 years old. Therefore, it was important that they mature a little more and, in addition, it was the time when the two families could get to know each other better because if the two families did not get along well, that would immediately bring problems with the couple. And if there was a serious problem it would be better for the newlyweds to separate before the birth of their children.

After this year of waiting, a big feast was organized, the ‘nissuin’, and the wife went to her husband’s house and they began life as a couple. It was during this interval that Mary became pregnant by the work of the Holy Spirit. In this narration, the Spirit does not represent the masculine element. In Hebrew ‘ruaj’ is feminine and ‘pneuma’ in Greek is neutral. There is nothing of ‘masculinity’… it is the creative divine force that we find in the book of Genesis at the beginning of the world, when the creative Spirit hovered over the waters. The Spirit is the power, the divine creator breath.

How is it that both Luke and Matthew mention that the conception of Jesus did not happen with the intervention of a human father? We must keep in mind the Semitic culture in order to understand the message of this decision of God to resort to a creative act to make the Son of God germinate in Mary’s womb.

In Hebrew, the term no ‘generator’ does not exist; today the term ‘orim’ is used, but this word does not appear in the bible because the ‘generator’ was only one; the father was the generator. The mother was considered an incubator that made her husband’s son grow in her womb. The mother did not count for anything else. The son was from the father. Thus, we find this concept in the gospel when Matthew says: “the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus” (Mt 20:20). The sons, James and John, were only the sons of Zebedee. She was ‘the mother of these sons of Zebedee.’

The second thing we must keep in mind: when in the Semitic world it is said ‘son of a certain man,’ more than ‘generated’ from him, it means ‘similar’ to him. This is the meaning of fatherhood. The son was recognized by the father when the son resembled him, not so much in the external factions, but as the son assimilated all the values ​​and the conception of life instilled by the father. This was what the father wanted to see reflected in the son.

The divine decision to resort to a creative act to make the Son of God germinate in Mary’s womb, has this meaning: The Lord has wanted to give a sign to highlight the fact that his Son, Jesus of Nazareth, was his perfect image; and seeing him we will have seen the face of the Father in heaven. For this reason, God wanted to give this signal that Jesus of Nazareth had as Father the one he perfectly resembled, only the Father in heaven.

And, at this moment, the earthly father enters the scene: Joseph, Mary’s husband. The first thing I want to do is to erase the image of a sad Joseph upon discovering Mary’s pregnancy and having been distressed to think that his wife had been unfaithful. In Matthew’s account, there is no sign that makes us think about this. To make some presupposition, the most logical thing is that Joseph knew, from the beginning, that the child that Mary carried in her womb had been conceived through a divine creative force.

Joseph doesn’t know yet what he is called to do with his wife and with the child generated by God in the mother’s womb. He wants to understand what he should do, “what does God want from me.” The gospel says that Joseph is ‘just’. What does the bible understand with this adjective? A ‘just’ person is one that is consistent with his faith, an observer of the law of God. The ‘Torah’ is for him the benchmark of all options, as it is for every pious Israelite. Joseph knows that the Torah states that he must declare publicly That the son is not his. And the text says he didn’t want to publicly accuse her and has thought about repudiating her in secret. It is difficult to understand how one can ‘repudiate’ in secret… everyone will know.

To understand the text, we must first of all analyze the translation, ‘He did not want to expose her to a public show ’= ‘ἀπολῦσαι’ in Greek means ‘to expose a problem in front of everyone and not knowing what to do.’ Joseph does not decide to ‘repudiate her’ (this does not correspond to the original text) – ‘apolïo’ does not mean repudiation; it means ‘to set free.’ So, what has Joseph decided to do? After reflecting, he says: ‘I don’t want to make noise, but I leave my wife free because I don’t know how to stand by her side … I don’t know what God wants from me.’ Joseph didn’t want to make noise about this event and decides to simply release her. Being male, he shouldn’t give explanation of his decision. It could be that he had rethought about it… he would leave her free. Joseph sees no other way out than to move away without noise because he doesn’t know what he should do. What does God want from him? Exposing her publicly would have been impossible because no one would come to understand the mystery that had happened in Mary. So, in this situation, how does God reveal to Joseph the vocation to which he is called?

Let’s listen:

Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit 
that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

To introduce God’s revelation to Joseph, the evangelist Matthew uses two biblical images: The angel of the Lord and the dream. The angel of the Lord: we are used to imagine this character coming from heaven with wings, without socks and shoes, naturally, because they fly… never in the paintings they appear with footwear. These are beautiful, exciting, sweet images, but the ‘angel of the Lord’ in the Old and in the New Testaments is a literary formula used to say that it is the Lord himself who has intervened to communicate to the person his will or to intervene in favor of the people.

In our text, “Angel of the Lord” means precisely this: when Joseph was wondering what decision to make, he was reflecting and asking God for the light because being a righteous person he wanted to fulfill the will of the Lord; at one point, he clearly understood what God wanted from him. ´Angel of the Lord’ means the enlightenment he had received came from God and that he was certain about that. Now he knew what he was called to do, in tune with the will of the Lord.

And also ‘the dream,’ the second image, it is not necessary to understand it in real sense. The evangelist Matthew recalls two other dreams of Joseph: when the angel of the Lord tells him to go to Egypt and then when the angel of the Lord tells him to return to the land of Israel. The dream is a metaphor. It is the image with which the evangelist wants to say that Joseph has had a revelation about the will of God. And naturally not when he slept but when he was wide awake. Today we would say when he was at prayer. As he tried to read, according to God’s will, the delicate moment he was going through in his life, he has heard the voice of the Lord in his heart because he was righteous, he had a pure heart, sensitive to the voice of the Lord.

This is an important message for us. We have an example in Joseph: he always wanted to act according to the will of the Lord; he did not make choices with his head but wanted to hear what the Lord said. We also, in our life, must move in the same way, always looking and asking: What does God want from me? When we listen to the Lord, certainly the angel of the Lord will come to talk to us. What did the angel of the Lord say to Joseph? “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to receive Mary as your wife.” Joseph’s fear is that of one who faces a mystery that overcomes him. Joseph feared to intrude in God’s design, not knowing how to move, not knowing what to do. Now he understood that he has been called to be Mary’s husband. And he understood that, as a father, he should give the name to the son of Mary and that he should name him ‘Jesus’, ‘Joshua’ in Hebrew.

Both names have the same Aramaic root. It is the same name. It is also said why this name has been chosen for the son of Mary: because this name comes from the root: ‘hiashiá’ which means ‘salvation’—‘save’ = God saves. At that time, many bore this name ‘Joshuá’ or ‘Yehoshúa’ because it was the time when in Israel the messiah was expected to be like Joshua, a deliverer of his people and they awaited liberation from the Roman occupation.

The historian Josephus Flavius mentions in his writings 19 people that bore this name: ‘Joshuá’. What kind of salvation is it? ‘The Lord saves.’ In Israel, the salvation from sin was not expected. The salvation that was expected was from the Romans. Instead, the evangelist Matthew explains this text by saying that Jesus is the one who saves from sin. What salvation is it?

Sin, חָטָא ‘chatá’ in Hebrew, means ‘to mistake the objective,’ ‘bear the blame.’ What is the goal we pursue in our entire lives? We seek joy, we want to be happy, we want to fully realize our mortal life. Sin means ‘to mistake the objective.’ When do we miss the goal? For example, when we have as objective of our life the accumulation of money without too many scruples; when we live abandoning ourselves and desperately seeking pleasure for pleasure;when we abandon ourselves to debauchery; when we think of being realized as people by imposing ourselves and dominating others. We miss the objective. And this error happensbecause we listen to our instincts, which come from the pre-human, and we don’t let ourselves be guided by the Spirit of the Lord. We forfeit our goal.

And when we make these mistakes it is not that the Lord punishes us because we have disobeyed His commands. God does not give orders. God indicates the path of glory and happiness. If we do not follow Him, He does not punish us. It is the sin that punishes us because it dehumanizes us. Jesus came to this world to save us from the dehumanization to which our options lead us if they are not in tune with the Word of God. He saves us, then, from our mistakes, from the wrong way, from the foolish options we take in the search for illusory happiness. It frees us from sin when we make wrong choices. And not only from the consequence of our guilt, but he wants to take away from us this wrong orientation which leads us to the non-realization of our life.

Now we know the name with which God wants to be called because Jesus has come to reveal to us the face of the Father from heaven. Born of a creative act of God Jesus wanted to highlight precisely this: he is the Son of the Father in heaven. And the Father of heaven is reflected in this name, the name he has given to the Son: he-who-saves. And Joseph is the first to recognize this true name of God: he-who-saves, God is salvation. It is the identity of God.

And now, the evangelist Matthew could only make reference to the realization of Scripture.

Let’s listen:

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel, 
which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.

The conclusion of the narration of the announcement to Joseph is solemn because it is of something so extraordinary that the evangelist feels the need to present the realization of a prophecy. And he has at his disposal an important oracle pronounced by the prophet Isaiah in the eighth century B.C.

The prophet had said: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” What did he mean? He was addressing Ahaz, the king of Jerusalem, who was very scared because the enemies had circled the city and feared that his dynasty would end forever. The prophet tells him: Your wife will have a son who will be called ‘Emmanuel’… You will call him ‘Emmanuel’, which means: God-with-us. He tried to tell the king: don’t be afraid, God has promised to always be with his people and to protect your dynasty. ‘Emmanuel’ = God-is-with-us. In fact, the son was born and the enemies will not conquer the city of Jerusalem.

What is the reason why the evangelist Matthew quotes this prophecy referring to Mary? Mary’s son will be the real ‘Emmanuel’, not the son of Ahaz who will be called Hezekiah. Joseph will give him the name, and the evangelist: “All nations will call him Emmanuel.” That is, they will recognize in Jesus the presence among us of the same God. This prophecy was fully realized in Mary because the Son of Mary is none other than the Only Begotten of the Father who has clothed our humanity. Not in the sense that he was covered with ‘muscles’. NO. He became completely one of us; he experienced our feelings, our emotions, our passions; he experienced our joys, our affections, our disappointments; he experienced betrayal, pain; he experienced death. By becoming one of us, the Only Begotten of the Father has become mortal.

This is truly the ‘God-with-us.’ No other religion has this image of God: a God who has loved us so much that he became the ‘Emmanuel’= God-with-us. This is the mystery we are invited to contemplate in this Christmas time.

I wish you all a good preparation for this feast where we celebrate the coming of God in our midst.