21 December 2025
Fourth Sunday of Advent ‘A’
Is 7:10-16; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24
Homily
If the people of Israel played a significant role in ancient history, it was certainly not because of their numerical or military importance, but because of their strategic position. Israel was a kind of buffer zone between the great powers of the time: between Assyria and Egypt for a time, then between Persia and the Greco-Roman Empire. These superpowers, each in turn, considered it their right and duty to act as international police and to impose or depose the leaders of the people of Israel. At the time of Jesus' birth, Judea was under the authority of a king who was a puppet of the Romans, and Galilee was under a Roman governor.
The Son of God was not born in any of the superpowers of the time, but in a tiny country that was despised and had been invaded several times by one or other of these superpowers.
One thing that today's three readings have in common is the title ‘Son of David’, given to both Jesus and Joseph. What this emphasizes is the profoundly human nature of God's intervention in history. The Son of God did not become incarnate in the abstract. He became man – a concrete man – born at a particular moment in human history, into a specific people and a specific family. This particular environment shaped him, gave him the categories of thought and language that enabled him to speak to us using a very specific set of images and concepts.
One thing that today's three readings have in common is the title ‘Son of David’, given to both Jesus and Joseph. What this emphasizes is the profoundly human nature of God's intervention in history. The Son of God did not become incarnate in the abstract. He became man – a concrete man – born at a particular moment in human history, into a specific people and a specific family. This particular environment shaped him, gave him the categories of thought and language that enabled him to speak to us using a very specific set of images and concepts.
His mission was accomplished in a very ordinary human life. A child was born of a woman. A very young woman. If Mary was betrothed at the usual age in her society, that is, at the onset of puberty, she must have been between 12 and 14 years old when she gave birth to Jesus. According to the same customs, Joseph must have been between 13 and 15 years old – not the bearded old man depicted in so many artistic representations. This child grew up and became an adult. He practised his father's trade. One day he felt the prophetic call and preached the good news in towns and villages. The authorities found him embarrassing and got rid of him as they had done with so many others. There is nothing really extraordinary about any of this. The same thing, including death, had happened to many others. Yet it was through this ordinary human existence that the course of history was profoundly changed and salvation was accomplished.
Matthew, in today's Gospel, like Paul in his letter to the Romans, or John in his Prologue, wants to show that this son of Israel was more than just a son of Israel. He was not simply a pious Jew sent to the Jewish people. He was Emmanuel (see the reading from Isaiah), God-with-us, for every human being and for all races. When Matthew tells us about the virgin birth, what he wants to emphasize is not so much a miraculous event as the fact that Jesus is much more than a child of Israel. Yes, he was Jewish by birth. Yes, his ancestors were Jews. But his real father was God who, through him, as he had done through Adam, gave birth to a new race, a race in which blood ties were of little importance.
Joseph's role in this story is a kind of symbolic expression of the disappointment of the Jewish people when they discovered that the Messiah was not their exclusive property. The birth of Jesus puts an end to the domination of one race over another, of one culture over another. Since Jesus, whatever our political citizenship, whether we belong to a tiny country or a powerful state that can act as an international police force, we have only one citizenship that really matters: we are all sons and daughters of God. Everything else, as Paul would say, in an expression that can only really be quoted in Latin, is ‘stercora’.
Another consequence of all this is that God is not simply ‘our’ God and Jesus is not only ‘our’ Jesus. However, we are accustomed to considering Jesus as “ours”; and, of course, since we are generous, we want to share him with others! In reality, we do not have to ‘share’ him with others. We have to “discover” him in others. No one – neither Joseph nor ourselves – can claim paternity of Jesus.
This is what is absolutely new and original. Why then are we Christians? Precisely for this purpose: to bear witness to the absolute equality of all human beings; to help humanity finally discover that no one can, for any reason, dominate another person, whether in the military and political order or in the order of religion.
I once heard someone reproach Catholics for wanting to ‘monopolize Christmas’! In a sense, this person was right... more so than they realized: in the name of Jesus, ‘Emmanuel’ or ‘God with us’, the ‘us’ refers to all human beings, whoever we are, without exception.
Armand Veilleux