I. A word about Bible translations: NAB, RSV, NJB
A. More precision about the text vs. More poetic translations
B. Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur
C. Other Catholic books
II. We cannot speak of the life of Jesus without beginning before the dawn of time, to the age before ages when there was only God:
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).“And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
A. Jesus is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word who was “in the beginning with God.” All things were created through him.
B. This pre-existing Word “became flesh” and entered into his own creation. This miracle is called the “incarnation,” and it is the beginning of Jesus’s life. It occurred during Mary’s encounter with the angel Gabriel.
C. Jesus is not a symbol or a metaphor for something else; he is not a psychological construct.
1. The witness of the Church down through the centuries, from millions and millions of disciples, is that Jesus was, and is, a real man, an actual historical figure who did and said the things that the Gospel attests to.
2. “The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory.” This is the testimony of Jesus’ disciple from the time Jesus actually walked the earth.
3. This is my witness as well: Jesus is real; I know he is, because I know him personally. I talk to him daily; he is constantly on my mind; he is the sole object of my entire life. All my hopes are in him, and he is, in the end, really the only thing worth living for. (Talk about prayer life)
D. The theological virtues
1. Three essential elements of the Christian life that serve to unite us to God and transform us to make us like him
2. Faith: lets us know God as he makes himself known through revelation. Faith is a preparation for eternal life, for the beatific vision, when we will know God perfectly, directly, and with our whole beings.
3. Hope: through hope we firmly and trustfully expect the happiness of Heaven. Hope makes us love God for his goodness to us.
4. Charity (love): Lets us partake of God’s life already on earth through friendship with God as we begin to love God as he loves himself
III. The Genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew and Luke
A. Matthew
1. The Gospel writer is concerned with showing that Jesus is “the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1), hence descended from the patriarchs and kings of Israel. He tells Jesus’ ancestry going back to the patriarch Abraham.
2. He says there are “fourteen generations” from “Abraham to David”; “from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations” (Matthew 1:17).
3. The significance of numbers in the Bible – often they are used to show that there is an order to Creation, and therefore One who orders.
B. Luke
1. This writer emphasizes Jesus’ humanity and so traces his lineage all the way back to “Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38).
2. Luke also mentions that Jesus was “about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23) when he began his ministry.
IV. The life of Jesus and the Mysteries of the Rosary
A. Pope John Paul II called the Rosary “a compendium of the Gospel” (Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 2002).
1. “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love.”
2. In another place, John Paul says, “To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.”
3. So the Rosary is a “teaching aid” in the “school of Mary” to help us to “contemplate the face of Christ.”
B. In that same letter, the Pope added five new mysteries to the Rosary, the Luminous Mysteries, that cover Jesus’ public ministry. In conjunction with the traditional Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries, the new mysteries offer a complete reflection on the life of Jesus.
V. The Joyful Mysteries
A. The Annunciation
1. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and tells her that she has “found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). Mary was “greatly troubled at what was said.” Mary is troubled because she receives Gabriel’s words as truth, and she knows herself to be unworthy of honor by God. It is because she is sinless that she knows perfectly her unworthiness.
2. The angel announces that “the holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35)
3. Mary makes the moral decision to give her assent, even though she scarcely understands what the angel is asking. We are called to give the same “Yes” to God, all the time, every time, just as Mary did. Not only did Mary say “yes,” she did so with her whole soul, leaving nothing “in reserve” in case things didn’t work out with God.
4. Mary’s wholehearted and immediate assent is a sign of her sinlessness and great purity. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). I can’t help but imagine all of Heaven and Earth holding its breath for the second it took Mary to agree. If she had said “no,” there would have been no Incarnation. Our salvation and the whole future of humanity rested for a moment on the “yes” or “no” of a girl.
5. Many scholars believe that Mary might have been as young as 15 years. And so the Gospel begins, with Mary and her baby: with two young people, children even, upon whom the hope of the world rested. It calls to mind the words of the Lord, “Let the greatest among you be as the youngest,” (Luke 22:26).
6. Notice what didn’t happen. Jesus was not born into fame, or in a palace, or into status and wealth. Mary was an obscure girl who lived by faith; she said “yes” to Gabriel, not knowing what it would mean (she might even have been stoned for being pregnant by another during her betrothal to Joseph). She trusted, but she didn’t have to; our fate really did rest on her consent, just as our fall rested on the disobedience of Eve. So Mary is called “the new Eve.”
B. The Visitation
1. Elizabeth is pregnant in her old age with the boy who will become John the Baptist. Immediately after the Annunciation, Mary travels “in haste” (Luke 1:39) to go visit her.
2. Mary has just known the “overshadowing” of the Most High; she knows that something great has happened. Her first impulse? To go tell someone—to witness to what God has done. We too are called to be witnesses to the power of God working in our lives. People don’t believe the Church because the Church says so; people will only come to believe if we say so.
3. Elizabeth knows immediately that Mary is “the mother of my Lord” (Luke 1:43), and the baby “leaped in her womb” (41). And Elizabeth explicitly declares that Mary is blessed because she “believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). So Mary is blessed because of her perfect faith.
4. Mary rejoices in the “Canticle of Mary” (Read Luke 1:46-55). Mary speaks of future events as having already been accomplished: “He has shown might with his arm,” “He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones,” “The hungry he has filled with good things,” etc. She already knows by faith the consequences of the life of the child she carries inside her, and she knows that God’s will is indomitable, that what he intends through this child will happen. We can take that lesson away for our own lives: what God intends through us will happen, so long as we remain faithful.
5. Notice again the unlikeliness of it all. Mary and Elizabeth are nobodies, and they are prophesying the downfall of kings.
C. The Nativity
1. We all know the story: Caesar decreed a census, and each citizen of the Empire had to return to his home district in order to be enrolled. Joseph had been living in Nazareth, where Jesus was later to live, but he went back to “the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David” (Luke 2:4). While they were there Mary, “gave birth to her firstborn son” (Luke 2:7). She laid him in a manger, because “there was no room for them in the inn.”
2. The shepherds—poor men, the lowest of the low in ancient society—were the first to be given sign of Christ’s birth: “Behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).
3. The Magi, pagans from the East (scripture does not call them “kings”), learned of the birth apparently through astrology and went to King Herod to find out about it. Herod, told that a king had been born, sensed competition, became alarmed and ordered the Magi to go find the boy, and “when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage” (Matthew 2:8). When the Magi found Jesus, they “offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11).
4. “It was necessary that the Messiah be anointed by the Spirit of the Lord at once as king and priest, and also as prophet. Jesus fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel in his threefold office of priest, prophet and king” (CCC 436).
a) Gold – a metal of great intrinsic value, a gift fit for a king
b) Frankincense – a resin with soothing properties, used by the ancients as a treatment for depression. A symbol of the priestly office, because priests burned frankincense to carry their prayers to heaven.
c) Myrrh – a resin used as an embalming spice myrrh is a symbol of Jesus’ prophetic office because it foreshadows his death.
5. The flight to Egypt: Joseph was warned by an angel to take Mary and the child to Egypt, because Herod knew of the boy’s birth and was trying to destroy him. Joseph stayed in Egypt until the death of Herod some years later, and when the angel told him to return to Israel he settled his family in Nazareth. This is why today we usually call the Lord “Jesus of Nazareth.”
6. The Slaughter of the Innocents: Today the Church recognizes December 28, three days after Christmas, as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The day commemorates Herod’s murder of all boys in the vicinity of Bethlehem two years old and under, as he attempted to destroy the Christ child. The victims of abortion are remembered in a special way too on this feast day.
7. We see the exercise of the virtue of obedience everywhere in this story. Joseph obeys Caesar in returning to Bethlehem to be enrolled (how would you like it if every 10 years the President ordered all citizens to return to the place of their birth for the census?). The shepherds, despite their fear, obey the angels; the Magi are obeying some sort of call in practicing their craft and travelling to Jesus’ place of birth; Joseph obeyed God and took his family to Egypt, away from King Herod, saving the child’s life. We are called to the twin virtues of faithfulness and obedience. Both are necessary for the Christian life. How could you say you are faithful to God but disobey his laws and commandments? And what would it matter if you legalistically obeyed every law on the books but had no faith?
D. The Presentation in the Temple
1. (Read Luke 2:22-38) According to Jewish law, Mary and Joseph were to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem in order to consecrate him to God. They were to bring a small sacrifice—two turtledoves, or, for poorer families, two pigeons. Simeon, led by the Spirit of God, met Mary and Joseph there and took the child in his arms, blessing God and prophesying.
2. Place yourself in Mary’s shoes. She has just given birth to this child; she knows that he was conceived miraculously and that Herod is trying to kill him. She doesn’t yet appreciate fully what it is to be “Son of God,” but she’s starting to get the idea that it means this kid is someone really special. Then Simeon tells her, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35). Now it sounds like your newborn son is going to be some kind of political figure, and that you will have to suffer yourself as a consequence. How do you keep your equilibrium?
3. At the visit of the shepherds, at Jesus’ birth, we were told, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Mary is always held up in the Church as the model of contemplatives, a contemplative being someone who holds the Word of Truth “in her heart.” Mary kept quiet and reflected, and so grew in wisdom and understanding, until she was ready to be crowned Queen of Heaven. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
4. In this scene, we begin to see Mary practicing the beautiful and mysterious virtue of long-suffering. She is told that she will suffer, and instead of rebelling, she keeps Simeon’s words “in her heart.” She could have said, “I want no part of this, it’s not good for me.” But she trusts. Long-suffering is a virtue that conforms us to God by helping us to give up our own desires, to be replaced with God’s desire, which is our ultimate happiness. It’s like being worn away by fine sandpaper day after day, year after year. It teaches patience and trust.
5. After the Presentation begin what are called “the hidden years,” because we have so few details about Jesus’ childhood with Mary and Joseph. The only story we have from the hidden years is about the Finding in the Temple.
E. The Finding in the Temple
1. Read Luke 2:41-52. The 12-year-old-Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem after the Passover when his parents went home (they thought he was somewhere in the caravan). When they look and can’t find him, they become alarmed and return to Jerusalem to look for him there. After three days of desolate searching they find him in the Temple, teaching the teachers.
2. Mary and Joseph practice the theological virtue of hope; they were devastated by the loss of Jesus, but in that desolation they retained their faith and sought him. That is what we must do, too. The life of faith is not always easy. A person can slip into a depression that leaves him feeling rudderless in life; but what you need to have is hope that things will get better, you will find Jesus again, your bad situation is only temporary. Faith and Hope get people through all kinds of illnesses, through wars, through every sort of desperation.
3. When Mary says, “Your Father and I,” she means Joseph, but when Jesus replies “my Father’s house” he means God. Mary and Joseph do not understand what he means—evidently Mary’s understanding of Jesus’ true nature has not yet developed. Once again we are told, “his mother kept all these things in her heart.”
4. This is also the last mention of Joseph in Scripture, which leads many scholars to believe he died before the events of Jesus’ adult life.
