HOMILY FOR THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT
In Paul’s letter to the Roman’s (1:1-6), we hear these words: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. (NRSV)
When families gather, especially at celebrations as Thanksgiving and Christmas, we often speak of our ancestry. Stories are told of those not only present, but those who once were, those whose presence, while alive, had a great impact on the family. A distant cousin of mine, Anne Gallagher, is presently working on the ancestry of the Marron-Gallagher families (the Irish side of my mother’s family) and sharing documents, marriage licenses, death certificates, and other information about my great grandparents, great Aunts and Uncles in the general Pittsburgh, PA area.
In sharing the information and stories about our ancestors, their joys, their sorrows, their strengths and weaknesses, we get a better sense of who we are. As much as we may like it or not like it, we carry the DNA of our ancestors within us. I have been told by the Irish side of my mother’s family, that my arthritis and bad joints is directly attributed to the my maternal grandfather, Oscar Jernstrom. “You have the Swedish joints” is what I have been told. Having come to know my maternal grandfather through the memories of him through my mother, I know what a truly honorable, loving and just man he is. (Now that is a genetic trait I wish I could inherit). In a very real way, our ancestors take up home in our bodies, so it is best that we are at peace with our ancestors.
Paul briefly cites the ancestry of Jesus in this reading we hear on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve will give a more detailed ancestry from the Gospel of Matthew (Note: as a point of interest, the ancestry of Jesus noted in Luke’s Gospel, is quite different from that of Matthew.). In doing this brief summary of Jesus, Paul does something very important. Paul tells us that through the incarnation of Jesus, the merging of the Divine into humanity, as brothers and sisters of Jesus, we are now part of Jesus’ ancestral line that goes back not to just David, but is traceable directly back to the source of all life, God.
We hold within our very cells not just the ancestral DNA of our human ancestors. We hold within our very cells the Divinity of Jesus.
How do we feel knowing that within the molecular structure of the cells that make up our body, we carry the DNA of Jesus? When we were baptized, we were joined intimately with Jesus as “priest, prophet, and king”. We are forever merged with the divinity of Jesus. Along with all the positive and negative traits of our human ancestors, we possess the divinity of Jesus Christ. How does this fact impact the way we live our lives? How does this fact direct our lives? Do we just shrug this fact off, as if it means nothing? Do we just say, “What’s the big deal?” Or do we allow the full impact of this fact affect the way we live and direct the way we live our lives?
Though the genes of my Swedish ancestors may affect negatively my joints (amongst the other negative genetic traits of my ancestors, Irish and Polish), they do not define who I am. As I continue to mature, I am becoming more and more aware of the important genetic impact of Jesus within myself. It is as if the genes of Jesus are stirring within myself a desire for the divine, a desire to be more than that of my human ancestry. You see, human ancestry, as interesting as the lives of our human ancestors may have been, is focused on the past, those who once had been. Our divine ancestry from Jesus focuses on that which we can become, that to which we can ascend.
On this fourth Sunday in Advent, may the divinity of Jesus stir within us a desire to become more like him this Christmas. May his divine presence within us, inspire us and direct us to become more his living presence in our world.
