What Went Ye Out For To See?

“What went ye out for to see?”  This is a question our Lord posed to the multitudes who thronged to see John the Baptist at the River Jordan.  “Did you come to see a prophet predicting the future or working wonders?”  Our Lord could have asked the same question to the same crowds who would later follow him into the wilderness.  He knew that a lot of their motivation came from their hope in seeing him perform miracles.  What is this man going to do next?  Will he heal a blind man or a leper?  Will he raise a dead man back to life?  Will he walk on water or feed them from a tiny portion of bread and fish?  Our blessed Lord was very familiar with human nature, and with his own good and kind nature, he does not condemn our curiosity and interest in the extraordinary, but merely smiles patiently at our imperfections.

But this question, “What went ye out for to see?” makes us uneasy, or at least it should.  Do we follow Christ for these less than worthy motives of wonder and novelty?  Are the marvels of his life and death meant to teach and inspire us, or merely to entertain us?  And are we disappointed when, instead of finding spectacles of wonder, we instead tire of the more mundane aspects of our religion?  Take today’s Gospel for instance.  At first glance it appears to be nothing more than a long list of genealogy, with one man begetting another, who then begets someone else, and so on for generation after generation, hundreds of years’ worth of obscure names, apparently of no more interest than a telephone directory.  However, this list is the way that the Evangelist St. Matthew chose to begin his Gospel, and the prominent position he gives it should therefore make us pause.  Why is this long and monotonous list so important for us to appreciate?  And what should we think about our own reaction of disinterest and even boredom?

To answer the first question, the human genealogy of the Son of God is indeed important.  The opening declaration by St. Matthew to his Gospel allows us immediate insight into the human background of Christ.  The Evangelist announces that this will be the “book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”  This brief introduction into the long genealogy that follows makes us immediately aware that this man, from the mortal point of view, was the descendant of the royal house of David.  This David was one of the first kings of the Hebrew nation, the slayer of Goliath, and delivering the people out of the hands of the Philistines just as Christ would one day redeem all of mankind from the chains of sin.  Not only that, but he can also trace his ancestry all the way back to the greatest of the patriarchs, Father Abraham, with whom God entered into a covenant, an agreement.

It is worth our while examining the establishment of this covenant in the book of Genesis.  To test Abraham’s faith, he asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac.  The Jews had long been accustomed to offering up the blood of animals to God in propitiation for their sins.  But they had always rejected human sacrifice as abhorrent and repugnant to the word of God.  Now, God was asking his faithful servant Abraham to do just that.  The blood of animals was not enough to satisfy for the terrible iniquities of man against their God, who now demanded something of higher value, the sacrifice of a human being.  Just as God the Father would later send his only-begotten Son to be sacrificed on Calvary, now Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice him as a burnt offering to God.  And Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be sacrificed up the hill to the place appointed, just as one day our Lord Jesus Christ would carry the wood of his cross to Calvary.

Of course, this whole episode was meant by God to be a lesson for us.  Firstly, that the blood of animals was insufficient to make satisfaction for sin.  Secondly, that not even the sacrifice of a mortal human would be enough to make up for the infinite offences against God, the infinite Creator of all.  And thirdly, it was a foreshadowing of the only True Sacrifice that would be that of God’s own Son, a Being both human and divine, a single drop of whose Blood would be able to satisfy for all the sins of mankind.

As we know, God sent an angel to hold back the hand of Abraham from slaying his son Isaac.  But the lesson was not yet over.  For then God made this astounding prophecy to Abraham.  “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.”  Note that last statement, that his seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.  Who is his seed?  Well… Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob, and so on and on until Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was Jesus, who is called Christ.  And so it came to pass that the seed of Abraham, our Lord Jesus Christ, did indeed come to possess the gate of his enemies.  Eventually the old covenant that was made betwixt God and Abraham was fulfilled by Abraham’s seed, Christ, in the new covenant.  It was fulfilled not by the blood of Abraham’s son Isaac, but by the most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Blood of the new and everlasting Covenant.  And by the shedding of that Blood, the enemies of God were put to flight.

For this to happen, a whole series of events must first take place.  One of those happy events is commemorated today with the anniversary of the birth of the Most Holy Virgin Mary.  Without this birth, there would have been no Mother of God, no Incarnation of the Son of God, no Redemption.  And for this reason, the Evangelist St. Matthew knew very well the importance of tracing the Redeemer’s lineage all the way back to the Patriarch Abraham.  All that followed from the Immaculate Conception and Nativity of our blessed Lady was the fulfillment of the prophecy God himself made to her ancestor Abraham.  And yes, Abraham was not only St. Joseph’s ancestor but our Lady’s too.  Don’t be put off by the fact that the lineage is based on the male line from Abraham to St. Joseph, who is only the foster father of our Lord.  We must remember that in those days, Jewish men customarily married only within their own tribe or house.  If Joseph was of the house of David, then it followed that so was Mary.  So any genealogy that ended with Joseph can be automatically ascribed to the Blessed Mother also.

Today’s Gospel, at first glance so uninteresting, should henceforth have new meaning for us.  And these insights should be a lesson in themselves, and not just by what they teach us about the importance of our Lady’s birth today.  They also remind us why we bother coming to church at all.  “What went ye out for to see?”  The beautiful traditional Mass?  The miracle of transubstantiation?  The graces that come to us from the sacraments?”  Yes, but not just that.  These things are there for our benefit, certainly.  But more so, they are there to give glory to God.  The riches of the liturgy may be long and sometimes tiring, they may require sacrifice, the effort to remain focused and avoid distraction.  Sometimes the time we spend in church must be endured rather than enjoyed.  Too bad!  This isn’t the theatre, the Mass is not a spectacle designed for our entertainment.  It is for the greater glory of God, and we are there to participate in giving that glory to God, not amusing ourselves.  Today’s Gospel is a prime example of how the words of Holy Scripture are not always page-turners like a penny novel.  Their significance goes far deeper than our own emotional response to them, and we must discipline ourselves to recognize this fact and eventually appreciate it.  In today’s case, the long genealogy we read is the written testament to an incredible fact, that our most holy Mother Mary was thought of by God even before the Creation of Man.  “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old,” words spoken by our Lady under the mantle of Wisdom in the Old Testament reading at today’s Mass.  “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.”  On this day she was born into this world, and here she would fulfill the ancient prophecies of a Messiah who would redeem mankind.  Let us give thanks therefore on this happy day, and rejoice in her holy nativity.  And let us do as she commands, keeping her ways, hearing instruction, watching daily at her gates.  “For whoso findeth me,” she says, “findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.”