Luke, III, 1-20. Preaching of St. John the Baptist.
"The Word of God rested on John the son of Zachariah in the wilderness." Before assembling the Church, the Son of God acts in his servant. It is, therefore, that S. Luke shows the Word of God resting on John, son of Zacharias, in the desert; so the Church departs not from a man, but from the Word. It is she who is the desert, because "the sons of the deserted are more numerous than those of the bride" (Is., LIV, 1). It is still to her that it was said: "Rejoice, sterile" (Ib.) And "exult, desert" (Ib., III, 9): because it was not yet cultivated by work of a people of strangers, and those trees that could bear fruit were not yet raising the height of their merits. He had not yet come, the one who had to say, "I am like a fertile olive tree in the house of the Lord" (Ps 51, 10); the heavenly vine did not yet secure fruit to its branches (Jn, XV, 1) by means of its words. So the word was made for the previously deserted land to produce its fruit; the Word came, the voice followed: for the Word operates first within, then the voice does its service. So David said, "I believed, that's why I spoke" (Psalm 115: 1): he first thought he could speak. So "the Word was made", so that St. John the Baptist preached penance. And so many apply to St. John the figure of the Law, because the Law was able to denounce sin, she could not forgive; for whoever followed the way of the Gentiles is by the Law brought back from his error, turned away from the crime, exhorted to penance to obtain grace. Now "the Law and the prophets lasted until John" (Lk 16, 16), and John is the forerunner of Christ: so the Law proclaims the Church, like penance grace. So Luke did well to use brevity to proclaim John the prophet, saying that the word of God descended upon him, without adding anything else: for one does not need to prove oneself when one is full. of the word of God. He said only one word, which explains everything. On the other hand, S. Matthew and S. Mark wanted to show him a prophet in his garment, his belt, his food, since he had a garment of camel hair and a leather belt on his back and he was eating locusts. and wild honey. The Precursor of Christ could not bear to let the spoils of unclean beasts be lost, and by the sign of his own garment he foresaw the coming of Christ, who, taking upon himself the monstrosity, impregnated with the stains of our ignoble deeds, sins of unclean gentility, would be robbed on the trophy of the cross of the garment of our flesh. But what does this loincloth, this leather belt mean, except that this flesh, which until then had been used to weigh down the soul, began after the coming of Christ to be no longer an embarrassment but a harness? For according to David "we have suspended our lyres with willows" (Ps. 136, 2) and according to the Apostle we have no confidence in the flesh and we have confidence in the body (Phil., III, 3); we do not have it in the pleasures, we have it in the sufferings, animated that we are by a feeling of spiritual fervor and girdles to execute all the commands of the sky, the devoted and waking soul, the equipped body and cleared. The dreary food of the prophet indicates his mission, announces the mystery. Is there anything as vain and useless for man as the harvest of locusts, and so fruitful as to the mystery of the prophet? The more the locusts are devoid of utility, unfit for all use, concealing themselves from touch, jumping here and there, hoarse in their cry, the more they agree and are apt to represent the people of the nations, who, without useful labor, without work fruitful, without weighting, emitting the inarticulate sound of its murmurs, ignored the word of life. This people is therefore the food of the prophets; for the greater the number of people who gather together, the more they grow and abound in the harvest of the mouths of the prophets. The sweetness of the Church is also prefigured in the wild honey, which is not found in the hive of the Law as produced by the Jewish people, but is scattered in the fields and under the foliage of the forests by the misguidance of the Gentiles , according to the word: "We found it in the fields of the forest" (Ps 131, 6). And he ate wild honey to announce that the peoples would be filled with the honey of the rock, as it is written, "And he has filled them with the rock of honey" (Ps 80:17). Thus again the ravens fed Elijah to the desert of food which they brought, and of a drink which they gave him: a sign that the peoples of the nations, hideous by the darkness of their conduct, who until then had been feeding the corpses fetid, would now offer in themselves and bring to the prophets their food; for the food of the prophets is the fulfillment of the divine will, as the Lord Himself said in these words: "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me" (Jn, IV, 34). "A voice is screaming in the desert. " It is good to call the voice of John, the Precursor of the Word. For John himself, to the question, "What do you say about yourself? Replied, "I am the voice that cries in the wilderness" (Jn, I, 22 ff.). If he says: "The one who comes after me is before me" is that the voice precedes, which is inferior; then comes the Word, which is superior. This is also why He wanted to be baptized by John, because among men the Word has its consecration in the word of the doctor. Perhaps Zachariah has found his voice again because he has named the voice. "Race of vipers, who taught you to flee before the coming wrath? therefore do worthy fruits of penance, and do not say to yourself, our father is Abraham. But I say to you, God has the power to draw from these stones the children of Abraham. " It is, it seems, the denunciation of the perversity of the Jews, who, soiled by the venom of their malevolent soul, like the undulations of snakes and their underground hiding places instead of the mysteries of the knowledge of God. Yet the words "who taught you to flee before the coming wrath? Show that the mercy of God has given them the prudence to do penance for their faults by conjuring by a wise devotion the dreadful judgment to come. It is therefore to the race, not to the descendants, that this comparison of the vipers must be related. Or maybe, as it says: "Be careful as snakes" (Matt. X, 16), is to show that they have natural prudence, seeing their advantage and eager to ask for it, but not yet giving up their mistakes. And they are warned to claim rather the brilliancy of their works than of the nobility of their race, since birth gives no privilege if it is not supported by the heritage of faith. the will of God, will be transferred to the peoples of gentility, as he revealed in these prophetic terms: "God," said he, "has the power to draw from these stones the children of Abraham. For although God may transform and interchange the various species, yet finding more profit in the mystery than in the miracle, I must not recognize in this message of Christ anything but the construction of the nascent Church, which, built not of rocky quarters but of living stones, rises in residence from God and to the top of the temple by the conversion of our hearts. Yes, God was preparing to soften the hardness of our souls and to draw from these stumbling blocks followers of religion. Could they pass for anything but stones, those servants of stones, surely like them, who fashioned them (Psalm 113, 16)? It is prophesized, then, that faith will be laid in the hearts of Gentile stone, and the oracles promise that faith will make Abraham's son those in whom the hardness of heart has engendered a soul of stone, a natural unfeeling and without reason. For if the sentence of the Apostle compared to living stones men strengthened in the vigor of the faith, as it is written: "And you, like living stones, you form a spiritual dwelling, for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual victims "(I Peter, II, 5), in a much deeper sense, it seems, the word of the prophet here compares to stones the men who had lost the feeling and the human spirit to the point of believing that stones could shelter a divine reality; so were they themselves changed into stones, not as to the nature of their bodies, but as to the state of their souls. So they are descendants of Abraham according to the flesh, who are called princes of Sodom (Is., I, 10) and whitewashed (Act., XXIII, 3). Thus the privileges of the race are acquired by the likeness of the mores rather than by the line of the ancestors. And even to show you that men have been compared to stones, the prophet also compared men to trees, adding, "The ax is already at the root of the trees. This change of emblem is intended to show, by a gradation in the comparison, that there is already in man a certain progress and taming; for hitherto unformed, without ornaments, sterile and without fruit, without reason for progress, they are represented under the figure of trees, which, by an almost spiritual advantage of their nature, are of good appearance, pleasant in appearance, fertile and fruitful, grow their crowns, extend their branches, are laden with fruit, covered with foliage. And please God that we can imitate the naturalness of fruitful trees and, by the increase of our merits, supported by the roots of persevering humility, lifted from the ground, beautiful to see, raise the vigorous peak of our fruitful works, lest the ax of the evangelical farmer slice at the root a wild trunk! for "woe to me if I do not evangelize! (I Cor., IX, 6). But this is the word of an Apostle; woe to me if I do not mourn my sins! woe to me if I do not get up in the middle of the night to praise you! (Ps. 118, 62) woe to me, if I deceive my neighbor! woe, if I do not tell the truth! The ax is already on the root: do what can the fruit of grace, which owes the fruit of penance! The Lord is there to gather the fruit, to give life to the fruitful, to discover the barren. It has been three years since he came (Luke xii. 7), and he has not been able to find fruit among the Jews: can he find it here! He will slaughter those who have no fruit so that they do not encumber the soil; but to those who have no fruit yet to make an effort to bring it back in the future! The good cultivator of the field will intervene for us the sterile, for us the fruitless, so that we are given a deadline, we use patience: maybe we too will be able to bear some fruit for God ... The holy Baptist still gives the answer that suits each human profession, the one that is unique for all: publicans, for example, not to demand more than the tax, the soldiers not to be wrong, not to seek to plunder , reminding them that the pay of the army was instituted so that the search for their livelihood does not unleash brigandage. But these precepts, and the others, are peculiar to each function; mercy is of common use, therefore the common precept: to every function, to every age it is necessary, and all must exercise it. Neither the publican nor the soldier are exempted, neither the farmer or the city dweller, the rich or the poor: all together are warned to give to the one who does not have. For mercy is the fullness of virtues; also to all is proposed the rule of virtue completed: do not be stingy with his clothes and his food. However, even mercy keeps a measure according to the resources of the human condition, so that each one does not entirely shed but shares what he has with the poor. "As the people wondered and thought in the heart whether John was not the Christ himself, he spoke to them, saying," I baptize you in water for penance "(Matt. III, 11). John, therefore, saw the secrets of hearts; but let us see from whom comes this grace. How are the secrets of the hearts revealed to the prophets? Paul has shown it in these terms: "The very secrets of his heart will be revealed, and, prostrating himself on the face, he will worship God, proclaiming that truly God is among you" (I Cor., XIV, 25). It is therefore the gift of God that reveals, not the power of man, that is helped by the divine blessing rather than by a natural faculty. Now what is the result of this thought of the Jews, except to prove that, according to the Scriptures, Christ has come? There was someone waiting and it was the one we were waiting for who came, not the one we did not expect. But is it greater madness to recognize someone in another and not to believe that he is in him? They thought he would come by a woman, they do not believe he came by a virgin. Was there birth, according to the flesh, more worthy of God than this one: the immaculate Son of God safeguarding, even to take body, the purity of an immaculate birth? And certainly the sign of the divine advent was constituted in the birth of a virgin, not of a woman (Is., VII, 14). "I baptize you in the water. " He hastened to prove that he is not the Christ, since he accomplishes a visible ministry. For man subsisting in two natures, namely the soul and the body, the visible part is consecrated by visible elements, the invisible by an invisible mystery: the water cleans the body, the Spirit purifies the faults of the soul. 'soul. We fulfill one, we call the other, even though, on the fountain itself, the divinity breathes his sanctification; for water is not all ablution, but these two things can not separate; that is why there was another baptism of penance, another is the baptism of grace, the latter comprising the two elements, that one only. Because the faults belonging in common to the soul and to the body, the purification also had to be common to them. So John answered very well, showing that he understood what they were stirring in their hearts and, as if he did not understand, avoiding all jealousy of greatness, he showed, not by his word but by his works, that he was not the Christ. The business of man is to do penance for his faults; it is the blessing of God to fulfill the grace of mystery. "But here come stronger than me. " He has not established this comparison to say that Christ is only stronger than he? for between the Son of God and a man there could be no comparison? but because there are many forts. The devil is also strong, because "no one can remove his furniture from a fort without having first enchained this fort" (Mc, III, 27). So there are many strong, but stronger is only Christ. As well he was so careful not to compare himself that he added, "I am not worthy to wear one's shoes" (Matt, III, 11), showing that grace to preach the gospel has been devolved to Apostles, who are shod for the gospel (Ephes, VI, 15). It seems, however, that if he speaks thus, it is because often John personifies the people of the Jews, and it is to which this word is related: "He must grow and I diminish" (Jn III, 30): it was indeed necessary that the people of the Jews be diminished, that the Christian people grow in Christ. Besides, Moses also personified the people; but he wore the shoe not of the Lord but of his feet. They have put on a shoe that may not have been their feet, but this one is ordered to take off the shoe from his feet (Ex., III, 5), so that his footsteps heart and soul, freed from the shackles and bonds of the body, engage in the ways of the spirit. As for the Apostles, they had left the shoe of the body when they were sent without shoes, without sticks, without wallets, without girdles (Matth., X, 9 ff.); but they have not at the time worn the shoes of the Lord. Perhaps it was after the resurrection that they began to wear them; for before they were warned not to tell anyone the Master's actions (Lk. VIII, 56), and later they are told: "Go out into the whole world and preach the gospel" (Mk. Xvi. 15), so that in the footsteps of evangelical preaching, they walk the whole world through the actions of the Lord. Thus the nuptial shoe is the preaching of the gospel; but it will be more fitting to explain it in another place. "He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. He holds the van in his hand, and II will clean his area and pick up the wheat in his attic; as for the straws, He will burn them in a fire that will not die. "He holds the van in his hand. This emblem of the van indicates that the Lord has the right to make the departure between the merits: for, when the wheats are drained in the area, the full is separated from the void, the fruitful of the dry, by a kind of control that makes the breath of the air. This comparison, therefore, shows that the Lord, on the day of judgment, will make the departure between the merits and the fruits of the solid virtue and the sterile lightness of vain boasting and empty actions, to place men of a completed merit in the remains of the sky. For to be the perfect fruit, one must have deserved to be conformed to the One who, like the grain of wheat, has fallen to bear abundant fruit in us, who hates straw, who does not like sterile works. So "before Him will burn a fire" (Ps 96: 3) of a harmless nature, since it will consume the evil products of iniquity, bring out the brilliance of goodness.
Luke III, 21-24. Baptism of Christ.
"And it came to pass that, all the people having been baptized, as Jesus also had been baptized and praying, the heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove, and a voice was heard from the Heaven: You are my Son, in you I am pleased.
So the Lord was baptized: He did not want to be purified but to purify the waters so that, washed by the flesh of Christ who did not know sin, they had the power to baptize. So whoever comes to the bath of Christ leaves his sins there. But the evangelist S. Luke wisely limited himself to summarizing what the others had said and suggested that the Lord was baptized by John rather than expressed it. As for the motive of this baptism of the Lord, the Lord Himself explains it by these words:
"Let it be done now: this is how it befits us to do all justice" (Matt, III, 15). God having done so much, by a divine favor, that, for the construction of his Church, after the patriarchs, the prophets, the angels, the only Son of God descended and come to baptism, do we not recognize with what truth How divinely has it been said of the Church: "If the Lord does not build himself a home, in vain do those who build it work? And nothing surprising that man can not build, since he can not keep: "If the Lord keeps the city, vainly watch those who keep it. Thus speaks some psalm (Psalm 126: 1). I dare say, however, that man can not engage in a way unless he has the Lord to go before him; so it is written, "You shall walk after the Lord your God" (Deut., XIII, 4) and "it is the Lord who leads the footsteps of man" (Prov., XX, 24). Finally, such a perfect one, who understood that without the Lord he could not walk, said, "Teach me your ways" (Psalm 24: 4). And, to come to history - for we must not simply draw from it the facts, but order our actions in imitation of what is written - the people came out of Egypt; he did not know the way that would lead him to the Holy Land; God sent a pillar of fire so that during the night the people would know their way; he also sent during the day a pillar of cloud so that they would not deviate to the right or to the left. But you are not, O man, to deserve a pillar of fire too; you do not have Moses, you do not receive a sign; for now that the Lord has come, faith is required, signs are withdrawn. Fear the Lord, and rely on the Lord; for "the Lord will send the angels around those who fear him, and He will deliver them" (Ps. 33, 8). You see that everywhere the power of the Lord collaborates with the efforts of man, so that no one can build without the Lord, no one to keep without the Lord, no one to do anything without the Lord. Also, according to the Apostle, "whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God" (I Cor., X, 31), in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ: for in two epistles he has commanded us to to act, here "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (Col., III, 17), there "to the glory of God": you will thus know that the Father and the Son have the same glory and the same power and that there is no difference as to the divinity between the Father and the Son, who, to protect us, do not disagree.
David taught me that nobody without the Lord builds the house, does not guard the city. Moses also taught me that no one but God made the world; because "in the beginning God made heaven and earth" (Gen., I, 1). He also taught me that God made man by his work, and it is not without purpose that he wrote: "God fashioned man from the mud of the earth and breathed on his face a breath of life "(Ib., II, 7), to make you notice as an activity of God to build man by a kind of bodily labor. He taught me again that God also made the woman: for "God sent sleep to Adam, and he fell asleep; and he took a rib on his side and reformed his flesh. And the Lord God made a woman the rib that he took from Adam "(Ib., II, 21 ff.). It is not in vain, I said, that Moses shows God working for Adam and Eve as with hands of flesh. For the world God commanded him to be made, and it was done; and by this one word Scripture indicates the completion of the work of the world; it comes to man, and the prophet took care to show us, so to speak, the very hands of God at work. This fashioning by God of these works pushes me to hear here I do not know what more thing than what I read. The Apostle helps my embarrassment, and what I do not understand, I mean, "it is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh, and this will be called woman because she was taken from his man "(Ib., II, 23), he revealed it to me in the Holy Spirit, saying:" This is a great mystery. What mystery? "It's only because they are two flesh, and the man will leave his father and his mother to cling to his wife," and "because we are members of his body, made of his the flesh and its bones "(Ephesians, V, 30-32) Who is this man for whom the woman must leave her parents The Church left her parents, she gathered people of the gentility, to whom he is said prophetically:
"Forget your people and your father's house" (Ps 44,11). For which man? Would it not be for the One of whom John said: "After me comes a man who has passed before me" (Jn, l, 30)? on his side, as he slept, God took a rib; for he "slept, rested, and was lifted up, because the Lord hath hired him" (Ps 3, 6). What is his side, if not his power? For it was at the very moment when the soldier opened his side that the water and blood that was shed for the life of the world suddenly came out (Jn, XIX, 34). This life of the world is the rib of Christ, it is the rib of the second Adam; for "the first Adam was a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit" (I Cor., XV, 45); the last Adam is Christ, the rib of Christ is the life of the Church. We are therefore "members of his body, made of his flesh and of his bones" (Ephes., V, 30). And perhaps it is from this coast that he said: "I feel that a power has come out of me" (Lc, VIII, 46). It is the coast that came out of Christ and did not diminish his body; for it is a non-corporeal, but spiritual, coast; but the spirit is not divided but "share with each as he wills" (I Cor., XII, 11). Here is Eve, mother of all living. Because if you understand:
"You seek Him who lives with the dead" (Lk. Xxiv. 5), you understand who the dead are: without Christ, having no part in life, for it is not part of Christ, since Christ is life. The mother of the living, therefore, is the Church which God has built, having for his cornerstone Christ Jesus himself, in whom the whole edifice is paired and rises to form a temple (Ephesians II). , 20).
May God come then; that he builds the woman: the other as the help of Adam, this one for Christ: not that Christ claims an auxiliary, but because we desire, we, and seek to reach the grace of Christ by the Church. Now again it is being built, now again it is being formed, now again the woman is shaped, now again she is created. So Scripture has used a new expression, that we are elevated on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets (Ephes., II, 20). Now again the spiritual house rises for a holy priesthood (I Peter, II, 5). Come, Lord God, build this woman, build the city. May your servant come also; for I believe in your word: "He will build me the city" (Is., XLV, 13). Here is the woman, mother of all, here is the spiritual home, here is the city that lives forever, because it can not die: it is she the city of Jerusalem, now seen on earth but which will be transported to Above Elijah? Elijah was a unit? transported above Enoch, of whose death there is no question: for he "was taken away from him so that evil might not change his heart" (Sag., IV, 11), while this one is loved by Christ as being glorious, holy, unblemished, without wrinkles (Eph., V, 27). And how much more does the body have more titles than him to be removed! This, indeed, is the hope of the Church: it will certainly be carried away, carried off, transported to heaven. See, Elijah was carried away on a chariot of fire, the Church will be carried away. You do not believe me ? At least believe Paul, in whom Christ spoke: "We will be carried away," he says, "in the clouds before Christ in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever "(I Thess., IV, 17). To build it therefore, many are sent: sent the patriarchs, sent the prophets, sent the Archangel Gabriel; innumerable angels are applied to it, and the multitude of the heavenly host praises God because the construction of this city was near. Many are sent there, but only Christ builds it; yet He is not alone, because the Father is present; and if he is alone in building, he does not claim for himself alone the merit of such a construction. It is written of the temple of God which Solomon built, and which included the church, that they were seventy thousand to carry on their shoulders and eighty thousand stonecutters (II Sam., III). May these angels come, may stonemasons come, cut the superfluous of our stones, polish their asperities; that also come those who wear on the shoulders; because it is written:
"We will wear them on the shoulders" (Is., XLIX, 22).
He therefore comes to John, - since you are informed of the rest - He comes to John's baptism. But John's baptism entailed the repentance of faults; so John stops him, saying to him, "I am the one to be baptized by you, and you come to me? (Matt, III, 14); why come to me, you who have no sin? This one must be baptized who is sinful, but he who has not committed sin, why should he ask for the bath of penance?
"Leave it for the moment," says II - that is to say, while the Church is being built - "it befits us to do all justice" (Ib., 15). What is justice, if not mercy? for "He has distributed, He has given to the poor: His righteousness remains forever" (Psalm 111: 9). He gave me to me poor, He gave me to me pitiful the grace that I had not before: his justice therefore remains forever. What is justice, if not to undertake first what you want others to do and to encourage others by your example? what is righteousness, except that, having taken flesh, far from dismissing as God the sensibility or the servitudes of the flesh, He triumphed over the flesh as man to teach me to triumph over it? for He taught me how I could give to this flesh, soiled and fouled by the vices of the earth to which it is subject, the burial of crimes, the renewal of virtues. O truly divine foresight in the very lowering of the Lord! for deeper was the lowering, the more divine foresight. God betrays himself by the excess of his affronts; and by the use of these remedies, He who did not need any remedy, He asserts himself God. Was there anything so divine, to call the people, as to allow no one to escape the bath of grace, when Christ did not escape the bath of penance, to no one to say that he was free from sin, when Christ came to the remedy of sins? If for us Christ washed, or better if he washed us in his body, how much more must we wash our faults! What work then, what mystery shows more God, though God be in all, than this: throughout the whole world where is spread the race and the human race, through the distances and the spaces which separate the countries, in a moment in one body, God effacing the deception of the ancient error, spreading the grace of the kingdom of heaven? for only He has plunged, but He has relieved everyone; only He came down so that we all went up; only He took upon himself the sins of all, so that in him the sins of all might be cleansed. "Purify yourself," then, as the Apostle says (Jn., IV, 8), since that One purified himself for us, who did not need purification.
This for us. Now consider the mystery of the Trinity. We say that God is unique, but we confess the Father and we confess the Son. For while it is written, "You will love the Lord your God and serve only Him alone" (Deut., X, 20), the Son has declared that he is not alone in saying, "But I am not alone, for my Father is with me "(Jn, xvi, 32). At this moment also He is not alone: for the Father testifies of his presence, the Holy Spirit is there; never, indeed, can the Trinity separate. As well "the sky opened, the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form, like a dove".
How then do the heretics say that he is alone in heaven when He is not alone on earth? Let us beware of the mystery. Why: "like a dove? It is that simplicity is required for the grace of baptism, so that we are "as simple as doves" (Matt. X, 16). Peace is required for the grace of baptism, which, according to ancient figuration, a dove once brought to this ark, which alone was preserved from the deluge. What this dove was, I learned from Him who has now deigned to come down in the form of a dove: He taught me that by this branch, by this ark were figured peace and the Church and that In the very midst of the cataclysms of the world, the Holy Spirit brings fruitful peace to his Church. David also taught me, when, seeing in a prophetic inspiration the mystery of baptism, he said, "Who will give me wings like a dove? "(Ps 54, 7).
The Holy Spirit has come; but be attentive to the mystery. He came to Christ because "all things were created by Him and subsist in Him" (Col. I, 16 ff.). But see the benevolence of the Lord, who alone has submitted to affronts, has not only sought honor. And how did he build the Church? "I will pray to my Father," said He, "and II will send you another Comforter to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth that this world can not welcome, because he neither sees nor knows it" (Jn , XIV, 16 ff.). It is therefore rightly that he has shown himself bodily, since in the substance of his divinity we do not see him. We saw the Spirit, but under a bodily appearance. Let's see the Father too. - But we can not see it. - Let's hear it. For there is this benevolent God, One will not forsake his temple; He wants to build every soul, to give him form for salvation; He wants to transport the living stones from the earth to the sky. He loves his temple, and we love him. To love God is to keep His commandments; to love him is to know him, for "he who says he knows him and does not keep his commandments is a liar" (I Jn, II, 4). How, indeed, can we love God if we do not love the truth, when God is truth (ib., V, 6)?
Let us listen to the Father; because the Father is invisible. But the Son is also invisible in his divinity, for "no one has ever seen God" (Jn, I, 18); therefore, the Son being God, as God the Son does not see himself. But He wanted to show himself in a body; and as the Father had no body, the Father wanted to prove to us that he is present in the Son, saying: "You are my Son, in you I am pleased. If you want to learn that the Son is always present with the Father, read the word of the Son who says: "If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I go down to hell, you are present "(Psalm 138: 8). If you desire the testimony of the Father, you have heard it from John: trust in him to whom Christ has entrusted himself to be baptized, to whom the Father has accredited the Son by a word from heaven, in these words: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am pleased." Where are the Arians, to whom does this Son, in whom the Father is pleased, displease? It is not me who says it and it is not some man who said it; for God has not appointed him by a man, nor by angels, nor by archangels, but it is the word uttered from heaven by the Father himself who has marked him. For the rest, this same Father has returned elsewhere in these terms:
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am pleased; listen to him (Matt. XVII, 5); yes, listen to him when He says: "I and my Father are one" (Jn, X, 30). So not believing the Son is not believing the Father; he is a witness for his Son: to doubt the Son is not to believe in the testimony of the Father. Finally, when He says, "In whom I am pleased," what he praises in his Son is not to another, but to Him. What is it to say, "In whom I am pleased," except that all that my Son has is mine, just as the Son said, "All my Father is mine" (Jn , XVI, 15)? The power of a divinity without difference means that there is no diversity between the Father and the Son, but that the Father and the Son share in the same power. Believe in the Father, whose elements have echoed the voice; believe in the Father, to whose voice the elements have lent their ministry. The world has believed in the elements, that it believes in men; he believed by inanimate objects, that he believes by the living; he believed by what is dumb, that he believes by those who speak; he believed by what is without intelligence, that he believes by those who have received intelligence to know God.
Luke, III, 23-28. Genealogy of Christ.
"And Jesus began at the age of about thirty: he was believed to be the son of Joseph." We will talk about genealogies.
Between them we see some divergences, from the Gospel according to Matthew to this one of which we undertook the interpretation. Since it is not credible that holy men could have contradicted themselves, especially concerning the actions of the Lord Savior, let us show with all possible care that their words do not disagree.
And first of all no one should be moved by what he says: "They thought he was Joseph's son. That's right, we thought so. In fact, by nature He was not so; but he was believed to be so, because Mary had begotten him, who had Joseph for husband and husband. In the same way you find: "Is not this the son of Joseph the craftsman" (Matth., XIII, 55)? We have said above why it is by a virgin, we have also said why it is by a bride and why it was at the time of the census that the Lord Savior wanted to be born: it does not seem out of place to explain why his father was a craftsman. By this figure, in fact, He shows that He has for Father the Artisan of all things, who created the world, as it is written: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth" (Gen. I, 1). For if the human is not comparable to the divine, the symbol is however perfect, since the Father of Christ operates by fire and the Spirit (Matt., III, 11), and, as a good artisan of the The soul, plan our vices, hastens to carry the ax on the barren trees, knows how to cut down what is puny, preserve the lofty peaks, soften the fire of the Spirit with the stiffness of souls, and fashion for various purposes the whole the human race by the various kinds of ministries.
But why write the genealogy of Joseph rather than that of Mary, since Mary begotten the Christ of the Holy Spirit and Joseph appears foreign to the generation of the Lord? We could hesitate if we did not have to instruct us in the custom of the Scriptures, which is to always inquire about the genealogy of man. This is how you read: Phares was the son of Judah, chief of the tribe. "And he begat Esrom, and Esrom begot Aram, and Aram begot Aminadab, and Aminadab begot Naasson, and Naasson begat Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begat David" (Matt., I , 3-6). It is the man from whom the person interests; it is also he who in the senate and in the other councils of the cities supports the dignity of the family. That, on the other hand, it would not be easy to leave aside the origin of man to seek the origin of woman, and to make appear without father the one who was to be announced to the people of the whole world!
But let us show that in other places there is a variety in the order of the genealogies, so that here also the evangelists do not seem to disagree, having followed an old order. You find indeed: "There was a man of Arath, named Elcana, son of Hieremiel, son of Heli, son of Ozi" (I Sam., I, 1). You see it: it is from the fathers to the sons like sons to the fathers that the ancient custom disposes the plot of a genealogy; you see that everywhere one follows a family by the genealogy of men. Do not be surprised if Matthew has traveled from Abraham to Joseph, Luke from Joseph to Adam and to God the genealogical series. Do not be surprised if Joseph's origin is recorded: for he who was born according to the flesh was to follow the customs of the flesh and, coming into the world, to be recorded according to the custom of the world; especially since Joseph's ancestry is also that of Mary: for Joseph, being a righteous man, certainly took his wife in his tribe and in his kinship. This just could not go against the prescription of the Law; but you find that "the sons of Israel shall each be bound to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers, and shall not pass from one tribe to another" (Num. I, 4), and "Every daughter having inheritance in the tribes of the children of Israel shall take of his father's family and tribe as husband" (Num. XXXVI, 6-8). As well, at the time of the census, Joseph, of the house and the country of David, went up to register himself with his wife Mary (Lk, II, 4): can she make her declaration as being of the same house and from the same country, she certainly asserts to be from the same tribe and the same country. In the same way Elisabeth is presented as a relative of Mary: first of all because all the Jews are parents, as the Apostle taught by these words: "I wished to be anathema, me, for my brothers and parents according to the flesh, who are the Israelites "(Rom., IX, 3-4); they were related, because both Israelites; also, because both were from the tribe of Judah. You have learned that Mary was from the tribe of Judah, and learn it also for Elizabeth; for in those days Mary arose and went quickly to the mountains in a city of Judah - it is said - and entered the abode of Zechariah "(Lk I, 39 ff.). And Moses, having commanded that each one dwelt in his tribe (Num. II, 2), if she dwelt in a city of Judah, it was because she was also of the tribe of Judah, especially as in the family of Judah. Elizabeth there were priests, of whom God is the part. At the same time, as it is beautiful that one having given birth to the Precursor of Christ, the other the Christ, the one having conceived of the Holy Spirit, the other prophesied of the Holy Spirit, they still appear as parents according to the flesh, since, according to God, the bond of a spiritual kinship did not fail them! - That if the head of every woman is the husband, according to the holy Apostle (Ephes., V, 23), and if they are two in one flesh, according to the divine law (Gen., II, 24) How could it be that those who were one flesh and one spirit appeared to have distinct kinship and tribe? - Add still this, that the angel Gabriel announced of the Lord: "The Lord will give him the throne of David his father" (Lc, I, 32): it is therefore certain that Mary, too, belonged to the descendants of David. And at the same time we learn that it does not matter what line the genealogical series is formulated, since on both sides the path is clear. Now why did St. Matthew start from Abraham to count the genealogy of Christ while St. Luke brought him from Christ to God? This seems to require explanation. But first, why did not St. Matthew, beginning with Abraham the genealogical series, write: "Book of the genealogy of Abraham," but "Book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David , son of Abraham? And why did he name these two characters? I do not think the thing is negligible. It is not without reason that the most faithful are chosen as leaders of the lineage to make us understand that even in the genealogy according to the flesh, it is necessary to attach oneself especially to the spiritual descendants: for these are the two men on which spread the divine promises. Abraham first: before the Law of Moses and before the people of the Jews, by the abandonment of his goods and his knowledge of God, he deserved this testimony of his faith: "He believed in God, and it was imputed to him. to justice "(Gen., XV, 6). It was he who received the promise of God when he said to him: "Come out of your land and from your family and from your father's house to the land that I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and will glorify your name; and you will be blessed, and I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you; and in you will be blessed all the tribes of the earth "(Gen., XII, 1-3). You see, then, that the bringing together of the nations and the reunion of the holy Church have been the word of God promised first to this one. It was therefore necessary to designate him as leader of the lineage, since he had first deserved the promise of the institution of the Church. David, too, is rightly declared leader of the lineage, since he received the assurance and oath that Christ would come to him according to the flesh; This is what is written: "The Lord has given David a true oath and he will not repent of it: it is the fruit of your bosom that I will place on your throne" (Ps 131, 11). -13); and elsewhere: "Once for all I swore by my holiness, I will not fail David: his descendants will remain forever and his throne will be like the sun in my presence" (Ps., 88, 36-38) ; and in the Paralipomena: "And it shall come to pass, when your days are finished, and you rest with your ancestors, I will cause your seed to rise after you, some of your bosom, and I will establish his kingdom. It is he who will build me a home and I will erect his throne for centuries. I will be for him a father and he will be for me a son; and I will not deprive him of my benevolence, as I have taken away from those who have gone before you "(I Chr. 17: 11-13). Also by Isaiah, the same Lord God revealed the generation of the Lord, saying, "There will come out a branch of the stock of Jesse and a flower will rise from its stump; and on it shall rest the Spirit of God, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding "(Is., xi, 1-2); and below: "And it shall come to pass that the root of Jesse, the One who will arise to command the nations, will be the hope of the nations" (Is., XI, 10); and elsewhere: "A child is born to us, a son has been given to us: He has the empire on his shoulders, and will be given the name of Messenger of the great design: for I will bring peace to princes and to him salvation. . His power will be great and his peace will have no end, on the throne of David and in his kingship "(Is., IX, 6-7). Here we see again, according to the Aquila version, that the promise is not made as for a man, but for the One who must be above man; because he translated:
"A child is born to us, a son has been given to us; and his measure was placed on his shoulder, and he will be given the name of Admirable Advisor, my Counselor, strong, powerful, Father of the centuries, Prince of peace. His authority is plenary and his peace has no end, on the throne of David and on his kingdom."
That all this applies to Christ, the texts clearly show, and how it is impossible to divert the fruit of divine power to the benefit of Solomon. which was the son of David, and whose end is known with certainty; for there was an end to the kingdom of Solomon, and to peace, as the reading of the kings demonstrates (I Kings xi. 43). There is only Christ whose kingdom has no end. Solomon did not command the nations at all, while Christ gathered his church among the nations. Finally, it was during David's lifetime that Solomon was born and came to the kingship, while the One promised here is given as to arise after the death of David, as you read: "When your days are over, and that you will rest with your ancestors, I will bring forth your seed after you, someone from your bosom, and I will establish his kingship. It is He who will build me a home and I will set up his throne for centuries "(I Chr., XVII, 11-12). Is it for centuries that Solomon reigned, who reigned only forty years? "I will be for him," he said, "a father, and he will be a son to me" (ib., 13); - who is this own Son of God, except Him to whom it was said: "Thou art my Son, it is I who today hath begotten you?" (Ps. 2, 7)? "And I will not deprive him of my benevolence, and will keep him faithful in my house and in his kingdom for ever" (I Chr. XVII, 13); but Solomon has erred, perhaps so seriously that men do not make the mistake of believing that the divine promise was addressed to him. We know it afterward from the divine texts: for he built a temple to the idol Astarte for love of a woman, and the Lord was indignant against Solomon (I Kings, xi, 4). If then, even in the lifetime of David, he began to reign, for you find that when David was told the kingdom of Solomon, he prostrated himself on his couch and said, "Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who today gave me someone of my blood sitting on my throne, and my eyes see it "(Ib., I, 47-48), if he has erred, if he has chopped, it is as you see, that the whole of the prophecy promised Christ.
That is why the evangelist chose these two leaders of the lineage: one who has received the promise of the reunion of peoples, the other who has obtained the prophecy of the birth of Christ. And although it comes later in the order of descent, it is mentioned before Abraham in the genealogy of Christ for this reason that it is better to have received the promise of Christ than that of the Church, since Even the Church exists through Christ. So one is head of the line according to the flesh, the other head of the lineage according to the spirit; one as to the privilege of posterity, the other as to the faith of peoples. For he who saves is better than he who is saved. And this is why he is said to be the son of David: "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David": for he was first to be called the son of him who was promised that he would be given for son, though the Apostle says that Abraham, too, has been promised; because "to Abraham were made the promises, and to his descendant. He does not say: and to the offspring, as many, but as for one: and to your descendant, which is Christ "(Gal. Iii. 16). Thus to one is attributed paternity in the proper sense, to the other its origin. To one it was given that Jesus was called his son; to the other, as patriarch of the family of nations, is reserved the privilege that Abraham takes his point of departure from the genealogy of the Lord; for being the ancestor in the faith, it is also that Scripture must affirm the ancestor of the divine genealogy. This is also the reason why Luke thought it necessary to trace his origin to God, because the true Father of Christ is God: either Father by a real generation, or by the regeneration of baptism, author of the gift mysterious. So it is not from the beginning that he undertook to establish his genealogy; but, having recounted his baptism, desiring to show that God is the Father of all through baptism, he testified that Christ also comes from God, in order of descent, chaining all things so as to show him the Son of God and by nature and by grace and by the flesh. And what more evident testimony of his divine descent than to have preceded his genealogy with the word of the Father: "Behold, my beloved Son, in whom I am pleased" (Matt. III, 17)?
Many also like to raise problems because Matthew counted from Abraham to Christ forty-two generations and Luke fifty, and Matthew has genealogy succeeded by others than Luke. On this point you can already verify what we have said: although Matthew enumerated other ascendants of the lineage of the Lord than those inserted by Luke in his genealogical series, both yet related to Abraham and David the rest of the ancestors. That if Matthew thought it necessary to deduce genealogy from Solomon, Luke by Nathan, it seems that one shows the royal lineage, the other the priestly lineage of Christ. And we must not hear it in the sense that one says more true than the other, but that both agree in equal probity and truth. For He was truly, in His very flesh, a royal and priestly race, King by kings, priest by priests. It is true that the prophecy bears not on the carnal but on the divine, since "the King rejoices in the power of God" (Ps 20, 2), He to whom the King his Father delivers judgment (Jn, V 22) and that he is a priest for eternity, as it is written, "You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 109: 4). The one and the other therefore remained in the true: Matthew establishing the origin that comes by the kings, Luke deducing an offspring which, by the priests, leads from God to Christ, which gives a more holy character at its very origin. At the same time, his emblem of the young bull is justified here, since on every occasion he thinks he must stick to the mystery of the priesthood. Do not be surprised either if, from Abraham, there are in Luke more generations until Christ and less in Matthew, since you admit that the genealogy is deduced by other people: it can be done, in fact, that some have provided a longer career, and that in the other genealogy men have died prematurely; for we see many old men living with their grandchildren and other men disappearing as soon as they have children.
One more remark: St. Matthew mentions Jacob, who was the father of Joseph, as the son of Matthan; but Luke writes that Joseph, whose wife was Mary, was the son of Heli, and Heli the son of Melchi. How does one man have two fathers, Heli and Jacob? how also two paternal grandfathers, Matthan and Melchi? But, if you seek more, you will find that, according to a prescription of the old law, two brothers have begotten various children from the bosom of one wife (Deut., Xxv, 5). It is reported that Matthan, who was descended from the race of Solomon, fathered a son, Jacob, and died leaving a wife whom Melchi later took for a wife, and of whom Heli was begotten. In turn, Heli, his brother having died childless, married his brother's wife and fathered a son, Joseph, who was legally called the son of Jacob, the brother who had given birth to his dead brother, according to the text of the Law. Ancient. Thus he was called the son of both, not that both begot him, but because he found himself the son of one by birth, of the other by law. This prescription of the Law promised us later on the perpetuity of the offspring of the dead - that is what the people of the Jews did not understand, but, taking the text to the letter, it spoiled its value - for there was another brother who was to raise the descendants of his dead brothers: brother not by the kinship of the flesh but by the purity of grace. Perhaps this is why "the brother does not redeem; a man will redeem "(Ps 48, 8), because he is not a brother by blood, but the Lord and" mediator of God and of men, Jesus Christ man "(I Tim., II, 5 ), who spread the blessing of the resurrection. There is another interpretation of this verse, of which we will speak in its place. On the other hand, it does not seem out of place that St. Matthew, doubling a mysterious number, saw fit to distribute by fourteen generations of Abraham to David, from David to the exile of Babylon, the exile from Babylon to Christ; hence he also marked the successive changes. For from Abraham until the time of David the people of the Jews had no kings - the righteous kingship having begun at David, and the whole race of the Jews was ruled by kings, and their kingship was untouched until to exile; but after the exile it was towards decadence that the circumcised nobility of this degenerate people slipped. As for the fifty generations that Luke has wanted to do since Abraham, it is quite clear that they have saved the benefit of a mysterious number: for the number ten and the number seven are mysterious and the triple repetition of the one and the another means a mystery; and Pentecost, of which Luke has retained grace, and Quarantine, preferred by Matthew, have enough and more than enough published a mysterious number.
Many are still astonished that Matthew thought fit to insert in the genealogy of the Lord the mention of Thamar, that decried woman, it seems to them; that also of Ruth; that also of this woman who was the wife of Uriah and, after the murder of her husband, passed into the arms of David: especially since Sara, Rebekah and Rachel, these holy women, he has nothing part makes mention. For you read: "Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, Jacob begot Judah and his brethren, Judah begat Phares and Zara by Thamar. It is therefore not without design that the evangelist has inserted the name of this woman, who is to be treated separately now. First, if you apply your mind to realities, this woman was not so infamous, but rather just; she did not seek so much to satisfy a passion of a moment as she did not desire the good of a posterity: for it was a reproach to have no children, a thing which the civil laws themselves themselves have sanctioned their authority. Judah had promised it to his son, and he had postponed the conclusion of marriage long since agreed; by dint of delaying the promised thing, the husband died. The flower of virginity, that of emptiness, did not flower before the coming of Christ; Desolate at having remained childless, the desire to be a mother made her lie and skillfully triumph over Judah, presenting herself to him when she had heard of the death of his wife. You see that in all the life of this woman supports the ordeal: she did not seize a foreign bed, she took the adornment of a courtesan without being a courtesan, because she was not trying to capture n any passion; but, for a long time deceived by the promises of her father-in-law, she wished, rendering a ruse for cunning, to gather into the family which she had chosen the fruit of a posterity. Who was more chaste? The one who had waited so long for the promised thing, or the one who could not resist the offer of a love? the one who did not give up the family of her husband, or the one who thought to meet a courtesan? who has not lent a fiber of his body to the commerce of those who desired it, or who, beginning with the misguidance of passion, ends in the chastity of this woman for the good of posterity? the one who had no children and feared that the time to conceive would happen by dint of delaying the union, the one who preferred the seriousness of a mature man, or the one who fell in love with age teenager ? As well he himself acknowledged it, saying, "Tamar is more righteous than me, because I did not give it to my son Selom. That is why she wanted to experience the very one who imposed chastity on her. Finally she knew no man afterwards and took the widow's clothes from this meeting; he, without waiting an hour, when he had imposed on this child years of chastity, said good-bye to his mourning, changed his clothes, cut off his hair, left the pyre, stretched out on the couch like a lash. But we do not defend one to accuse the other; rather, we must excuse both - not us, but the mystery which the fruit of this union translated: for this woman begot sons for Phares and Zara, she begat these twins. Hence it is not without reason that Matthew noted them both, while his subject only asked for the mention of Phares; for "Phares begot Esrom, Esrom begat Aram," and so on, one by one.
But why, Isaac having had two sons, Jacob many, the text of the Scriptures he mentions only those who claimed the subject of the genealogy of the Lord and, for them, reminded them both? Is there not here in these two sons a mystery?
We treated the moral point of view: she did not exercise the profession of courtesan but sought the benefit of fertility. Let's treat the historical side and deepen the mystery. For it can not be without mystery that she has received the ring, the jewel, and the staff; it is not a person who deserves to receive an ornament, a seal, an emblem of power: the seal of deeds, the ornament of the breast, the insignia of royal liberty.
So, to come to the story, you read that at the time when Thamar was being born, one of the children first took the hand out of her breast and the midwife took it and tied it up. scarlet, saying, "This one will come out first. But scarcely had the child withdrawn his hand from his mother's breast, his brother immediately went out; and the midwife says, "Why did you make the breach? And she gave him the name of Lighthouses. And after him came out his brother, whose hand was scarlet, and she named him Zara. You see how many obscurities denounce a mystery: the first hand out, the scarlet knot, the hand withdrawn, the two words of the midwife, that one would come first, that the other did the breach. But why did one first take the hand from the breast and the other before he came into the world, if not because the mystery of these twins draws the lives of two peoples? : one according to the Law, the other according to faith, one according to the letter, the other according to grace? Grace precedes the Law, faith precedes the letter; and that is why the figure of grace first passed the hand, because the action of grace preceded: it existed in Job, Melchizedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, who lived by faith, without the law. For "Abraham believed in God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness" (Gen. XV, 6); and before that grace was shown in Melchizedek the saint by the figure of the sacrifice: for the holy patriarchs who preceded the law, freed from the hindrances of his precepts, have shone with a grace of liberty similar to ours, that of the Gospel. The younger brother is the second form of holiness: the first exists in the patriarchs, the second in the kings and pontiffs. The two lives are according to God, because those who led the fight of religion and piety according to the law of Moses are not devoid of grace and honor; but the fruit of piety exists first in the ancestors, then in their heirs. In fact, the first comer was Zara, whose name translates as Orient; for the light of piety is the splendor of the true East - the one, of course, who said:
"East is my name" (Zech., VI, 12), whose ray of light shone first in the patriarchs. These, in fact, first exercised the activity of their lives in the world, and by their hand was first shown the figure of our activity to us, the complete body, which were still as retained within mother Nature ; but as a partition interposed the observance of the Law, and the life of the ancestors was interrupted; it is from her that, according to the figure, this midwife, perhaps the justice who welcomed us out of the bosom of mother nature, is reported to have said: "This one will leave first. And it was really wonderful that this kind of holiness, inculcated not by Moses, by any man, nor by means of a man, but by a blessing of wisdom communicated spontaneously. So the first school of holiness is that of the Gospel, because we believe by the cross and the blood of Christ, of which Abraham was born with joy (Jn, VIII, 56), which Noah foresaw, by an acquaintance spiritual, the grace represented by the figure of the Church, of which Isaac did not refuse to take the role in the sacrifice, which Jacob adored in his victory (Gen., XXXII, 25), of which Isaiah saw the garment red (Is., LXIII, 2) - because the life of the prophets also comes from the Gospel - whose blood was one of the calamities of the world, to ensure the salvation of all, as this Rahab, a public woman, has shown in the figure, as to the mystery of the Church, which does not refuse the commerce of many lovers, the more chaste it is because it unites with a greater number, virgin without stain, without wrinkles (Ephes., V, 27), untouched by purity, to all by love, chaste public woman, sterile widow, fertile virgin: public woman, for many lovers come to by the attraction of diligence, and undefiled by sin (for "he who attaches himself to a public woman is but one body with her" (I Cor. VI, 16); a sterile widow, who can not give birth in the absence of the husband - the bridegroom has come, and she has begotten this people and this crowd - fertile virgin, who has brought to light this multitude with the fruits of love, without tasting the pleasure. But, to return to the story, what do these words say by the midwife: "This one will go out first," except that he represented in the figure the one who, coming later in the flesh, but being first by his power and its reality, has claimed primacy over all things? Hence this word of John: "After me comes a man who has gone before me" (Jn, I, 27). What does the scarlet she has tied to her hand mean? Was he not the emblem of the One who, by the sign of his cross and by the shedding of his blood, annihilated human activity? So, after he had withdrawn his hand, as if through a breach in a wall, his brother went out; the Apostle calls it the intermediate wall of separation or enclosure (Ephesians II, 14); and he took his name from this breach: for Phares means separation; hence the name of the Pharisees, because they separated from the commerce of the multitude. Now it would have been more fortunate and much preferable for the wall not to be divided, but to remain one and undivided: what could have been realized, if to this life which first passed its hand, that is to say, showed its activity, had responded the service of life that followed. Yes, it would have been much better for the circumcised people to imitate the life of their ancestors; in this way there would have been only one wall, one wall, one building, for the ancestors and their posterity. But as this first way of life could not be sustained by the weakness of the following age, there was undoubtedly a rupture of that enclosure or wall which had been raised according to God; and it is like an intermediary wall interposed, interrupting this enclosure which is the permanent and continuous edifice of good morals. For the fence is what surrounds the fertile field, prevents the thief from entering, encloses the crops, separates them from wastelands. The wall, on its side, closes the house; if she lives, the house is safe; as well "I will take away its wall, it is said, and it will be plundered" (Is., V, 5). Let us wish that the wall of our house, of the spiritual house which is in us, be intact; for it can not be built by man, but by the living God, who said, "And I have surrounded him with a wall" (Is., V, 2). So they lost salvation, those who lost the wall. As the wall remains, what remains this fence. Do you want to know how useful is a fence? "Close your ears with thorns and brambles, and beware of listening to the wrong language" (Sag., Sir, XXVIII, 28): this fence protects you from fault. So the Lord Jesus, who came to the world later in his flesh, raising the wall of this ancient fence, brought us back to the practice of our ancestors and the ancient simplicity of faith. So the Prophet said of Him, "You will be called the closing builder" (Is., LVIII, 12); for He abolished this obstacle, which broke the unity of the soul and the body, and the continuity of a simple life, and He made himself our peace, of two being one and destroying the median wall of the enclosure "(Ephesians 2: 14), the wall of which the Apostle explains as being enmities in the flesh. These enmities therefore, the Lord has suppressed them to spread peace, and He has "abolished the law of the commandments and precepts to melt the two into a new man", which means not only the outer and inner man but also the Jew and the Greek, so that Christ was all and in all (Romans, I, 16, II, 10, I Cor., XV, 28). For the Master of the Sabbath has abolished the superstition of a material Sabbath and destroyed the middle wall of the Law, which diverted us from the piety which is according to God, by the difficulty of the prescriptions: since with the law of Moses he It was neither easy nor possible for the Gentiles to serve God, the vain superstition of the Jews rejecting the pure desire of the Gentiles to submit to his observance. But then ? the Law was useless? not at all (Rom., III, 31); but it was useful to the incredulous, necessary to the weak: it held them on the slope of the errors by the austerity of a salutary commandment and imprisoned them in the attention to the observances. But the Law is good because spiritual (Rom., VII, 14); it is not good to anyone who does not believe it to be spiritual, to him whose petty and down-to-earth spirit could not see the majesty which surpasses the Law, that of Christ. This glory of God, Isaiah, sublime soul, looking so to speak over this wall, could see it (Is., VI, 1): we see it on the mountains, not on the hills.
So the Church has taught us in the Song of Songs that this wall could not have been an obstacle to Our Lord Jesus Christ, nor to the one who followed Christ. She says, "It's my brother's voice: here he comes, leaping on the mountains, crossing the hills. He looks, my brother, to the goat or to the deer on the mountains of Bethel. Here he is, behind our wall, looking out the window, looking through the lattice. He speaks, my brother, and says to me: "Arise, come, my sister, my beautiful, my dove; for this is the past winter, this obstacle which broke the unity of the soul and the body and the continuity of a simple life, and He made himself our peace, of two being one and destroying the middle wall of the fence "(Ephes., II, 14), wall which the Apostle explains that it is the enmities in the flesh. These enmities therefore, the Lord has suppressed them to spread peace, and He has "abolished the law of the commandments and precepts to melt the two into a new man", which means not only the outer and inner man but also the Jew and the Greek, so that Christ was all and in all (Romans, I, 16, II, 10, I Cor., XV, 28). For the Master of the Sabbath has abolished the superstition of a material Sabbath and destroyed the middle wall of the Law, which diverted us from the piety which is according to God, by the difficulty of the prescriptions: since with the law of Moses he It was neither easy nor possible for the Gentiles to serve God, the vain superstition of the Jews rejecting the pure desire of the Gentiles to submit to his observance. But then ? the Law was useless? not at all (Rom., III, 31); but it was useful to the incredulous, necessary to the weak: it held them on the slope of the errors by the austerity of a salutary commandment and imprisoned them in the attention to the observances. But the Law is good because spiritual (Rom., VII, 14); it is not good to anyone who does not believe it to be spiritual, to him whose petty and down-to-earth spirit could not see the majesty which surpasses the Law, that of Christ. This glory of God, Isaiah, sublime soul, looking so to speak over this wall, could see it (Is., VI, 1): we see it on the mountains, not on the hills.
So the Church has taught us, in the Song of Songs, that this wall could not have been an obstacle for Our Lord Jesus Christ, nor for the one who followed Christ. She says, "It's my brother's voice: here he comes, leaping on the mountains, crossing the hills. He looks, my brother, to the goat or to the deer on the mountains of Bethel. Here he is, behind our wall, looking out the window, looking through the lattice. He speaks, my brother, and says to me: "Arise, come, my sister, my beautiful, my dove; because last winter, the rain has gone, has disappeared. The flowers appear on earth, the season of cutting comes, the voice of the turtledove is heard "(Cant., II, 8-12). The flowers are the Apostles, the time of the harvest, it is the harvest of Christ, the voice of the turtledove is the voice of the Church. Is it right, then, that the Son of God, seeing men down to earth, lifeless to the heights, prisoners of a narrow materialism? because "there was none to do good, there was not one" (Ps 13, 3)? He deigned to descend Himself to earth to suppress this wall of the Law, this mass, so to speak, and this superstition of a material understanding, which overwhelmed and obscured in some way the hearts of peoples. So the wall is better than the wall. As well, it was not good this bleached wall, a word that was not rightly thrown at the prince of the priests (Act., XXIII, 2), since he maintained the obstacles of this intermediate wall that the Lord Jesus suppressed as a overwhelming service, in order to introduce a more enlightened practice of religion, so that henceforth it was no longer the only race of the Jews, as shut up in the material prescriptions of the Law, but all the nations which would be called to the worship of God by the gospel.
So these two twins are two lives, two militias, the first of which is better than the next: so what was better was restored. Who could deny that the gospel prevails over the law? The Law is, however, good, but on condition of elevating the soul above the letter, because "the letter kills" (II Cor., III, 6). But what profit would this story present if we did not see the light of such a mystery? For the holy Apostle has taught us to search through the simplicity of history for the secrets of truth and to apply our intelligence to certain considerations which the letter can not make us understand: "Tell me," he writes, "you who have you read the Fa, have you not heard the Fa? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one of the servant and one of the free woman; but that of the servant was born according to the flesh, that of the free woman according to the promise. This, he adds, has been said in allegory: for these are the two Testaments "(Gal., IV, 21-24). And below: "But the Jerusalem which is from above is free" (Ib., IV, 26). Towards her, therefore, that the median wall could not separate and divide, it is necessary to tend by the elevation of the soul. For here is ruined this partition of the Old Testament understood materially; the servant is chased away, the woman kept free. By this free woman we are free: for the Church is free, the Synagogue driven out - the Jewish people were enslaved - removed the yoke of servitude that weighed somehow on the neck of our soul so that we can not look over the wall of old life. We have a kind and light yoke, such that, by the reins of peace and the clasps of grace, he raises instead of overwhelming those whom he assembles. This is the Lord whose figure first appeared in Zara, since the Lord Jesus was, in His flesh, the tribe and descent of this Zara, having been begotten not only of a woman but under the Law (Gal. Iv. 4), in order to redeem those who were under the law at the price of his blood. His face was first shown in the hand of this Zara, to promise us the coming of the One who would bring back the customs of the old life and restore in the last Adam the freedom that he had granted to the first Adam, so that the human race was exempt from the law of servitude.
Having thus recognized that Thamar was inscribed in the genealogy of the Lord by reason of a mystery, we must undoubtedly attribute to a similar motive that Ruth was not omitted, she to whom seems to have thought the holy Apostle, when he foresaw in his mind that the vocation of foreign peoples would be exercised by the Gospel: "The law," says he, "is not made for the righteous, but for the unjust" (I Tim., I, 9). How did Ruth, who was a foreigner, marry a Jew? and for what reason did the evangelist consider it necessary to mention in the genealogy of Christ this union which the content of the Law forbade (Deut., VII, 3)? The Lord would not descend from a legitimate birth? It is, it seems, a dishonor: unless we return to this sentence of the Apostle, that "the Law is not made for the righteous, but for the unjust". For this was a foreigner and Moabite, and especially the law of Moses forbade such unions and excluded the Moabites from the Church - for it is written, "The Moabites will not have entered the Lord's Church until the third and fourth generations, and forever "(Deut., XXIII, 3) - how then does she enter the Church, if not because, being holy and undefiled in her conduct, she was put on top of the law? If indeed the Law is made for the wicked and the sinners, it is certain that Ruth, who escaped the limitations of the Law, who entered the Church and became Israelite, who deserved to be among the ancestors of the the race of the Lord, chosen because of an affinity of the soul, not of the body, is a great example to us: for in it is our entrance into the Church of the Lord, to all of us gathered among the nations, who has been prefigured. Let's imitate her then; and since his manners have earned him the privilege of being admitted to this society, as history teaches us, we too, thanks to the excellence of our manners, are welcomed into the Church of Christ in consideration of our merits. Indeed, as the Israelites, in the time of the Judges, in ancient times, were pressed by famine, a man departed from Bethlehem, city of Judah, where Christ was born, to dwell in the land of Moab with his wife and his two sons; the man was called Elimelech, his wife Noemi. His sons took Moabites as wives - one was named Orpha, the second Ruth - and they lived there for about ten years, and they died. But the woman, deprived of her two sons, deprived of her own husband, having learned that God visited Israel, prepared to return to her house and undertook to persuade the wives of her sons to return to their respective homes. One consented, but Ruth remained with her mother-in-law. And as her mother-in-law said to her, "Behold, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and to her gods: you too go back, like your sister-in-law," Ruth replied, "Let no to leave you and to return to me; for wherever you go, I will go with you, and where you live, I will dwell; your people will be my people and your God my God; and where you will die, I will die, and where you will be buried, you will bury me "(Ruth, 1: 15-17). So both came to Bethlehem. When this conduct, this devotion to his mother-in-law, this fidelity to his death, this religion towards God were known to Boaz, the great-grandfather of David, according to the law of Moses, and to give a posterity to his deceased parent, he chooses for wife.
It should be noted that she was met in a field in full harvest, gleaning javelins, as it is written, and reserving her harvest for her mother-in-law. And she did not go after a young man but followed a middle-aged man, which earned him to hear, "You're a virtuous woman," or "you've really made your last mercy surpass first "(Ruth, III, 11, 10): indeed, the last mercy, that of the gathering of the Church, surpasses the first. We say it here briefly, having treated more completely in the books I wrote about faith.
Now he who was far away came near, because he that was near departed; and he conquered the shoe of this close by taking this woman. For the custom was that the nearest, if he did not want to take his relative as his wife, untie her shoe and give it to another. There is a mystery of importance here, namely, that who, according to the figure, married the stranger, has received the power to evangelize. As well, that these marriages were figurative, the blessing of the elders testifies: "May the Lord, they say, make this woman who enters your house like Rachel and Lia, who built the house of Israel! May she produce virtue in Ephrata and have a name in Bethlehem! And let your house become like the house of Phares, which Thamar gave to Judah! May the Lord give you an offspring by this child! And Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife "(Ruth, IV, 11-13), and she gave birth to Obed, father of Jesse, grandfather of David.
It is therefore rightly that St. Matthew, wishing to call the peoples of the Church by the gospel to the Church, recalled that the Lord himself, the author of this meeting of nations, has drawn from abroad his origin according to the flesh. By this he gave to understand that this line would reproduce the Author of the vocation of the nations, the One we would follow, all of us gathered among the foreigners, abandoning our heritage and saying to whoever would call us to the worship of the Lord, for example to Paul or to some bishop: "Your people shall be my people, your God my God. So Ruth, forgetting, like Lia and Rachel, her people and her father's house, undoing the bonds of the Law, entered the Church. But this one unties his shoe that does not take the Church. And it is said to Moses: "Untie the shoe of your feet" (Ex., III, 5), so that one does not believe it the husband of the Church. The only one who does not untie her is the real spouse. So John says, "He, I am not worthy to untie the strap of his shoe" (Lk, III, 16). So here again there is a figure, and she built the house of Israel (see Ruth, IV, 11).
How far it was appropriate to insert his mention into the lineage of the Lord, we see it by the expression of a deeper mystery: it is prophesied that, from his descendants, Christ will be begotten in Ephrata, when It is said, "May the Lord give you to produce a virtue in Ephratha and to have a name in Bethlehem. (Ruth, IV, 11). What is this virtue, if not the one that Christ brought together the people of gentility? What is this name, except that Bethlehem became the homeland of the Lord at his birth according to the flesh? So it is said in a prophecy: "And you, Bethlehem of Judah, you are not the least among the great cities of Judah: for out of you will come the leader who shall rule my people Israel" (Matt, II, 6, Mich., V, 2).
We see, then, that the mention of these women is justified at the same time by history, the moral sense, the mystery. Yet, in defending Thamar or Ruth, I do not deny that even sinners counted among the ancestors of the Lord's family. It is to avoid mentioning them that S. Luc followed another genealogical line: he did not think it appropriate to name Ahab, Jechonias or, in the end, Uriah's wife, to show the unblemished suite of the priestly line. But if his plan is justified by reason, that of St. Matthew is not opposed to the right reason: since he announced the good news of the Lord begotten according to the flesh to take upon Him the sins of all, subjected to insults, subject to the Passion, he must not, he thought, show it without a kindness which would not even deter the affront of a tainted origin. At the same time, the Church would not blush to be recruited from sinners, since the Lord would be born of sinners. Finally, he would make of his ancestors themselves the first beneficiaries of the Redemption. So no one would think that a taint of origin could put an obstacle to virtue, would not boast insolently of the nobility of his race, nor blush with excessive shame crimes of his ancestors, having the resource to veil his origins under the flowers of virtue.
Has David the saint, so numerous as the mysteries figured in him, no greater for having recognized himself as a man and for having judged that the sin committed in kidnapping the wife of Uriah should be washed by the tears of repentance, showing us that no one should trust his own virtue? It is because we have a great adversary, of whom we can not triumph without the help of God; and you will often find among well-known and blessed men grave faults to make known to you that, like humans, they were accessible to temptation, lest their eminent virtues make them pass for more than men. If indeed David, for having said, exalted by the confidence in his strength: "If I have done evil to those who did it to me" (Ps. 7, 5), and elsewhere: "For me, I have said, in my wealth: I shall never be shaken "(Ps 29, 7), immediately bore the penalty of this arrogance, as he recalls with these words:" You have turned your face from me, and I have found in trouble "(Ib., 8); If even an ancestor of the lineage of the Lord has suffered the attacks of his arrogance, how much more, we sinners, who do not have the support of any merit, should we fear the pitfall of arrogance? , where good people are wrecked! especially since such a man provides us with teaching and example, having subsequently thought it necessary to sing the palinodie to appease the Lord:
"Lord," said he, "my heart did not exalt itself, and my eyes did not go up to the heights" (Ps.
130: 1), and "the Lord is on my right hand, that I may not be shaken" (Ps 15: 8): for he knew that the moment of his self-confidence was that of his fall. Finally he said that there is nothing in man, except knowing God; for you read, "What is man, that you may make known to him? or the son of man, that you may take it into account "(Ps 143: 3)? So if David condemns arrogance, puts on humility, it is right that the episode of the woman of Uriah introduces this lesson of embracing humility. And yet, since from it was born Solomon the Pacific, let us see if there would not be a mystery: once eliminated the one who once claimed to marry the crowd of Gentiles, the Church uniting with another spouse , to the real David. David! Christ was called thus, clothed with the name of his ancestor, as it is written, "I have found David my servant" (Ps 88:21). To Him the Church was united and, fertilized by the seed of the word and the Spirit of God, she gave birth to the body of Christ, that is to say the Christian people. It is therefore this woman who "in the lifetime of her husband is bound by the Law" (Rom., VII, 2), and that is why her husband died, so that she was not adulterous while being with a other man. So figuratively mysterious, sin as to history: fault of man, mysteries of the Word. Having this story spoken elsewhere throughout, we feel we must move quickly here. It is right that David the saint wrote on this episode the 50th Psalm, where he says, because of his union with Bathsheba: "Wash me abundantly of my iniquity, and purify me of my crime" (Ps. 50, 4). If this friend of God recognizes his iniquity and the obstacle opposed to his merits by his crime, if he finally confesses that he has sinned against God, why blush, to confess your fault? Shame is to blame, not to confess. So that David did not omit in his psalms the episode of Bathsheba, in order to teach us by that to be a mystery, or the reality of perfect repentance, we see that it is right not to omit it no longer in the genealogy of the Lord, since this same David who took her for a wife is indicated as the starting point of the genealogy of the Lord according to the flesh. His special privilege, as we have said, is to have seen in this mystery the origin of the Church and to have received the promise that from her lineage Christ would be born. For one of his words relates to the Church:
"We have heard that she was in Ephrata, we found her in the fields of the forest" (Ps 131, 6). The other circumstance is especially the promise of the incarnation of the Lord, revealed by the most manifest prophecy in these words: "It is the fruit of your womb that I will place on your throne" (Ps 131: 11). Beware, however, of relaxing on such a promise, for it has not been made without conditions; but if you keep the covenant and observe the warnings of the Lord, which he promises to formulate (ib., 12) in the Gospel, you too will open the access of the eternal throne.
So much for Uriah's wife. As for Ahab, his case is quite clear, since his wife is Jezebel. Likewise for Jeconiah, of whom Jeremiah testifies wisely that he was guilty of the greatest crime and to whom he even removed the name he bore: is the name of Joachim in the Book of Kings called Jeconiah? by Jeremiah, when he says, "Jechonias was discarded as a useless instrument, so he and his race were rejected. Earth, earth, listen to the word of the Lord. This man is disinherited, for no man shall go out of his race to sit on the throne of David, to reign over Judah "(Jer. Xxi. 28-30). It was indeed during his reign that the Babylonians devastated Judea, and subsequently no one of his race could ever attain kingship in Judah; for once freed from captivity, the people were governed by priests and tetrarchs. From there, until the birth of Christ, these tetrarchs subsisted, who, history teaches us, did not perpetuate the dignity of the royal race. It is indeed reported by those who, whether allegation, simple intelligence, or truthful statement, we have transmitted, that Idumean looters having entered Ascalon, city of Palestine, took among other captives, a temple of Apollo near the ramparts, Antipater, son of a certain priest Herod, who could not redeem him because of his poverty. Initiated to the sciences and mysteries of the Jews, he made friends with Hyrcanus, king of Judea, and Hyrcanus sent him on an embassy for Pompey; and as he happily performed his embassy, he gained from being associated with royalty. Antipater having been killed by those who envied his fortune, his son Herod was later, under Antony, charged by a senatus-consulte to reign over the Jews; his son was Herod and the other Tetrarchs. We have thought fit to reproduce this, according to the accounts of the Greeks, to show that Herod had no affinity with the race of the Jews, and had acquired royalty by an adulterous right-pass. Also, aware of his low extraction, fearing that his descendants would be discussed in the name of the Old Law, he burned their scriptures, thinking that if he suppressed these accusers, no other testimony could establish that he was not descending of the race of patriarchs or old proselytes. But, as it happens in many human calculations, it could not be detrimental to the knowledge and discovery of the truth. Let us beware, however, that this does not detract from our assertion that Christ is of an authentic and royal race, and that his genealogy is deduced by real and known kings. But, at the moment when a bastard dynasty seized royalty, the legacy of its nobility was preserved by the series not of potentates, but of descent.
Yet we have not learned that Christ was king over the honors of this world; How, then, is it "the fruit of thy womb that I will put on your throne" (Ps 131,12)? How, again, does the angel tell us of Him: "The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and He will reign over the house of Jacob" (Lk I, 32)? How is his kingship promised and not shown? Or how does the prophet say that of the race of Jeconia no one will reign? For if Christ reigned and Christ is of the race of Jechonias, the prophet lied and the oracles lied. But it does not say that the race of Jechonia will have no descendants, and so Christ is of his race; and the reign of Christ is not opposed to prophecy, for he did not reign with the honors of this world, nor did he sit on the throne of Jeconiah, but he was king on the throne of David. Yet even Jeconiah, having sat on the throne of David, how to explain this saying that the descendants of Jechonias will not sit on the throne of David, since it seems that both had the same throne? Thus we can not deny that it was the throne of David; and yet Christ did not sit on the same throne of David as Jeconiah. Moreover, in the race of David no one but Christ was able to sit on his throne, because his posterity is eternal in no other than in Christ, as God Himself revealed in these terms. "Once for all I have sworn by my holiness: I will not lie to David; his seed will endure for ever, and his throne will be as the sun in my presence "(Ps 88, 36 ff.). Who is he talking about here? No Solomon for sure, no Roboam, no Nathan, but the only one he can say: "I will stretch out his hand on the sea and his right on the rivers. He will call upon me: "My Father, it is you," and "I will establish his seed for eternal length, and his throne will be like the days of heaven" (Ib., 26-30). It is certainly not on this throne that Solomon, neither Roboam, nor Jechonias sat. You want to know who sat there? He is the One from whom the angel said to Mary: "Behold, you will conceive in your bosom and give birth to a son, and you will give him the name of Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end "(Lk , I, 31-33). If you do not believe the angel, believe at least the Lord Himself, who said: "You say it, I am king" (Jn, XVIII, 37). Is it that he too would have lied by asserting his kingship when he did not reign on earth? How to solve the Scripture, which says that he reigns and does not show that he reigns?
Here we have arrived at the abyss of discussion, stranded on a shallow and as tossed in the sinking of the truth. Let's wake up Christ, let's question him; to Him to answer.
Let's question the scriptures. We find that the kingdom of the Lord is not of this world, because He said Himself: "My kingdom is not of this world" (Jn, XVIII, 36). In saying that his kingdom is not of this world, He shows that He is above the world. So his kingdom was and was not: he was not in the world, he was above the world. So there was another real David's kingdom, which only Christ received; and there was another seed of David, who abideth for ever, from whom alone was begotten the Christ, who alone is the true son of David, just as He was the only one to receive his name, as it is written: I have found David my servant, and poured on him my holy oil "(Ps. 88:21): a word that certainly applies not to the prophet David but to the Lord, as the above indicates; for it is written, "I have helped the mighty, and I have exalted an elect from my people" (Ib., 20): for the only powerful, the only one elected, is Christ. In fact, the saints are made more by faith than by generation; so the Apostle says, "If there are believers, they are the sons of Abraham" (Gal. iii. 7).
Another point that does not seem negligible to us. From the time of David to Jechoniah, that is to say, to captivity, although there were seventeen kings of Judea, Matthew numbered fourteen generations; and likewise from Jechonias to Joseph, where twelve generations are counted by man, he declares that he has fourteen generations. You read indeed: "All generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the Babylonian exile fourteen generations, and from the exile of Babylon to Christ fourteen generations."
First of all we must know, as we have already said above, that there can be more successions, fewer generations: such can indeed live longer and give birth at a later date, or be completely deprived of posterity. Thus the duration of kings is not that of generations. This is the reason why St. Matthew omitted those whom he judged not to belong to the genealogy; for if he had had the design of establishing their succession, we would have reason to be moved by this. that the Books of the Kings and Paralipomena agreeing to make reign, after Joram, Ochozias and Jodas and Amasias, then to succeed to Amasias Uzzias, S. Matthew omitted the three kings Ochozias, Jodas and Amasias and makes follow Joram of Jehoshaphat. But he did follow it not in the succession of kings but in genealogy; for the rest, he recalled that he relates the generations. Now it may have been that Joram had begottened late, and that Jehoshaphat was late in coming to the kingship, and thus having not succeeded his father Joram in his power, he comes after him genealogically. As for the twelve generations that the Evangelist seems to have enumerated after Jechonias, if you look at it carefully, you will again be able to find the account of the fourteen generations: for there are twelve generations of enumerated up to Joseph, not until Christ, and in the thirteenth place comes Christ, from Joseph. But it does not matter whether the count is two generations or one; however, even here you will not meet the reef of Capreus nor the sinking of the truth. History teaches us that there were two Joachim, that is, two Jechonias, begotten one before exile, the other during exile, namely the father and the son. So the father was counted among the previous generations - it was he who succeeded Josiah - the son among those who follow: he succeeded his father, and it is the grandson of Josias. Now that they were two, the Books of the Kings indicate it, because it is written: "Pharaoh was master of Israel from the time when Joachim, son of Josiah, reigned in Judea in the place of his father Josias; and he changed the name of Joachim king, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem "(II Kings, XXIII, 34, 36). And it adds: "The rest of Joachim's actions and all that he did, is it not written in the Book of Actions, in the days of those who reigned over Judea? And Joachim rested with his fathers, and Joashim his son reigned in his stead. Joachim was eighteen, and became king, and reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Mesola. And all that his father had done before the Lord's eyes, he did it himself. And in his day Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon went up to Jerusalem "(II Kings, xxiv, 5 ff., 8-10). You see, then, that one was the son of Josiah, the other his grandson; his son is he to whom Jeremiah gave his name (Jer. XXXVII, 1); his grandson, the one who received the name of his father. And St. Matthew did well not to part from the prophet, and to call him not Joachim but Jeconiah. At the same time, as we have said above, it brings out more the treasures of goodness of the Lord, since the Lord did not require of all the nobility of the race but wanted to be born of captives and sinners, as it suited him who came to announce their redemption to the captives. So the evangelist did not suppress either, but indicated both, since both were called Jechonias. Thus, adding Jechonias the Younger, there are fourteen generations.
So that's for Matthew. As for Luc, he had this happy thought: not being able to enumerate several sons of Jacob, so as not to appear to be straying away from the genealogy in superfluous series, he did not think it necessary to omit the names absolutely. of these patriarchs: in others, of course, I mean come well after them; but he chose Joseph, Judah, Simeon, and Levi. Is it that we recognize in these? whose others were the descendants? four kinds of virtues. In Judah? it is the first? was prophesied and figured the mystery of the Passion of the Lord; in Joseph we already see a model of chastity; Simeon avenges outraged modesty; Levi is the priestly function. Finally, Nathan is reminded of the dignity of prophecy. Thus, Christ Jesus being to Him alone all things, in each of his ancestors. It is preceded by various species of virtues. Noah the righteous was not to be omitted either from the genealogy of the Lord: since the builder of the Church was to be born, we see him starring that of his ancestors who had once founded him in the figure. And what about Methuselah, whose years count beyond the flood? As Christ is the only one whose life has not experienced the attacks of age, in his very ancestors it appears that he did not feel the deluge. Is not Enoch an obvious mark of the tenderness of the Lord and of his divinity, in the sense that the Lord either did not feel death and returned to heaven, whose grandfather was taken to heaven? where it is manifest that Christ could not have died; but He did not wish it, that this death might be profitable to us. And the first "was taken away, lest evil should change his heart" (Sag., IV, 11); but the Lord, whom the malice of the world could not change, returned to the place from which He had come by the majesty of His nature. One does not say anything, of course, about the murderer of his brother; for it would not have been reasonable to count the one who struck his brother among the ancestors of the Lord, while the latter saved his servants' lives to honor them by giving them the name of brothers (Matt. 49, Jn, XV, 15). But it is not without interest that Seth not be omitted, which was given to Adam by a later birth: thus, as there are two families of peoples, the figure announced that the Lord Jesus Christ would count with the second rather than with the first. Finally, for Adam himself, who according to the Apostle was a figure of Christ (Rom., V, 14), what could be more beautiful and more suitable than the holy genealogy beginning with a son of God and leading to the Son of God? , the created one preceding as a figure so that next comes the One who is truly born, the one who was made in the image coming first, him for whom was to descend the Image of God? And if we dig up the mystery of the first misguidance, one tasted the tree of the science of good and evil, deceived by the devil, persuaded by Eve, that another, even before knowing the evil, chose for us the good and made vain the pitfalls of the cruel snake to the persuasion of the Church, as it is written: "For before the child knows good or evil, he does not believe in evil, so to choose what is good "(Is., VII, 16), and" before the child can call him father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the remains of Samaria "(Ib., VIII, 4). For here is the Child whose cradle has been filled by the wise men of the remains of the East, because the people who, before Christ, did not believe, changed in their faith, offered to the Lord the remains of idols as ornaments of his triumph.
All these details, brother, on the genealogy of Christ, you do not ignore them; but I was anxious to expose them a little for a long time, lest, by traversing them in the Gospel of a mind that was not very attentive, such would be somewhat disturbed. The holy evangelists, anxious to come to greater wonders and more divine deeds of the Lord, have seen fit to condense and shorten all this rather than develop it abundantly. In the manner of those who deem it sufficient to indicate to those who are unaware of the road some markers of the road and some paths, we have traveled the paths of the spiritual life - leading to the truth? we will see ; at least in a thought of religion and faith - and we strained to the depths of the mysteries, fearing that whoever would read these things, as the proverb says "like a child with a sword", did not know, because of his childhood, to wield these strong weapons, and to collect some injury by clumsiness instead of being saved by reading it. For the weak are wounded by their own features, and one can not use arms well if one does not know how to wear them. Therefore, the faith claims the perfect man (I Cor., XIV, 20), in whom the infancy of science does not crawl on the ground, in which there is no change in an age still infirm and devoid of knowledge. mysteries, which has not lost the strength of youth to the point of no longer claiming the crown of a glorious fight, and is not like the aging eagle, which once removed in its claws a hare or a goose and now, overwhelmed by age, attacks the brood without the feathers of the little birds, which can not procure him a solid food.
We composed a work that was not out of place, I think, on the genealogy of the Lord. Certainly it has not been without fruit to attach ourselves a little to the ancestors of the Lord. For those who are preparing to cross the high seas while sailing on the coasts avoid pulling at the shortest while taking off, because they are, like us, poorly reassured. They love, seduced by the beauty of the sites, to visit the countryside and the cities separated from the shore. How much more we, lost in the immensity not of the elements, but of the heavenly actions, should we like to stop at the nearest ports and to multiply the excursions, lest, tired of the boredom of a long navigation, such can not stop nausea and vomiting! Certainly, if anyone realizes that his skiff is unsafe, there are disturbing damages; even as it often happens, the port that is the books presenting itself, to load the sails of his ears, to cast the anchor of the reading, it will not be judged that he abandons his ship, but that he has completed his race if he goes down to the port. And perhaps in many places the very amenity of the sites is an invitation to the passer-by. For if the famous Ulysses, according to the fables - it is true that the prophet too said: "It will be the abode of the daughters of the Sirens" (Is., XIII, 21); and, if the prophet had not said it, no one would have the right to make a reproach, since the Scripture welcomes the Giants and the Valley of the Titans - if then Ulysses, after a ten-year exile during which took place the Trojan War, and after ten years of journeys, as he was hastening towards his country, was able to be restrained by the Lotophagi thanks to the sweetness of their fruits; if the gardens of Alcinoüs delayed him; if at last the Sirens, attracting him by their songs, have nearly dragged him to the famous shipwreck in voluptuousness, and if he had to fight against the enchantment of their melodious voices by blocking the ears of his companions with tampons of wax, how much more fitting to religious men to be captivated by the wonder of celestial actions! And here it is no longer a matter of savoring the sweetness of the berries, but the bread that came down from heaven: neither to contemplate the vegetables of Alcinous, but the mysteries of Christ: for "to the one who is weak to eat vegetables (Rom., XIV, 2). So it is not a matter of plugging one's ears, but of opening them so that the voice of Christ can be heard; and whoever hears it will have no shipwreck to fear: not that, like Ulysses, it is necessary to attach it to the mast by material bonds, but because its soul must be linked to the wood of the Cross by spiritual knots. so as not to be shaken by the attraction of pleasures and not to let the course of nature drift towards the pitfall of pleasure. The fictions of the poets have indeed given color to this fable according to which girls lived on a shoreline bristling with reefs; and when they had, by the charm of their voices, led navigators to divert their course for the pleasure of hearing them, they drew them to hidden reefs, disappointed them with a deceptive shelter, and caused them to perish in a lamentable shipwreck. . This invention was embellished by a presentation and a staged stage: we described the sea, the female voice, the coastline and its funds. But what sea less lenient than the world, so insecure, so mobile, so profound, so agitated by the breath of unclean spirits? And what does this image of young girls mean, if not the lure of an edgy voluptuousness without virility that effeminates the firmness of the seduced soul? And what are these reefs, if not the pitfalls of our salvation? There is no danger more hidden than that of the sweets of the world: by charming the soul, they tyrannize life and, in a sense, break meaning and intelligence over the pitfalls of bodies.
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