Have any of you ever tried to work on your family tree? And if so, how far back did you manage to go? Did any of you try to research something more about your ancestors besides simply knowing their names, dates of birth or death, and perhaps where they lived?

During my CPE, or clinical-pastoral education summer training at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City after the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the didactical exercises required each one of us to create a family tree and to go back as far as we were able too. To make the exercise more challenging, we had to add dates of birth/death, did the marital relationships of our family members worked out or failed, known major health challenges, causes of death, incarcerations, etc. Sounds fun, isn’t it? Then, to add a cherry on top of it, we had to present our respectful “grown” trees to our CPE team. The whole point of this exercise was to look at self and one’s own family and how that picture shapes or prepares me for the ministry to God’s people and what I can learn from it.

In the holy season of Advent, we hear about the genealogy – or the family tree of Jesus. When Matthew began writing his Gospel, there was no Ancestry.com; there was no digital database; there was no public buildings with records.Nevertheless, there was a well-developed Jewish biblical tradition that kept the genealogy alive. Family lineages were preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

Matthew tells us that Jesus is not only the “son of David” – the famous King and composer of Psalms, but also the “son of Abraham.” The claim of being “a son of Abraham” or having Abraham as one’s “father” carried with it implications of election and right-standing before God. It would be similar if one of us here had a well-known and important family member in the lineage who significantly impacted us or their own time and perhaps inherited estates owned by that famous relative.

One can say a lot about each person contained in the genealogy of Jesus and about their importance. I want to zoom in only on one of the crucial features. Mainly, Matthew breaks his biblical pattern by including women in the genealogy - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. You may ask me: why did he do this? Scholars tell us that he does that to break the pattern to remind us, his readers, of four women, who in various ways, are rather surprising members of messianic genealogy. It is like some of us who remember our baba/grandmother who shaped our family life, perhaps was able to raise and educate many kids after the sudden death of her husband. However, the women mentioned by Matthew lived in messy times and had messy families. Tamar bore children by her father-in-law Judah; Rahab was considered to be of ill repute and used to hide spies in her chambers and became the mother of Boaz. Ruth was the Moabite widow (an outsider) who married Boaz and became the mother of Obed. Finally, Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, whom King David murdered in a desperate bid to cover up his affair with her and her pregnancy. What is common for these four women is the unusual, exceptional element, not their sinfulness, for Ruth was not sinful, and in the case of Bathsheba, David was to blame. In all four cases, God acted in an extraordinary and unexpected way – just as he did in the case of Mary – the Mother of God.

Matthew concludes the genealogy with the words, “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” This is the statement that Jesus is really the offspring of Mary, but that he is not the physical descendant of Joseph. Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew’s gospel challenges the common belief of Jewish people who longed for the appearance of God’s Messiah from the perfect lineage. But despite the mystery of Jesus’s conception and birth, Matthew affirms that Jesus is indeed a “son of Abraham,” a true descendant of that great patriarch of the Jewish people and a “son of David” – a legitimate messianic heir.

The genealogy in Matthew’s gospel shows us that Jesus, being born into the line of David, “inherited” all of his family’s brokenness, drama, and woundedness. He points out to me and you that the skeletons of our family’s history closets are part of human reality. Jesus was born into a family line that had many skeletons in its closets, stories that were considered “shameful,” “painful,” but nevertheless, Jesus embraced that story. It didn’t stop him from bringing plentiful redemption to people of the past, present, and future. When you and I look at ourselves, at our family’s happy or messy relationships, situations, let us not despair, let us acknowledge that gift, which is Jesus Christ, Emmanuel or “God is with us”, who came to make all things new, to lift us, to point to us that we are still worthy children of God, and that despite our family trees, stories, failures, his plan of salvation includes all of us.

Having been the coordinator of the Vocation Ministry for the Redemptorist Congregation in Canada, I have the opportunity to meet many young men who are searching for an answer to the question: “what does God want me to do? Where is He calling me?” Many of them literally are overwhelmed by their own past, complicated family dynamics, brokenness of the human condition.

This is something that I can also relate to in my early days of discernment, when I asked myself: “Am I worthy to embark on this journey knowing my past, knowing the challenges in which I grew up?” Yet, the genealogy encouraged me to see that Jesus doesn’t look for perfectly “spotless” and “holy” people who feel worthy to be called to the ministry. He calls ordinary people, even those with the “skeletons” in their family closets, and it is He who makes us worthy, who heals the wounds of the past and helps us to walk into the future. While wearing my religious habit, or the priestly vestments, I am reminded that God covers my brokenness with His grace and makes me the instrument of His love and compassion to the wounded world around me. As we enter the holy season of Advent, may we rediscover God’s great love for each one of us and follow this love till the end.