Wednesday of the 3rd Week in Advent
Readings of the day: Genesis 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4ab, 7-8, 17; Matthew 1:1-17
“O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding
creation with power and love; come to teach us the path of knowledge”!
What is the significance of this prayer?
It is our acclamation we have heard just before our Gospel reading today. From
today until the morning before Christmas Day, our Gospel acclamations at Mass
will all begin with the same word, “O.” These acclamations are called the “O
Antiphons.” We can follow the “O Antiphons” through the hymn, “O Come, O Come,
Emmanuel”: “O come… Wisdom… Might… Rod of Jesse’s stem… Key of David… Dayspring
from on high… Desire of nations.”
Today we begin the “O Antiphons” by
acclaiming God’s wisdom, most fully expressed in God’s gift to us of his Son,
Our Lord Jesus Christ. What is this wisdom of God? How does God show us his
wisdom? Our readings are all about how God has shown us his wisdom from the
beginning of creation, just not in ways we would expect. In Genesis, of the
twelve sons of Jacob, Judah is associated with the image of the lion, an image
of strength; of leadership; of wisdom. But Judah is the fourth of Jacob’s sons,
neither the stereotypically independent oldest child nor the beloved youngest child,
but a “middle child.” (Those of us who are middle children may be able to
identify best with Judah). Judah, the “middle child,” would not ordinarily be
the model of wisdom, or known for anything in particular among twelve sons in a
story, but so he is.
Matthew’s Gospel begins with a
magnificent genealogy from Abraham, our father in faith, to “Jesus who is
called the Christ.” This genealogy, too, is an expression of God’s wisdom. But
again, Matthew’s genealogy shows, God’s wisdom is demonstrated in unexpected ways;
through unexpected people.
In Jesus’ family tree we hear of five
women (it was rare to include women in a Jewish genealogy at all): Tamar, who disguised
herself as a prostitute to marry Judah; Rahab, who was a prostitute; Ruth, the foreigner from Moab, not from Israel;
Bathsheba, “the wife of Uriah,” whom David had killed so he could marry
Bathsheba; and Mary, the virgin.
The men in this story are no less
strange than the women. They range from the sinful (David, who was at least as
great at repenting as in sinning, and many of Israel’s kings who misgoverned
Israel into the Babylonian Exile) to the bizarre (Boaz: Who in Israel would
marry a foreigner in those days?) to the silent, courageous, and obedient
(Joseph, who took Mary as his wife and cared for Jesus as his own son).
God shows his wisdom in the unexpected:
Through a line of strange people, sinners, “middle children” who would have
been insignificant without God; through each and every one of us. Ultimately,
God’s wisdom gave us a Savior, “Jesus who is called the Christ.”
And so today we celebrate in a special
way God’s wisdom; a wisdom that shows itself in the unexpected; a wisdom that
saves. And we pray, in the words of our Gospel Acclamation, “O Wisdom of our
God Most High, guiding creation with power and love; come to teach us the path
of knowledge”!
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