Main news for 18 May 2026

Compared with Mark's Gospel, which we have already read, this Gospel brings completely new information: Jesus did not come from heaven already grown and immediately begin preaching; He was born into this world just as every human being is born. The Son of God truly became human, taking human flesh upon Himself in exactly the same way we receive it. That is precisely why everything He will later do will concern all of us, because everything will be done in human nature. And His name, Jesus, means God's salvation for all humanity. To illustrate and explain this absolute humanity of Christ, the apostle Matthew gives His genealogy, built from several sevens, the number of fullness, and placing Him in the context of all sacred history, the whole chain of Covenants between God and humanity. And the quotation from Isaiah completes it, and with it, all the Old Testament prophecies.

Today at the liturgy we read the whole first chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, which includes Christ's genealogy and the account of His Nativity in Bethlehem. The whole structure of this chapter is determined by a distinctive movement of the plot from Abraham, the forefather of the people of God, to the moment when Joseph gives the newborn Child His name: Jesus. On the feast day itself we will once again read the account of the Nativity from this chapter, and then the account of the adoration of the Magi. But today it is important for us to see this whole human history contained in the long list of names from Abraham to Jesus.

The evangelist Matthew, with his characteristic desire to systematize the information he presents, offers us a fairly conventional scheme of the movement of history, dividing it into three periods of fourteen generations each. It is clear that the numbers he gives are symbolic in character. In its details Matthew's genealogy differs from Luke's genealogy; this is connected with the features of the Jewish system of kinship and fatherhood. But these details are not what matters to the evangelist. Strictly speaking, he gives the genealogy of Joseph, the husband of Mary, who receives the Child born of her as his own and, to the end of his life, protects Him and serves Him. To a certain degree, this is the calling of each of us.

In speaking of the Nativity, the evangelist Matthew leaves the Annunciation outside the scope of his story and directs our attention first of all to Joseph's faith. Having believed the Angel, he rises above human weakness and limitation and becomes a participant in God's saving action. And in the person of Joseph, as later in the person of Christ's disciples, all humanity receives the Child Christ. For the Nativity is the finale of the whole history of falling away from God and seeking paths of return, the history of resisting God and the history of salvation. All human loneliness, helplessness, and mortality come to an end for us in the cave of Bethlehem, where the One is born who will remain with us always, to the end of the age.

The readings before the feast of Christmas return us to the incredible and impossible event that has become ordinary and routine for us. God became man and walked the path appointed for each of us. When we speak about Christmas, the brightness and contrast of this event are too often blurred against the background of the rest of history. The human mind tries to fit the incomprehensible inside itself by simply treating the Incarnation as an ordinary thing. The best thing to do in this situation is to imitate Saint Joseph. That means accepting what is impossible for human beings but possible for God, and at the same time not treating God's incarnation as something self-evident.