Fourth Sunday of Advent – Cycle A
Well, we are full-tilt back in Matthew’s gospel, and we’ll stay here, except for three Sundays of the Christmas season, three Sundays in Lent, and most of the Sundays of Easter, right up to the Feast of Christ the King next November. That’s thirty-eight weeks of the gospel that begins with Advent and Christmas stories painted in charcoal and grey, and written in the gloomy key of B-flat minor.
That’s a dramatic change from the gospel we just completed, which begins with Luke’s Advent and Christmas stories using a palette of bright primary colors of reds, yellows and blues, and sung, I imagine, in A major. Luke loves to tell stories about Mary, and he knows far more about her than any of the other gospel writers. But it’s only Matthew who tells us about St. Joseph. He’s the only one, for example, who knows what Joseph was thinking when his betrothed “was found with child,” a child certainly not his.
He was going to divorce her quietly, even though Moses had said that when a man had relations with another man’s wife—which is how “betrothed” was understood—both the woman and man should be stoned (Lev. 20:10). But Joseph wasn’t going to do that, and this was BEFORE the angel came to him and announced that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit! He was willing to go against Moses himself in order to do the merciful thing.
And there it is. That’s the glorious aria of Matthew’s gospel. Over and over, we will learn that mercy outbids justice every time. Go and learn the meaning of mercy, says Jesus.
Maybe he learned that at home, from Joseph.
How will you show mercy to someone in your life this Advent?
Kathy McGovern ©2019