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I know it is the Christmas season but for the last time this Simbang Gabi, please allow me to share with you another story about anointing of the sick with a happier ending. My first sick call as a newly ordained priest in April 1998 was my mother’s aunt, “Lola Cedeng”. She lived for seven more years after that anointing though, it was also a few days after that sick call when she had a stroke and fell into a coma. Of course I prayed hard for her to recover and in a few weeks I visited her. According to her when she was rushed to the hospital ICU, she found herself walking alone in a tunnel toward a bright light at its end when suddenly St. Martin of Tours arrived riding a white horse, telling her, “Cedeng, umuwi ka na. Hindi mo pa oras.” Just before she turned to go back home, she spoke to him: “Hindi po ba kayo si San Martin ng Tours? Paano po ninyo ako nakilala?” St. Martin replied, “Ako nga si San Martin ng Tours. Paano kita hindi makikilala, Cedeng, e palagi kang nagsisimba sa aking parokya sa Bocaue lalo kapag pista.” After that the saint left her and my Lola Cedeng woke up.
That’s the only near-death story I have personally heard in my life. And I believe Lola Cedeng did encounter St. Martin of Tours, our patron saint in Bocaue, Bulacan where me and my three other siblings along with almost all of our cousins were baptized. The Parish of St. Martin of Tours in Bocaue is the root of our spiritual family. That is the importance of the parish that we now take for granted as more Catholics no longer care about the Sunday Eucharist and other sacraments. The parish as the root of our being Christians also defines who we are as beloved children of God, giving us our sense of mission to make God present in this world and eventually bring us into His eternal presence in heaven later in life. This is similar to what our gospel account today tries to present to us in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Today is actually the start of the official countdown of the Church for Christmas Day. Every year on December 17, our liturgy shifts into the second character of Advent which is Christ’s “first coming” when He was born in Bethlehem more than 2000 years ago. All the gospel readings beginning today would pertain directly to the events surrounding the first Christmas. And the Church rightly chose since the reforms of Vatican II to always have the beginning of St. Matthew’s gospel account to show us the roots and mission of our Lord because since His time until now, people have always had two nagging questions about Jesus Christ: who is He and from where is He? For St. Matthew, these two questions are closely linked that must be immediately addressed correctly and accurately at the beginning of any story about the Christ that immediately, he wrote: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Mt. 1:1)
In declaring “Jesus Christ, the son of David”, St. Matthew definitively tells us that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise of God of establishing eternal kingship through David, Israel’s greatest king. It is also a part of His promised salvation that began with Abraham but St. Matthew chose to mention first the root of Jesus in David because His genealogy of three fourteen generations is structured around David: “Thus the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Christ, fourteen generations.” (Mt.1:17)
In the Bible and among the Jewish people, including us today, numbers are very significant. The number seven is highly regarded because it is a perfect number. Fourteen is therefore twice perfect because it is two sevens. Furthermore, the name “David” in Hebrew letters sum up into fourteen. At the same time, for the Jews the number three means of something so undeniably very true. Hence, the three fourteen generations from Abraham to David to Jesus mean that Jesus without any doubt is the promised King and Messiah of Israel! God is evidently present in His family tree because “Joseph, the husband of Mary” is from the family line of King David even if it is marked by some sinful and wayward ancestors! This is the reason why in tomorrow’s Gospel it would be very important for Joseph to marry Virgin Mary in order to be the legal father of Jesus, “the son of David.”
For St. Matthew there is no doubt that Jesus is also “the son of Abraham” as the fulfillment of God’s promise first made to Abraham, the father of all nations. The evangelist understood so well the meaning of Abraham being the father of all nations to show us the universality of God’s plan that has always been since the very beginning, from Genesis to Ascension wherein God had projected the future when all nations would be under Him as expressed in Jesus Christ’s commission to “baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Call it destiny for that is the only certainty we can be sure of: from whatever nation and family we come from, in the end we would be one in the Father in eternal life in heaven.
Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham shows us that humanly speaking as well as legally and culturally, we all have different origins as individuals and yet in spite of these distinctions, we all belong to one big family of peoples. Science would always come up with new theories and ideas about our origins but with the coming of Jesus Christ, we are reminded of our true genealogy in God through faith as exemplified by David and Abraham. This is exactly what we do every time we gather in the Holy Eucharist especially on Sundays. Though we are of different races and families and origins, we are all one as the body of Christ, a parish community which Vatican II aptly referred to as “the people of God” bounded together in faith in Christ Jesus. In Him, we do not only see and realize our human roots as sons and daughters of David and of Abraham but most of all as beloved children of the Father Who is our ultimate origin and end. Such is the value of our parish as a reminder of our common spiritual roots in Christ Jesus who renews us, giving us so many chances to be fulfilled as persons so that even by now, we can have a taste of heaven, of bliss. In fact, every Mass celebration in our Parish is a rehearsal of our entrance into heaven. Don’t miss the next practice – we’ll be glad to see you!
Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Parokya ni San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista
Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria, Bulacan
