Genealogy Sunday

by Fr Yuhanna Azize

Today is “Genealogy Sunday,” the day on which the response to the Qadishat aloho changes from it.ra.7am 3a.lyn(have mercy on us), to m.shee.7o de.tee.led men bat da.weed, it.ra.7am 3a.layn, “Messiah born from the daughter of David, have mercy on us.” This simple change in the acclamation achieves four goals at once: it marks the importance of this feast, and of the Nativity which is soon to follow; it demonstrates that the Qadishat is addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, and not the Father or the Trinity, and also makes the point, important in the Syriac tradition, that the Lord shared in the House of David through His flesh (through His Mother, because His flesh was from her.) Of the icon, Fr Badwi writes:

This icon is a personal composition from some Melkite Antiochian icons and some Romanesque and Gothic miniatures. It represents Jesse lying down, with his name in yellow letter, written just to our right of his halo. He is holding in his left hand the inscription, “There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse.” Behind him, the stump sprouts green drawing out in a circular form around the mother of God (in the fashion of Our Lady of Elige) carrying the Saviour of the World. On the green leaves are written the names of the patriarchs from Jesse to David to Joseph the husband of Mary from whom Jesus was born. The base of the family tree is set in a dark rectangle, as if planted in the earth. But the branches and leaves of the Old Testament figures are against the same coloured background as Jesse, indicating that they belonged to the same age as he did. The Virgin Mary and her Holy Child are set against a bright background, representing the New Testament which brings all the mysteries of the Old Testament to light.

The reference to the rod of Jesse is a quote from Isaiah 11:1, where the “rod” here is a shoot or a branch. The Lord’s family tree comes from the side of Jesse, while he looks as if he is enraptured, holding his right hand to his eyes as if he is looking into the distance. He is in fact gazing into the future, foreseeing the fulfilment of God’s promise to him.

It is an extraordinary icon: the simple device of writing the names on individual leaves both shows the individual value of each of these names, but does so without having to produce a lengthy list of names which would intrude on the pictorial content. Rather, text and illustration are perfectly melded together. It shows us the ancient past and the eternal reality of the Incarnation in one simple image, using filled-in rectangles of different colours to comment on and interpret the relation between the Old and New Testaments.

The Genealogy

 In today’s Gospel, St Matthew reveals the genealogy of the Lord. It often presents a puzzle to people: why do the genealogies in St Matthew and in St Luke have so little in common? The short answer is that the genealogy in St Matthew is almost certainly the royal line, while in St Luke, we have the family line of the Lord. That is, St Luke tells us about the Lord’s family line. He clearly indicates that the Lord was only thought to be the son of Joseph, and that Joseph was the son of Heli, all the way back to “Adam, the son of God.” This answer, was expounded in some detail in Lord Arthur Hervey’s brilliant The Genealogies of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ … (Macmillan and Co., Cambridge, 1853). In that book, Hervey (himself the Anglican rector of Ickworth) also showed that the difference between the two genealogies was not, as Protestants often said, that St Luke traced Our Lord’s line through Our Lady.

Now, there was not always a king on the throne of David, but – points out Hervey, there was a  Davidic succession. He therefore states:

… sixteen of the middle generations are a succession of kings who reigned over the house of Jacob, and that after a further succession of twelve private individuals who were not kings, the list closes with the name of Him who was ‘born King of the Jews.’ But as the whole period that those twelve private persons lived, the royalty of the house of Judah was violently suppressed, it is natural to conclude that they are the persons who would have been kings on the throne of Judah … had the throne of David continued to stand. (11)

Also, despite the terms of St Matthew’s Gospel, which we shall come to later, Jeremiah 22:29-30 tells us that Jehoiachin – who is said to have begotten Shealtiel – was in fact childless. This is important, because there was no lineal descent after Jehoiachin, and it is precisely here that both the genealogies of Ss Matthew and Luke present identical names: Salathiel and Zerubbabel. As Hervey concluded: “… Jehoiachin’s line was supplied by heirs taken from another line … the line of Nathan, as we learn from St Luke.” (19) That is, St Luke gives the lineal descent (to prove the right of succession as given by St Matthew), and so St Joseph must have been the legal heir to Solomon’s throne, while not being his descendant. (22-26) This double genealogy of birth and right to the throne where the double line is not identical, was known in the Old Testament: Hervey provides examples (26-36). He concluded: “… it is in accordance with the customs of the Jews … that a person possessing an inheritance which he did not derive from his direct male ancestors, should have a double genealogy, one that of his real progenitors, the other that in virtue of which he inherited.” (36)

There are some other powerful points, but I shall omit them here. What is most interesting to me as a Maronite, is how Lord Hervey, an English peer worked out the importance of Our Lady not from theology but from history, thus writing that both genealogies are those of Mary, too:

For if the Matthan of St Matthew is the same individual as the Matthat of St Luke, it follows that Jacob and Heli were own brothers. And if Mary were the daughter of Jacob, and Joseph the son of Heli, Joseph and Mary would be first cousins, grandchildren of the same grandfather Matthat. And if Jacob had no son, but only daughters, and his male heir and successor, as head of the tribe of Judah, were his brother Heli’s son Joseph, we are quite sure, from the constant practice of the Jews, that Joseph would marry Mary: just as the five daughters of Zelophehad married their five cousins, Numbers 36:11, and as the daughters of Eleazar, the son of Mahli, were married to the sons of Kish, Eleazar’s brother, 1 Chronicles 23:22. Compare also Tobit 1:9; 3:15-17; 6:10-12.” (57)

And in footnote 1 on that page, he writes: “It is important to observe, how strong even in the captivity, when there could be no land to inherit, was this feeling, that a daughter should marry her next of kin.” Further, even the fact that Mary and Joseph both dwelt at Nazareth before their marriage (Lk 1:26, 39 and 2:4-5) is an important details: if she was of the tribe of Judah, then the best way of accounting for two families from the tribe of Judah living at Nazareth in the territory of the tribe of Zebulun, is that “they were near relations whose common ancestor had for some reason come to reside there.” (58)

Now I had prepared a good deal of material from the Ancient Near East, such as the Assyrian King List, to show that King List of the Lord should be read as what it really is ­– a Near Eastern document written according to the ideas and beliefs not of the Greeks and Romans but of the ancient Semitic world. But that, and some other fascinating points would make this post too long. Next year, perhaps.

The Revelation to Joseph

by Fr Yuhanna Azize

Concerning the icon for today’s feast, Fr Badwi wrote: “In a Rabbulian frame, (is an icon inspired by the (ancient Syrian icons in) British Library 7170 and Vaticanus Syrianus 559, Joseph is sleeping on his bed while the angel is (coming to earth from the) celestial circle to remove his doubts. The Syriac inscription which fills the empty space between both states: “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

When Fr Badwi writes of a “Rabbulian frame,” he means the way that the icon is bordered by two columns supporting a canopy in the Rabbula Gospels. Here the canopy is depicting the night sky, hence in the top left and right hand sides, we see two stars rather than the sun and the moon. The “celestial circle” is the region of heaven. Here it is shown as a large circle, with inner concentric circles: heaven was believed to have seven levels. The angel is appearing from behind the spheres.

There is a direct line between the open eyes of the angel and the face of the sleeping St Joseph , whose had seems to float just a little above the pillow. His body is lying on the bed, but his mind has been lifted above the earthly level. There is an important lesson in this: in order to contemplate divine realities, we have to be grounded on the earth, but our eyes are closed to the impressions of the world to perceive the divine light, and our intellects lifted above any earthly thoughts so as to receive the mind of God.

Notice the red of the angel which is shaped like a flash of lightning or a flame of fire. Well, it is a flash of lightning, and it is a flame of fire. St James of Serug wrote of the angel who appeared to St Joseph: “The spiritual one flew and reached him swiftly to drive away all doubtful thoughts from him. In the vision of the night he approached towards him … so that in fright and with caution he might accept his words. A perturbing appearance, glorious and amazing, did he reveal and made manifest to him so that he might fearfully hear the truth from him. He blew like wind and flew on high like lightning and reached him. He was inflamed with fire, resounded like thunder and spoke with him. He became a man and brought forth lightnings from his flame.” (First Homily on the Nativity, lines 699-707). When the angel appears to St Joseph, the entire house was filled with a “cloud of fire.” We tend to think of the angel appearing like a postman with a message. But St Jacob, understanding better the nature of angels, has him assume a fearsome human form so that the splendour and power of his appearance would be its own guarantee of truth. It is a very different way to think of the angel’s appearances to Joseph.

St Jacob also adds to the Gospel accounts, the angel saying to St Joseph: “Behold, God is united with man as was proclaimed: God is with you.” (733-734). We Maronites recall these words in every Mass when the priest prepares the offerings: “You have united your divinity with our mortality, and our mortality with your divinity …”

When we think of St Joseph, we remember that he bears the name of Joseph the son of Jacob in the Book of Genesis, and like him, received dreams. Rather, according to Syriac thought, it is Joseph the son of Jacob in the Old Testament, who is named after Joseph the son of Jacob from the New Testament, the foster-father of the Lord. Consider this, in Matthew 1:16 we read: “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.” Is that a coincidence? According to the typological way of thought, the events of the life of Christ are the very centre of history, and all of history, whether it happened before His lifetime or afterwards, takes its meaning from His life.

To our minds, which can only understand time as a line, Joseph the husband of Mary comes after Joseph the Dreamer. But in eternity, there is no arrow of time: our lives, like all of time, are only a moment in the mind of God (so to speak). That is, from the perspective of God, there is no before or after in time.

It is often asked: did St Joseph ever know Our Lady as a man knows his wife? People often find an ambiguity in the Gospel account. But the Maronite tradition is clear: the answer is no. This is an ancient tradition. St Jacob, for example, had no doubt at all. He wrote that St Joseph said to Mary: “God forbid that I should turn to marital union with you … to your purity I am submitting myself because your Son is my Lord” (758 and 762).

Another point which St Jacob notes is that, for the sake of Mary and her divine son, Joseph “endured ignominy” (a bad reputation) (1022). Coming from the same cultural world as that in which Our Lord was born, Jacob understood very well that St Joseph, as the husband of a woman who became pregnant while in her father’s house, would himself have had a bad name. In the Third Homily on the Nativity, St Jacob wrote: “O Joseph, come, show us the Father of the Child since you are treated wrongly because of Him and the truth calls out that your are not His father.” (300-301) This is an overpoweringly beautiful thought: that because Joseph was not the Father of his own foster-child, but accepted this, he can show us the true Father.

It is extraordinary to think that if St Joseph had not done as he did, Our Lady might even have been put to death because it was thought she had committed adultery (Third Homily, 309). Let us close with this meditation from the poet: St Joseph says “I am guarding him as my son, the Hidden Mystery.” Then, adds St Jacob: “Words fall silent …” (w shalyon mele), line 314.

The Birth of John the Baptist

by Fr Yuhanna Azize

Luke 1:57-66  Now Elizabeth’s full time came for her to be delivered, and she brought forth a son. When her neighbours and relatives heard how the Lord had shown great mercy to her, they rejoiced with her. So it was, on the eighth day, that they came to circumcise the child; and they would have called him by the name of his father, Zacharias. His mother answered and said, “No; he shall be called John.” But they said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name.”

So they made signs to his father—what he would have him called. And he asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, saying, “His name is John.” So they all marvelled. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, praising God. Then fear came on all who dwelt around them; and all these sayings were discussed throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all those who heard them kept them in their hearts, saying, “What kind of child will this be?” And the hand of the Lord was with him.

 Fr Badwi writes of the icon: “This icon unites two events – Elizabeth in her home carrying her new-born son, surrounded by midwives and neighbours; and Zechariah writing the name “John” in front of two of his friends. In the miniatures of the British Library … and the Vaticanus Syriacus … the second event is only represented. We have added the lighted lamp in front of the sun, the symbol of the Baptist in front of Christ, according to the Syriac liturgical texts.”

The name is written in Syriac in this icon: “Yohanon.” Of course, Christ is the sun, and the Baptist is the lamp.

Once more, a dome is present, this time over the house where St John the Baptist is born. This could be because the Temple was in Jerusalem, which is in the hill country where St John was born (after all, his father was a priest who served in the Temple). But I think there may be more: the Temple is a model of the Church of God. Every house where God is worshipped shares in the holiness of the Temple and of the Church. Hence, the dome was present over both the houses of Our Lady and her cousin in the icon for the Visitation (the Journeying of Mary). Obviously, the Temple cannot be in two places at once, but the reflections (or in theological language, the antetypes) of the Temple can be in many places simultaneously. In this way, the Church is one in heaven, and it is reflected in many “copies” on the earth. Elizabeth’s house is shown in the same manner, even with the same colours, as Our Lady’s in the icon of the Annunciation. They seem to be the one house: and they are, in their holiness.

Finally, from the icon, the curtains of the house are pulled back, for the birth of the Baptist was the topic of conversation in that area. St John is wrapped in swaddling bands, as the Lord would be. Also, Zechariah is walking forward towards the two men (two men were needed as witnesses in the Hebrew tradition), which is shown by the lifting of his right foot: he is intervening to ensure that the child is named “Yohanan,” or “God is gracious.”

Interpretation This is the fourth Sunday of Announcement. What is being announced today? It is partly the birth of St John the Baptist, partly confirming that the woman who had been thought barren has been found fertile (hence the sprouting from the withered tree trunk which we saw last week). But above all, the announcement is that the hand of God is operating in our world. This is shown my multiple factors: the miraculous birth itself, Elizabeth’s choice of a name which no one had expected, the confirmation of her choice by Zechariah, and the curing of his inability to speak, and that both Elizabeth and Zechariah attributed the miracle to God through their naming of the child.

Fr Badwi was quite justified in deciding to show not only the events with Zechariah, but also the birth of the Baptist. The two events go together, and give each other meaning. Perhaps the old icons only showed one event because the icons might otherwise have been too full, with too many details. When we considers it from that perspective, we see how capable and judicious Fr Badwi’s icon is. It manages to show the two events with great clarity.

How do we interpret all this? When we consider all the miraculous events together, we see that God is truly the Lord of History. He uses unexpected people, and unexpected events, to bring His Divine Will to come to pass. Like the people in today’s Gospel, we think we have a pretty shrewd idea of what is happening and what it likely to occur. But are we justified in this? These people thought they understood Elizabeth and her condition: they thought that her barrenness was because she did not enjoy the favour of God. Their beliefs were completely overturned: it was precisely because she was a good woman and was to receive the favour of God that she was kept barren until such time as her giving birth would show forth the glory and power of God.

So too, we should be humble when we look at the world around us, or contemplate the direction our lives are heading. We might think that God has forgotten us, that He is not listening to our prayers. But if we did think that, we would be wrong. First of all, if one prays to Him, God will always grant us the grace to deal with whatever the issues before us may be. But secondly, and shown very clearly by this Gospel: history and our lives are not in our hands, they are in the hands of God. He knows better than us what we need and when we need it. He knows better than us His own Divine Plan for the Salvation of His People. Rest assured that He will bring His salvation to come to pass – and the way He does it will surpass the workings of our small minds.

The Visitation to Elizabeth (Mary’s Journeying)

 by Fr Yuhanna Azize

 

Journeying, or in Western Christianity, the Visitation of Our Lady to her Cousin Elizabeth is the third week of the Maronite Season of the Nativity or the Announcement. It is a little surprising to realise that in the Syriac interpretation, this Sunday is an integral part of the Season of Announcement, not only because it follows the announcements but more deeply because it is itself the announcement of the Incarnation to Elizabeth and to John the Baptist. The emphasis in the Syriac tradition is not on visiting, it is on travelling to proclaim the conception of the Lord.

In other words, the Syriac presents Our Lady as the first apostle, the first to be sent forth to declare the mystery of salvation. Just as “apostle” means “the one sent forth,” so in this week we honour Mary as “the one who went forth.” This is the very meaning of the Maronite icon: it is called mi.zal.tō d.mar.yam, meaning “Mary’s Journeying.” The word mi.zal.tō means “journey, departure, pilgrimage.” It can even be used of the final voyage, into eternity. It actually does not mean “to visit:” that is another word altogether in Syriac, s.3ar “to visit, inspect,” which is used, for eample, when visiting the sick. When a chorepiscopus visits his area, that is a sō.3ou.rou.tō, or “visitation.” The noun mi.zal.tō however, comes from an entirely different verb, e.zal, which means “to go, walk, journey.”

Now, of course, a person who makes a visit does also go on a journey. But not at all who go travelling are visiting. Further, the emphasis is different: in the case of visiting it is on one person dropping in on another – at least two people are directly concerned in a visit. However. when we speak of a journey, only one needs to be involved. That is, the emphasis is quite different: in one instance we emphasise that the traveller has gone forth, and we draw attention to her journey. In the other, we emphasise the meeting.

Why, when the Syriac mind contemplated this episode from the Gospel of St Luke, would it think of Mary’s making a journey as the more revealing title than the fact of her visiting her cousin? One reason might be that the Syriac New Testament reads like this: qō.mat deyn Mar.yam b.houn b.yaw.mō.tō hō.noun: we. zalt b.Tee.lō.yeet l.Tou.rō lam.deen.tō dee.houd (Luke 1:39). “She arose, Mariam, in those days, and she journeyed instantly to the mountain, to a town of Judah”, the verb “to journey” being e.zal. So, in calling this episode “Mary’s Journeying,” the Syriac tradition follows the text of St Luke very carefully indeed. In neither the original Greek nor the Syriac, do we find either the words “visit” or “visitation.”

But I think there are two further reasons: the first is found in the Maronite Beit Gazo, a treasury of medieval Maronite hymns and religious literature. Fr Badwi quotes this part of it:

The young girl whispered gently in the ears of the aged woman.

The voice crept in, entered, and impelled the Forerunner of the Truth (John the Baptist).

The child leaps for joy before the Son of David (Jesus),

(David) who danced in front of the Ark.

He kicks his mother to go out, and to adore,

so that his Lord who has come to visit him is not kept at the door.

This passage is taken directly from St Jacob of Sarug’s first Homily on the Nativity, 497-502. I have consulted both that text and the Syriac in Beth-Gazo Maronite Add. 14.701. The passage is not an easy one in the Syriac, but the overall meaning is clear, and is fundamental to Syriac interpretations of the Journeying (Visitation): Mary is the Ark of the Covenant, and her journeying to Elizabeth is the type of the journey of the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament.

In 2 Samuel 6:9-14, we read: “David was afraid of the Lord that day; and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” So David would not move the ark of the Lord with him into the City of David; but David took it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite three months. And the Lord blessed Obed-Edom and all his household. Now it was told King David, saying, “The Lord has blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.” So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with gladness. … Then David danced before the Lord with all his might …”

Here the Ark of the Covenant (the box containing certain holy items, and being a sign of the presence of God) is taken for three months because of David’s fear before returning, and brings with it blessings. In St Luke, the Ark of Covenant, Mary, bearing the presence of God, goes to her cousin’s house for three months, fearlessly making the arduous journey, and brings with her blessings. St Luke is showing us the true meaning of the Old Testament stories, and how all of sacred history, read typologically, shows us the Lord.

The Icon

Fr Badwi’s icon was based on an ancient Syriac picture available in the Vatican Library. The Virgin and her cousin stand in front of two houses: the Virgin’s house with a closed veil, symbol of her virginity, and nearby, Elizabeth’s house. In front of Elizabeth’s house is a fry tree, which would appear to be dry and withered but for the green branch sprouting from it. This is, Fr Badwi explains, a symbol of the barren woman who will give birth.

I would add that, although Fr Badwi has placed in front of Elizabeth’s house, the dry tree with the green branch unexpectedly sprouting, it could quite rightly have been placed in front of both houses, for St Ephrem writes in his first Nativity Hymn: “The staff of Aaron sprouted, and the dry wood brought forth – his symbol has been explained today – it is the virgin womb that gave birth” (line 17). Ephrem is referring to the story in Number 17 where, during the Israelite wandering in Sinai, twelve staves of twelve leaders were deposited in the Tent of Meeting. The next morning, Aaron’s staff had produced blossoms and ripe almonds, showing that the Lord had chosen Aaron and his sons to be responsible for the priesthood (Numbers 18:1).

Now, St Luke tells us that Elizabeth was of the house of Aaron (Luke 1:5). So the dry tree which miraculously blossoms is a fit sign of her. But, the ancient system of thought which we call typology can handle this: the tree which gives forth life when it did not seem possible is both aged Elizabeth the daughter of Aaron who had been barren, and the young Mary the daughter of David who was ever-virgin. And so the houses of Aaron and David, the kingship of the one and the priesthood of the other, the old and the young, the hills (Elizabeth) and the plains (Mary) are brought together in one mystery. Words cannot explain this uniting of opposites and differences: but the symbolism of the artist can present it to the eyes so that it can be read by the faithful soul, interpreting by the light of the Spirit.