Hope In Genealogical Dysfunction

Today's Gospel reading on Jesus' family tree used to bore me to tears.  But as I have slowly immersed myself in Scripture, these names (some hard to pronounce) have become familiar, their foibles particularly prominent in my memory.  The sinful, the outcasts, the adulteress, the drunk, the deceiver, this is the kind of human family the Holy One was born into.  I chuckled and cried at that thought.  Talk about a truly dysfunctional lineage.  It has given me hope from the past and into the future especially as the genealogy account ends gloriously with Joseph and Mary.

St. Augustine's prayer beautifully sums it up - O blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily repay thee thy just dues of praise and thanksgiving, thou who by the wondrous assent of thy will didst rescue a fallen world? What songs of praise can our weak human nature recite in thy honor, since it is by thy intervention alone that it has found the way to restoration.

When we think about the world we live in- broken, dysfunctional, hurting - our assurance is the Star of Hope's  free assent.  So we continue to praise and pray and trust that Jesus'  birth isn't all for naught.

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodidisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviter disponensque omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. 

Eight more days.