Today was (I’m posting this at night) the great feast day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. With the exception of the birthday of Him who was to be born of her, there is no more important birthday in the history of the world. In fact, the Church celebrates only one other birthday besides those of Jesus and Mary and that is the birthday of Saint John the Baptist, the greatest of all the prophets. Our Lord’s precursor, conceived in sin, was sanctified in the womb of his mother, Elizabeth. The immediate occasion for this infusion of supernatural life in John was Our Lady’s visitation to his mother shortly after the Annunciation. Mary brought the Incarnate God, the Word made flesh within her, on her mission of charity. John was in his sixth month of pre-birth formation when he “leaped for joy” at the presence of Mary and the Son of God who had been conceived in her womb. “Whence is this to me,” Elizabeth said to Mary, “that the mother of my Lord should come to me.” All three babies, Jesus, Mary, and John were born without original sin: Jesus, because He was God; Mary, the Mother of God, because she was the Immaculate Conception and never had any sin; and John, because six months prior to his birth he was sanctified by Him whose coming he was to prepare the way for by his preaching the baptism of penance in the desert.
It is important in our defense of the inerrancy of holy scripture to insist that Jesus was the Son of David, and the King of the Jews, through both His foster father, Saint Joseph, as well as His Mother, Mary. Protestants have a major problem in affirming how this is so on account of the discrepancies between the two inspired genealogies of Christ as given in the Gospels of Saints Matthew and Luke. They argue, rightly, that Jesus received His royal title through Joseph, from King David through King Solomon, but, wrongly, not Juda’s royal blood, because His immaculate mother, whose genealogy Saint Luke traces back to Solomon’s brother Nathan, conceived Him virginally. Solomon, as we know, inherited the royal title, not Nathan.
Saint Joseph would provide for his wife and the Child Jesus and give the Child a human father in every sense of the word except that of generation. Too, he would give Jesus his royal title, which he received through his father, Jacob, who was of King Solomon, as we read in Matthew’s genealogy (1:1-16), which takes us from Abraham to Christ. What the fathers of the Church in the fifth and following few centuries determined to resolve was that Jesus was not only King by legal entitlement, but also heir to the throne of Juda by bloodline. Hence, as Saint Alphonsus demonstrates in his Glories of Saint Joseph, Mary was also of the royal bloodline. How is this, being that Saint Luke has her descending from David’s other son Nathan who was not a king?
Take a moment and open your Bible to Matthew, chapter one, and Luke, chapter three, where you will find the two genealogies of Our Lord, the former running from Abraham to Christ, the latter from Christ back to Adam.
If we read the genealogy as Luke has it the problem seems insurmountable, which is why we have a Church and a living authority to validate that both apparently disparate genealogies are — must be — true. Unbelieving scoffers from every age have prided themselves in pointing out that since both genealogies have a different “father” listed for Saint Joseph then scripture must be in error — as if the fathers and doctors of the Church avoided facing this discrepancy for fear of admitting an error in the very genealogy that ought to authenticate Our Lord’s titles of Messiah, Son of David, and King. The more common explanation of the scholars is that the two different men listed before Saint Joseph in the genealogies, Mathan and Mathat, are themselves half-brothers born of the same mother and different fathers.
Jewish law required that the brother of a married man, who died without issue, marry his brother’s widow and raise up children for his brother. It was also the case by Jewish custom, not law, that a son’s inheritance should to be kept within the family line if it should happen that a father had a daughter(s) and no sons. The daughter was encouraged in this situation to marry the closest available relative, so long as he was old enough to beget children and not too old to be a provider. Such in God’s providence may well have been the case with Our Lady, an only child, who was espoused to Joseph, her first cousin.
How was Saint Joseph related as cousin to Mary? Through Jacob, the father of Joseph, who was the brother of Saint Anne, the mother of the Mother of God. It is also a common opinion of the fathers, who, being in such close proximity to the Jewish Christians from the early Church, learned these things from those who knew the traditions, that Heli (whom Saint Luke lists as father of Saint Joseph) was not his blood father but his father-in-law. How is this? Mary’s father, by tradition, is not called Heli, but, Joachim. However, Hebrew scholars point out that the Hebrew name “Heli” is short for Eliachim and the name “Eliachim” can also be rendered “Joachim.” We find this to be the case in the Book of Judith, where the same high priest who blesses Judith is called both Eliachim and Joachim. Notice, too, that in Saint Matthew’s genealogy the verb “beget” is used throughout, but in Saint Luke’s we have “Joseph, who was of Heli, who was of Mathat, etc.” (Luke 3:23).
Since, therefore, Saint Joachim had no son, his daughter, Mary, by custom, was given to her closest relative, who was Joseph, son of his wife’s brother, Jacob. Joseph, then, by inheritance, was also “of Joachim” — not “begotten of,” but simply “of.” Being that Heli is short for Eliachim, and Eliachim can also be rendered Joachim (as we see with the high priest in the Book of Judith), then the Holy Ghost provides the Church with two genealogies, one of Mary through her husband Joseph’s natural father, Jacob, and another of Mary through her husband’s father-in-law, Heli. The cognate (blood) relation of Mary and Joseph as cousins comes about because, as I already mentioned it is the more common tradition, Mary’s mother, Anne, is believed to be the sister of Joseph’s natural father, Jacob. The names of Our Lady’s parents are not given in holy scripture, but they are known by tradition, as recorded in certain non-inspired (but credible) gospel accounts, one of which is that of the apocryphal Gospel of Saint James. In the inspired Gospel accounts, the genealogies as given in Matthew and Luke may be believed to come together two generations back from Saint Joseph in Mathan and Mathat, if, as some doctors of the Church held, these two figures were brothers. Since the inspired genealogies assign them to two different fathers (Mathan begotten from Eleazer and Mathat “of Levi”) some doctors held that Levi could have married the widow of Eleazer, which would make Mathan and Mathat half-brothers, born to the same mother but different fathers. Given this interpretation therefore, Mary and Joseph would also be related by blood in a common unnamed great-grandmother. The royal blood, coming through the seed of Solomon, would in fact come to Jesus in the flesh through Mary because of her cognate relationship with Joseph and his ancestors. In fact, before they conjoin in David, the Gospel genealogies do link up in two other ancestors, Zorobabel and Salathiel, at the time of the Babylonian captivity, then they separate until they coincide again in David.
How fitting, too, that it was a holy high priest named Joachim who came with all the ancients to greet, praise, and bless the zealous Judith with immemorial words, after the valiant woman had slain the tyrant Holofernes: Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honour of our people. (Judith 15:10) Can we not imagine Saint Joachim, perhaps as he lay dying, taking hold of his daughter’s hand and praising little Mary with the same words uttered to Judith by the ancient holy priest six hundred years before? I like to think so; just as I like also to think that Our Lady’s mother, Saint Anne, taught her honorable daughter the beautiful Canticle of Anna, the mother of the prophet Samuel, which, in many verses, echoes over a thousand years prior the exquisite hymn of the Incarnation, the Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat.
If Saint Joachim had not the opportunity to speak such words to Mary, the Church, in his stead, has done so. For she taken this blessing of Joachim the priest for Judith and applied it to the Mother of God in her liturgy for the feast of the Immaculate Conception:
Blessed art thou, O Virgin Mary, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth. V: Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honor of our people.Alleluia, alleluia. V: (Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is in thee no stain of original sin. (Judith 15:10 & Canticles 4 & 7, Gradual Prayer)
And, again, in the Tract which follows: The foundations thereof are in the holy mountains: the Lord loveth the gates of Sion above all the tabernacles of Jacob. V: Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God. V: A man is born in her, and the Highest Himself hath founded her.
Alleluia, alleluia. Thou art the glory of Jerusalem, thou art the joy of Israel, thou art the honor of our people. Alleluia. V: Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is in thee no stain of original sin. Alleluia.
