By Rev. Peter M.J. Stravinskas

We know relatively little of Our Lady's origins; most of our information comes from the Protoevangelium of St. James, which contains many pious legends and traditions, including information about her parents and infancy. That work informs us that her parents' names were Anne and Joachim. We do know, for a fact, however, that every devout Jewish woman dreamed of being the mother of the Messiah, or at least of giving birth to a daughter who would be.

The Church Universal commemorates Mary's birth on September 8 (superseded this year since it falls on a Sunday), when we are presented with Jesus' genealogy according to St. Matthew (1:1-17) - a rather strange Gospel passage, with even stranger names. Can we make some sense of it all?

Matthew presents us with a thoroughly Jewish Jesus, intending to show the fulfillment of Judaism in Him. Therefore, he pictures Jesus as the "new Moses," the Church as the "new Israel," and the Gospel as the "new Law." He does this in a variety of ways, from the five-book structure of his work to parallel the five books of the Torah, to frequent use of the number seven, to the dozens of citations of texts from the Old Testament.

But Matthew also does something else, and does it so subtly that most readers miss it. His genealogy is a powerful proclamation of the Jewishness of Jesus, the reason for which is to announce and to demonstrate in a definitive manner that Jesus is a real son of David, from whom the long-awaited Messiah would come, according to the prophets.

To appreciate the genealogy in all its intricacy, it is important to understand, first of all, that the Jews (like most ancient peoples) had a great fascination with the symbolic value and meaning of numbers. For them, "seven" was the sign of absolute perfection, while "six" epitomized gross imperfection. No surprise, then, that the Messiah's lineage is broken into three groups of fourteen ancestors (twice the number of perfection and also the numerical value of the letters in David's name).

This genealogy is not historical in our modern understanding of the word, especially because there are many gaps. It doesn't tell us the lineage of the human race from Adam (like St. Luke), but the lineage of the Hebrew race from Abraham, the man the Roman Canon calls "our father in faith." This list is punctuated by the most important events in Jewish history: the origins of the people, kingship of David, Babylonian exile, coming of the Messiah.

This is significant for its differences from standard Hebrew genealogies, particularly in that some women are included: Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law Judah into an incestuous union (Genesis 38); Rahab, the chief prostitute of Jericho, who sheltered Joshua's spies (Joshua 2); Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah who committed adultery with David and then conspired with him to murder her husband (2 Samuel 11); Ruth, the wife of Boaz and daughter-in-law of Naomi, who stands as an exemplar of faithful love and devotion.

This is notable for several reasons. First, the unsavory nature of most of females (and many of the males as well) is a salutary reminder that all of us, even the Son of God, come into this world with a history. Second, the fact that three of them are not only women but also foreigners points to Jesus' mission to the Gentiles. The third reason must be understood in light of the fact that, in a patriarchal society such as that of the Jews, name and property were passed on through males, not females.

So the mention of these women serves as a crucial affirmation of the importance of Mary, "of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Christ." (Matthew 1:16) It's likewise interesting to note that the genealogy is indeed Joseph's and not Mary's. While the legal patrimony of Our Lord had to come through a male, His human origins did not come through a male, a point made clear by the Evangelist.

Matthew wants us to comprehend that salvation history reached a high-water mark in ...