Three
Genealogies
Two of Christ —and
One of Man
We must choose one
We
are presented with two genealogies in the Holy Gospels: one
in Saint Matthew (1:1-17) and the one in Saint Luke
(3.23-38) There is little agreement between them. This much, however,
appears to be generally agreed upon:
Saint
Luke
traces the genealogy of Jesus through His Mother Mary (a biological
genealogy that goes back to Adam the First Man, as Christ was the
New Adam), whereas Saint Matthew traces it through Saint
Joseph (a legal genealogy to authenticate Christ’s descending from
an unbroken line of kings which extends back to the great King David).
The genealogical relevance that was of importance at the time of
Christ is of little importance to us now. We know Who He is, whence
He comes, and why. And yet we still have the impulse to authenticate
everything in Holy Scripture and to demonstrate its consonance with
Christ. It is understandable in a world that increasingly separates
itself from the matrix of its origins. We wish to defend the narrative
in terms the world cannot reject. But that is impossible.
As we will see in our commentary on the Gospel reading for December
16th, there is nothing — no evidence, no reasoning, no
possible motivation — that will suffice to satisfy the world’s demand
for autonomy that is radicated in a defiant and determined disbelief.
Nothing we can present will move the world from its unbelief. It
has chosen its god — however meretricious and irrational — and
will not be moved away from it, for it is nothing less than
itself. To accept any other god is not a form of secular
idolatry — it is suicide for this civilization.
Modern Man’s Genealogy
Modern man’s historical genealogy has less pedigree than we find
present in Saint Matthew and Saint Luke; far less. It goes
no farther back than the 18th century to what we euphemistically
understand as the “Rational Enlightenment.” — which was neither
(rational or
enlightened). It was the inauguration of an age in which
faith in
reason not simply superseded faith in God, but sought
to abolish it — often violently. Man became the epicenter
of the universe, and having abolished God apotheosized himself.
The moral aftermath reverberates to this day.
Indeed, the attempt to abolish faith in God and supplant
it with faith in reason is concomitantly the attempt abolish
morals altogether as so many lingering vestiges of faith
in God: a God already ideologically assassinated by
faith in reason has no legislation remaining whatsoever and
in whatever vestigial form — in this case “morals”.
Hence, what had already become an immoral society following the
“Rational Enlightenment”, now becomes an amoral society in
which there is nothing whatever that is intrinsically good
or bad, let alone good or evil. Apotheosized man is a god unto himself
and everything proceeding from him is, of course, autonomously self-legislated
and no longer susceptible to the “old” canons that advert to anything
outside himself. He himself is the canon!
Our genealogy has not yet been fully populated, of course — unlike
the genealogies in the New Testament. Historically they culminated
in the one true God Who became man — Jesus Christ — to Redeem of
the world.
Our own genealogy has resulted in a Pantheon of competing gods in
a war of wills as numerous as the deities themselves. It is the
apex of internecine warfare and, consequently, not the destruction
of the God made Man, as intended — but the likely destruction of
man as god.
Much Depends
Much depends on the generation to come and which genealogy it chooses
as its own.
As there are two genealogies presented in the New Testament, so
we have two historical genealogies from which to choose: A continuation
of the genealogy that culminated in Christ, or the present
generation that has abolished Him in the name of “a false and lying
god”, as Dante put it, which culminates in the Post-Modern Enlightenment
that does not see its own shadow before it, even as it covers
the land in, to use Tolkien’s words concerning the land of shadows
called Mordor, “a second darkness”.
This “second darkness” is the total eclipse of God by man,
resulting, aptly, in a Godless civilization worthy of the “Second
Death”1 which forever seals the covenant of man with
himself — and eternally apart from God.
The two genealogies — that descending from Christ and that from
the world — are utterly incompatible. We cannot choose both.
The one is inimical to the other. But choose we must!
In which genealogy, then, will our names be inscribed? To which
will we lay claim? Christ or the world?
“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the
presence of the throne, and the books were opened; and
another book was opened,
which is the book of life; and the dead were
judged by those things which were written in the books,
according to their works.”
(Apocalypse 20.12)
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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