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 nor 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reason not simply superseded faith in God, but sought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 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-become-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)
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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