Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lady. Today’s readings: Micah 5:1-4a; Psalm 12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 1:1-23
In 2020, the National Archives of Malta acquired the Giuliana Letard-Ciantar collection, a vital resource for genealogical research. Familial and national memory depends critically on Giulianas. This noteworthy Giuliana is in the process of digitalisation to facilitate people’s efforts to look up their family genealogy. Ancestry, who is working with NAM on the digitalisation process, has a 40 billion records database from 80 nations.
There seems to be a growing interest in lineage research in this age characterised by a sense of uprootedness. Quite a number of philosophers, anthropologists, theologians and humanities academics studied this phenomenon, with psycho-social studies claiming that being “unattached” or rootless is one of the main issues of the 20th century, where becoming invisible and rootless constitutes the ideal.
For Simone Weil, uprooting is a social ill associated with the Western religious and cultural crises. Rootedness is the most crucial yet the least understood need of the human psyche, the last source of security. The emergence of right-wing populist fundamentalism, posing as the guardian and protector of a country’s economy, culture and sense of identity against imagined external threats, is one of the concerns brought about by this phenomenon.
Being deeply rooted strengthens one’s sense of self, gives one a willingness to meet obstacles openly, and empowers one to develop and prosper in the ability to accept change, diversity, and the unknown
Having no roots triggers scaremongering and strengthens ideological conservatism in a bid to seek refuge in an imagined past. Conversely, being deeply rooted strengthens one’s sense of self, gives one a willingness to meet obstacles openly, and empowers one to develop and prosper in the ability to accept change, diversity, and the unknown.
The late Oliver Friggieri often illustrated his views on the spinelessness of a rootless culture on the cusp of extinction by employing the metaphor of an imitation plastic tree, devoid of life, sterile, and lacking in roots.
Rooted. Growing in Christ in a Rootless Age, by Stephen SchafferDrawing from the works of respected intellectuals and writers such as Bonhoeffer, Dostoyevsky, Brueggemann, and others, Stephen Schaffer, in Rooted. Growing in Christ in a Rootless Age (2022), argues that a lack of a deep sense of belonging drives our inner being to weaken and our roots to be harmed. Examining biblical history, where rootedness is vital, the author demonstrates how a desire for it eventually results from an unconscious or conscious yearning for God.
The gospel for today’s liturgy reads the Matthean genealogy of Jesus Christ, for the festivity of Nativity of Our Lady, celebrated in Malta as Our Lady of Victories in connection with the end of the 1565 Great Siege, the end of the Valletta French Blockade in 1800, and the end of the World War II Siege in 1943.
Two separate genealogies of Jesus Christ, each highlighting a different theological argument, are provided in the Gospels. While Luke depicts Jesus as the Son of God, tracing his lineage to Adam, Matthew demonstrates that Jesus is the promised Messiah by tracing his genealogy to Abraham. The genealogy is structured symbolically in numerical values, revealing that Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s covenant with the first patriarch.
The differences between the two genealogies have been the focus of a great deal of writing and fruitless discussions, seemingly since antiquity. St Paul criticised them in 1 Timothy 1:4 as being harmful to faith and omitting the essential message concerning the person and mission of Jesus who, firmly anchored in his twofold identity as the Son of God and the Son of Man, accomplished his mission for the good of humanity, constituting a significant development in religious history. The Matthean genealogy highlights the fact that there’s no racial purity in Jesus’s lineage made up of royalty, Jews, Gentiles, the impoverished, the privileged, the just and the unjust, the famous and the unnoticed.
As the Apostle reminds us, God works for our good in everything; justifying and glorifying us, calling us to conformity to Jesus Christ, the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.