By Placide Deseille
This reading (on the genealogy of Christ) which seems strange to us, is actually so beautiful and at the same time so comforting for us, to the extent that it shows us that already this people of the Old Testament consisted of both saints and sinners. Among the persons listed, among the women mentioned in this genealogy there is no lack of sinners. And yet this whole chain led to Christ. There is, however, in this chain also a significant number of true saints, whom we honor in the same way as the saints of today's Church, because in their way - a still enigmatic but real way - they believed in Christ, were saved by their faith in the word of God and to the promise of the coming Messiah.
The Fathers of the Church – I have in mind, for example, St. John Chrysostom and St. Ambrose of Milan – liked to immerse themselves in the earthly life of the saints of the Old Testament: Abraham, the Patriarchs and so many others, because, although they still did not have the full light, as it would be revealed in Christ, they truly obeyed the word of God, they had absolute confidence in that word, and they are for us, like the saints of the New Testament and all the saints of the Church, both models and mediators.
Let us love to study these texts of the Fathers, which allow us to grasp all the depth, all the richness of the Old Testament, which is ours, it is indeed one with the history of our Church.
From the book Entering Into the Mystery of Mysteries. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
