Daily Archives: December 18, 2025

On their own land

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The first reading today is from Jeremiah, the prophet to the nation during times of crisis in the final days of the kingdom of Judah. The prophet was given the daunting task of prophecy to Jerusalem who was at the end of a “death spiral” of horrible leadership under the kings of Judah, the descendants of King David. In the midst of his oracles against and city, king and people, the prophet proclaims: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; As king he shall reign and govern wisely.” (Jer 23:5). 

Here is the season of Advent we hear and understand Jeremiah as speaking of “the days” being some 580 years later long after the crisis of the Babylonian Empire and the coming Exile. We hear the trace of the messianic prophecy of Jesus – the “righteous shoot” that will bloom from the stump of Jesse (cf. Isaiah 40). In Jeremiah’s day, I suspect the people knew their days were numbered as none would be able to stand against the power of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian armies. They were sure to be dispossessed of the land and their inheritance. But to them Jeremiah says that the children of Israel “…shall again live on their own soil.” (Jer 23:8). Even if dispossessed, they would return to claim their inheritance.

In our days, the Righteous King has already come, bringing the Kingdom of God to those who claim their inheritance – and so it has been for more than 2000 years… There are certainly days when here in the United States we can feel like the faithful remnant of Jerusalem in Jeremiah’s day. According to Pew Research landscape studies, Christianity has been declining in America. In 2007, 80% of people identified as Christian; by 2024 that number had decreased to 62% of the population. By 2024 only 45% of young adults identified as Christian. In that same period between 2007 and 2024, the share of U.S. adults identifying as Catholic declined 21%.

As I read Jeremiah and consider the Pew Studies, one can be disheartened that, as a people, we are being “dispossessed” of our inheritance of faith. But at the same time, I am encouraged. All across the United States, Catholic parishes are experiencing a phenomenon of increased numbers of people in the OCIA programs, the means by which people come into the Catholic faith as adults. It is a movement in which I hear the echo of Jeremiah: “they shall again live on their own soil.” (Jer 23:8)

My unscientific sampling of Catholic parishes points to a doubling of the numbers of participants in OCIA just from last year with a marked increase in the numbers of adults seeking the Sacrament of Baptism. A statistical blip? Time will tell. A renewal of faith? I certainly hope so. Time will tell. But it strikes me that we need to be people that are not satisfied that the Messiah has come but even if we are but a faithful remnant, to be aware that the promise of the Messiah and the Kingdom are everlasting and we are called to witness to those signs among us.

Jeremiah | detail of Sistine Chapel | Michelangelo | PD-US | Pexels CC-0

The Virgin Birth

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That Jesus was conceived by a virgin mother without the agency of Joseph is clearly stated throughout this section, and is the basis for the introduction of the quotation in vv. 22–23. 

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”

In the text this not so much argued or even described, but assumed as a known fact. There may be an element of apologetic in Matthew’s stress on Joseph’s surprise, his abstention from intercourse, the angel’s explanation of Jesus’ divine origin, and the scriptural grounds for a virgin birth, due perhaps to an early form of the later Jewish charge that Jesus’ birth was illegitimate (see Brown, pp. 534–542). But the account reads primarily as if designed for a Christian readership, who wanted to know more precisely how Mary’s marriage to Joseph related to the miraculous conception of Jesus, and Christians who would find the same delight that Matthew himself found in tracing in this the detailed fulfillment of prophecy.

The suggestion that the virgin birth tradition is an imaginative creation by Matthew or his predecessors on the basis of Isaiah 7:14 is precluded not only by this assumption of it as a known fact in Matthew’s narrative, but also by its appearance in a completely different form in Luke 1:26–56; 2:5. Further, vv. 22–23, where Isaiah 7:14 is introduced, are clearly an explanatory addition to the narrative, which would flow smoothly from v. 21 to v. 24 without these verses, and not the inspiration for it. Suggestions that the tradition derives from pagan stories of gods having intercourse with women ignore both the quite different tone of such stories, and the impossibility of their being accepted in a Palestinian Jewish setting; yet the Gospel accounts are both intensely Jewish in their contents and expression.

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