It is certainly a great glory to come of an ancient and a noble race, particularly when to this high lineage is united the memory of great deeds and integrity of life; and, although there is no virtue in being born great, yet may it greatly conduce to virtue. Nobility of birth is a boon from the Supreme Giver of all good not conceded to all, in which, nevertheless, its recipients must not take pride, but of which they must strive to profit, if they wish to become themselves worthy of honor and veneration. Hence we find Holy Scripture exciting us to praise these noble and holy personages who in their generation were truly glorious.1 Now, among all who deserve to be eulogized for their noble and exalted ancestry, the first in rank, after Jesus and Mary, is, no doubt, our great Patriarch St. Joseph. It is necessary, therefore, to exhibit his high genealogy with all possible clearness, solving all the doubts connected with it which might occur to the mind, that we may thus perceive how egregiously those err who regard St. Joseph as a poor plebeian, and hold him to have been a rough and ignoble artisan.
Joseph an ignoble plebeian! There is not in the whole world a more splendid genealogy than was his; among all the monarchs of the earth there is none to compare with him. God Himself desired that he should be thus privileged amongst the kings and patriarchs of the old covenant, because the glory and splendor of his genealogy was to be wholly reflected upon Jesus and upon His Blessed Mother. The documents which record it are irrefragable, and its proofs unquestionable; for they rest, not on the testimony of men, but on that of God. God Himself, by means of His Evangelists, has been pleased accurately to enumerate all the generations which led in a direct line from Abraham to Joseph. The antiquity of a family is estimated by the uninterrupted number of ancestors it can reckon up to the remote stem from which it traces its origin. But what scion of a noble family can in this respect compete with Joseph? St. Matthew, descending from Abraham, through David, to Joseph, registers forty generations; and St. Luke, ascending from Joseph to Adam, counts as many as seventy-four.
It would, however, be of little value that a pedigree should be ancient, unless it were rendered illustrious by persons of noble rank and exalted dignity. Now, in the lineage of Joseph we find the most celebrated patriarchs, as Abraham; the greatest legislators and leaders of the people, as Zorobabel; the wisest and most renowned monarchs, as David and Solomon. And, if the greatness and the power of his ancestors went on diminishing after the return from the Babylonian captivity even to the time when the scepter of Juda was usurped by an idolatrous and foreign king, as was Herod of Ascalon, nevertheless Joseph still remained the rightful successor and heir of the kings of Juda, as being descended from the family of David. On the other hand, the scepter of Juda, according to the famous prophecy of Jacob,2 was to be taken away, and to have ceased to be at the coming of the Messias; its failure, indeed, was to be the manifest sign of the coming of the Redeemer. Now, this removal of authority from God’s chosen people occurred precisely at the period when Joseph appeared in the world, to be, as it were, the forerunner and the herald of the great Messias, who was to found a new kingdom, to wit, the Catholic Church, which was to “stand for ever”.3
But Joseph was not glorious solely because the pure blood of the kings of Juda circulated in his veins, since others of the same stock could claim a like honor, but he was specially glorious in being, so to say, the last link of the regal genealogy which through his spouse united him to the King of kings; he closed the line of the ancestors of the great Messias, and beheld under his roof Him who was the Desired of all nations, the end and consummation of the law, born of his race and the Child of his Virgin Spouse.
Thus the genealogy of Joseph was to comprise the genealogy of Mary, his spouse, and also that of Jesus. For whence do we learn the genealogy of Jesus and Mary but from that of Joseph? He may be said to be its guardian, its depositary, its vindicator, its juridical witness. The Eternal Father had decreed that Jesus should be born of the tribe of Juda, of the race of David, and that He should have no earthly father, but be born of a most pure Virgin. In order, then, to fulfill this great counsel, He ordained that Joseph, the descendant of Juda and of David, should be espoused to Mary; and that of Mary, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, should be born Jesus. The Evangelists, following the custom of the Hebrews, who were not wont to give the genealogies of women, have not expressly left us the genealogy of Mary; and, as they could not give the direct genealogy of Jesus on the paternal side, since He had no earthly father, how were they to make it known save through the genealogy of Joseph? The Old Law provided that men were to intermarry with their own tribe and kin, and the women also, particularly if they had possessions, in order that their inheritance might not pass out of the family.4 So that by the fact of knowing that Mary was the spouse of Joseph, we know also that she was of the tribe of Juda and of the race of David; and thus that Jesus, her Divine Son, was also of the same tribe and race. It is a great glory to St. Joseph that his genealogy should serve to make known to us those of Jesus and Mary, and should be, in fact, so identified with them as to be even called by the Evangelist the genealogy of Jesus: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David”.5 St. Bernardine of Siena, then, justly observes that the nobility of St. Joseph was so great that, if we may be allowed to say so, he, in a certain sense, conferred temporal nobility on God Himself in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.6
Although Mary’s genealogy is not expressly mentioned, but has been sheltered under that of her holy spouse, it is really given; and, were this fact not recognized, serious difficulties would arise from the difference between the two genealogies, as recorded by the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke. St. Matthew, who wrote his Gospel, about eight years after the death of Jesus, for the benefit of the first Christian converts from Judaism, enumerates in direct descent the generations between Abraham and Joseph, that is, from Abraham to Juda, from Juda to David, and from David, through Solomon, Roboam, Jechonias, down to the transmigration of Babylon; and then from Jechonias to Mathan, who was the father of Jacob, “who begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ”. On the other hand, St. Luke, the associate of St. Paul’s travels, who wrote his Gospel about twenty years after our Lord’s Ascension, traced the genealogy of Joseph in an upward line, giving different names to his father and many of his ancestors from those assigned by St. Matthew. This is the form in which he casts it: he says that Jesus was beginning to be about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, who was of Heli, and Heli of Mathat, and so on up to Nathan, the son of David. From him he mounts up to Juda, and from Juda to Abraham; but he does not stop there: he continues to ascend to Noe, and from him, through the antediluvian patriarchs, until he reaches Seth, “who was of Adam, who was of God”.7 Now, how is it possible that the Evangelists should contradict each other? Or, again, how would it be possible that Joseph should have two genealogies, and be at the same time the son of Jacob, according to St. Matthew, and the son of Heli, according to St. Luke? We proceed to solve this difficulty.