Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
My maternal grandmother was born on September 8, 1900, in Bessemer, Michigan, an Upper Peninsula town near the Wisconsin 
border where almost all the men, including her father, worked at either the iron mine or in logging. He had come to the United States nine years earlier from Poland, where the family he left behind included a sister who was a nun. His given name was Cajetan because he was born on the Italian saint’s feast day (August 7) but in the United States, everyone called him John. It was easier. My grandmother’s mother had arrived from Poland the year before, working as a domestic, and was named Johanna because her birthday was close to the feast day at that time for John Cantius, a Polish saint, priest, and theologian.
Obviously, there was no debate what to name their first child when she arrived on September 8—Mary. It is, after all, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now, you may be interested in little of this or of any of the stories, some true, some not, of these ancestors or those of the man Mary would marry. His lines have been traced back to fifteenth century England. But they are stories about the people who helped make me who I am, people who passed down a Christian faith through the centuries. They lift me up.
You might keep that in mind in considering the long form of today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 1:1-16), the one with dozens of names, many difficult to pronounce. Some were kings; some were psalmists; some were scandalous in one way or another; all were flawed. They were people who passed down the promise of the coming of Messiah, a promise that helped Joseph with his own awesome yes to the Lord’s angel who advised him not to be afraid to take Mary into his home… and that this baby would “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Their stories lifted Joseph up.
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