Jesus the Emmanuel

Gospel Reflection for December 21, 2025, the Fourth Sunday of Advent - Matthew 1:18-24

Now the generation of Christ was in this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost.

Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, was minded to put her away privately.

But while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost.

And she shall bring forth a son: and thou shalt call his name JESUS. For he shall save his people from their sins.

Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying:

Behold a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

And Joseph rising up from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife. (Matthew 1:18-24 DRA)

The readings for this final Sunday of Advent are some of the most revealing in all of Scripture. There are many questions that can be asked of this Gospel reading, including whether Our Lady was the wife of St. Joseph or merely ‘betrothed’ in a modern, promissory sense (she was already his wife, in a sense), or why the angel communicated to St. Joseph in a dream, or why the Hebrew version of the prophecy of Isaias seems to differ from its quotation by St. Matthew (the Septuagint is actually more authentic than the Masoretic text, here and elsewhere). But for this reflection, I would like to focus on one word of the prophecy in particular: Emmanuel.

The question that immediately comes to mind when reading or hearing this passage is: if the prophecy said that His name would be Emmanuel, then why did the angel say that His name should be Jesus? Why didn’t Our Lady and St. Joseph simply name Him Emmanuel?

There is a very important reason for this, related both to biblical usage and to a deeper theological significance, which St. John Chrysostom explains for us:

As it is the manner of Scripture to convey a knowledge of events under the form of a name, so here, They shall call His name Emmanuel, means nothing else than, They shall see God among men. Whence he says not, ‘Thou shalt call,’ but, They shall call. (Catena Aurea)

Emmanuel, therefore, is not simply a given name, as was Jesus (shared by several figures in the Old Testament, such as Joshua and Jesus ben Sira), but an interpretation of events and a title. For this reason, as Chrysostom says, Emmanuel is not simply what His parents would call him, but what ‘they,’ i.e. all people of the world, shall call Him: God with us. The Person incarnate in the womb of the Virgin is thus revealed to be, not a human person, but the definitive Presence, the true tabernacle and ultimate Temple of the Son of God, the divine Person who is consubstantial with the Father, begotten of Him from all eternity in the life of the Trinity and sent by Him on the mission of salvation, whose conception is effected by the power of the Holy Ghost and whose coming on Earth fulfills not only all the prophecies of Scripture but every desire of the human heart: for the Author of the story has entered His world and lives among His characters, to save us from our sins and be reconciled with us. This is the hope of history whose fulfillment is signified by this one great epithet: Emmanuel. As Remigius writes,

In this name are conveyed at once the two substances, the Divinity and Humanity in the one Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who before all time was begot in an unspeakable manner by God the Father, the same in the end of time was made Emmanuel, that is, God with us, of a Virgin Mother. This God with us may be understood in this way. He was made with us, passible, mortal, and in all things like unto us without sin; or because our frail substance which He took on Him, He joined in one Person to His Divine substance. (Catena Aurea)

Why was Christ crucified? Many tons of ink have been spilled over this question, but the answer is quite simple: because He claimed to be God. This ‘Messianic secret’ was not quite so secret to the Jews of His time, who recognized very clearly that His fulfillment of prophecy was not simply that of an earthly Messiah but of the Emmanuel, of God made man and man deified in union with God. This truth, which is so obvious in Isaias’s prophecy and many others in the Old Testament, was intolerable to most of His contemporaries, and so, as He knew they would, they accused Him of blasphemy as though He were a mere man claiming divinity.

But indeed, this is why He came, since, to use St. Athanasius’s famous formula, “God became man so that man might become God.” This theosis or divinization is the true purpose of Creation and the meaning of life, that which the angels and saints already enjoy at this very moment and which is being worked in us through the power of grace, conforming us more perfectly to the likeness of Christ and elevating us beyond the limitations, not only of sin, but of human nature, into true and complete union with God. Christ’s humanity enjoyed this unsurpassable unity from conception and He makes it available to us through the Sacraments of the Church and the life of charity. So, while Christ is the prototypical and true Emmanuel, every person is created by God to become an Emmanuel by participation in Christ, a sacrament of God in Creation.

What was once unimaginable has been made possible in Christ, and it is this wondrous joy and miraculous beauty that we celebrate at Christmas and look forward to its completion in the End Times during Advent. May we remember and never cease to long and to pray for this gift, to keep Christmas in our hearts every day of the year!

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!

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