Shealtiel and Abiud are you serious!!!!

      I can finally check off the experience of proclaiming the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew off my list. Today’s reading (which can be found here Matthew 1:1-17) describes in detail how Jesus is a descendant of Abraham. It is a beautiful reading, but very challenging when you start to look at some of the names like Shealtiel and Abiud and realize that you are supposed to pronounce them. Luckily for me the USCCB has the daily reading also on audio, so I was able to listen to the Gospel a couple of times. But, in reality all what this did was let me know that I am saying these names wrong. Now, I know that I am not perfect (big shocker here), but neither were all the people in the line of descendents from Abraham to Jesus (like Boaz) and that God is aware of this, and this is the reason why he sent down his Son for us, because we are fallen people who need God to raise us up. So, if you need to figure out that you are not perfect I would recommend that you take a look at the Gospel for today, and see if you can pronounce all of these names (and even if you can, you still are not perfect, because I’m sure there is something that you struggle at).