From Our Family Broken Stories, God Brings Life

December 17, 2025 – Second Day of Misa de Aguinaldo

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121725.cfm)

Today, very early this morning, we come again to the altar carrying our lives, our tired bodies, and our stories. We come as families. We come as sons and daughters. We come as people shaped by where we came from. And that is why the readings today speak deeply to our hearts. They speak about family, about history, and about how God works quietly but faithfully within our human family stories.

When I was still a college seminarian, I remember one evening seeing my late father seated quietly at a table. He was carefully writing names in a record book. The names were unfamiliar to me. At first, I honestly thought it was a list of “utang” to be collected. So I asked Papa what was it about. My father smiled and told me he was tracing our family tree. He was writing down the names of our relatives, our great-grandparents, as far back as he could remember. He wanted to keep a record of our family history.

Since our family is originally from Cebu, and I also studied there, my father would often tell me, “When you are there, visit this family, visit that family.” But to be honest, I was not excited about doing that. I was quite indifferent. I did not see the importance of reconnecting with relatives. But to my father, knowing our past mattered. He would tell me funny stories about our family, but also painful ones. Stories of shame, of mistakes and broken relationships. For him, our family history was not something to hide. It was something to remember.

That simple experience helps us understand today’s readings. On this Second Day of Misa de Aguinaldo, we are invited to reflect on the gift of our family and the healing of our family history.

Each of us is a product of a long and complex family story. Yet, we are not chained or doomed by the past. But we are shaped by it. Our families carry stories of joy and sorrow, success and failure, faithfulness and sin. Our family history is part of who we are. It forms our identity. That is why it is important to be in touch with it, not to glorify it, but to see how God has been present in our family stories.

And so, let us discover the invitations of the Lord through our readings today.

The first reading from the Book of Genesis shows Jacob calling his sons and blessing them. Among them was Judah. And Judah was not the most perfect son. Yet, from him kings would come from like King David. And from that same line would come Jesus. This blessing already points us to God’s plan unfolding through a human family.

When we look closely, the family of Jacob was also far from perfect. And the Gospel today does not hide that. Matthew presents the genealogy of Jesus, a long list of names, a family tree filled with broken people and sinful stories. There was Judah, who sold his brother Joseph. There was David, who committed grave sins of adultery with Batsheba and the murder of her husband. There was Rahab, a prostitute. There were kings who practiced idolatry. King Ahaz and his grandson, King Manasseh burned their sons as sacrifices to the pagan gods. Indeed, this is not a clean or ideal family history. Yet, God did not abandon them.

Matthew carefully lists forty-two generations, arranged in three sets of fourteen. In Jewish tradition, seven is the number of completeness. Fourteen is double seven. And repeating it three times is Matthew’s way of saying this that God is at work, perfectly and faithfully, even in imperfect human history. God writes straight even on crooked lines.

The genealogy of Jesus is God’s message to us. God chose to enter human history not through a perfect family, but through a wounded one. Jesus was born into a family with a complicated past. This tells us something very important. God does not wait for us to become perfect before He comes to us. He enters our mess. He walks with us through our sins and failures. God indeed embraces our humanity fully.

This is good news for us. Because when we look at our own families, many of us carry wounds while others have deeper and more painful wounds in the family. For certain, some carry trauma from violence or abuse. Some families are divided because of inheritance and money left by their parents. Some are struggling every day because of poverty. Others carry shame, guilt, or deep resentment passed on from one generation to another. And these are real, yet, God also sees them.

Today, God invites us not to deny these realities, but to bring them to Him. Just as God worked patiently through the broken history of Joseph’s family where Jesus was born, God continues to work in our families today. He brings healing where there is pain. God brings reconciliation where there is division. And God brings hope where there is shame and discouragement.

As Christmas draws near, God invites us to allow Him to be present again in our family stories. Not only in the happy moments, but especially in the wounded ones that we have. When we allow God to enter there, healing also begins. Slowly, quietly, but truly.

As we continue this Misa de Aguinaldo, let us carry our families in our prayers. Let us trust that God has not abandoned our story. Now, I leave you two simple invitations as your takeaways.

First, take time to pray for your family history. Name before God, the good and the painful, and ask for healing.

Second, choose one simple act of reconciliation in your family. This can be through a message, a visit or to start a conversation that heals. Let God begin something new in your families.

May this Misa de Gallo lead us to a Christmas filled not only with lights and songs, but with healed hearts and grateful families. Ok lang? Sana All.