It is faithful to live in the present, in “the day that the Lord has made” (Ps. 118:24). But that does not mean forgetting the past. Remembering it provides for a more faithful life now—even when the past is painful to recall.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana wrote in 1905. It is crushing for me, as a descendent of survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide, to know that just 25 years later the Holocaust began—fueled in part by history’s ephemerality. In 1939, Adolf Hitler confirmed the cost of forgetting when he wrote of his attack on Poland, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
Matthew’s Gospel emphasizes how important it is to remember history, beginning with its 17-verse homage to Jesus’ genealogy. Scholars make clear that this rehearsal of history anchors Jesus’ messianic identity. But its purpose does not end there. Throughout the gospel, Matthew grounds the present in the prophetic past—as in this passage, when Jesus’ ministry is launched.
