Today we start reading another of the four Gospel books: the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 1, we read about the birth of Jesus. We learn that his mother Mary is a human, but that she conceived not from a man, as is the case for all of us with our mother and our father. Rather, the Holy Spirit came upon her in a very special way. This is why Jesus is one hundred percent human yet also one hundred percent God. This is difficult to understand, but that should not trouble us. The Trinity is a miracle that we can never fully comprehend. We also learn in this chapter that Mary remained a virgin when she conceived Jesus. That too is a miracle, but it was prophesied hundreds of years earlier in the Old Testament (in Isaiah, chapter 7): “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). This is one of many, many Old Testament prophesies about the coming Messiah that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled. Amen.