Youtube Interviews
In this episode of Roadmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by Father Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, who delves into the concept of the Jesse Tree as an advent custom.
Father Kirby explains that the Jesse Tree is an engaging and creative way to explore Jesus’ genealogy. By breaking down the lineage, it becomes more accessible, particularly for children.
Fr. Kirby emphasizes that even Jesus’ family had its share of dysfunctional characters, offering hope to those experiencing brokenness or difficulty within their own families.
Throughout the conversation, the importance of knowing the sacred story and ancestry of Jesus is emphasized.
Tune in to this enlightening episode of Roadmap to Heaven and prepare to deepen your understanding of the Jesse Tree and its significance during Advent.
Adam Wright:
Joining us all the way from Indian Land, South Carolina, Our Lady of Grace parish is Father Jeffrey Kirby. Father, it’s good to have you back with us on Roadmap to Heaven today.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Thank you, Adam. Good to be on the show.
Adam Wright:
Now the last time we spoke, I mentioned that the decorations are slowly starting to go up around the Wright house and one of the ones that’s now making its way up but not fully decorated, is our Christmas tree. And full disclosure, we’re a fake tree family because we have really bad allergies. One of the customs we love is as our friends and relatives and loved ones send us Christmas cards, we punch holes in them, and we tie a little ribbon around the card and hang that from the tree so that as we get closer and closer to Christmas, our home becomes decorated with the love and the tidings of our friends. But that’s not the tree we’re here to talk about today. We’re here to talk about the Jesse tree, which is a tree I actually don’t know much about other than from the scripture, “a shoot shall spring forth from Jesse”. So, Father, what’s going on here today?
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
And actually, Adam, your lead in actually really does fit very well with the Jesse tree, because as you described how family and friends bring ornaments and you place them on your tree and so on, and so your eventual Christmas tree is is very much surrounded by the love of family and friends, that is very much related to the Jesse Tree. The Jesse Tree is a great advent custom. It used to be very popular, it it’s kind of waned. I’m trying to bring it back. I see there’s some really great resources for young families about the Jesse Tree from some of our Catholic publishers. And I want to promote that because the Jesse tree is basically a creative way of giving the genealogy of Jesus. Now we’ve all been there where you know, the genealogy is read, and “So and so is the father, so and so is the father, so and so is the father” and it’s like, okay can we hurry this up? You know? And of course, I think it’s interesting that the church gives us that reading for the first Mass of Christmas, which just shows that sometimes it’s good to have pastors involved in these liturgical decisions, because that’s usually the Mass where all the kids are. Right? You know? And we have this extensive genealogy of Jesus. You know?
But that genealogy is very important, and of course it shows us that when the anointed Savior came to us, when the Lord was brought to us, He came from a mother, from a family, that He had grandparents and great grandparents, and he would have heard Joseph and Mary talk about His forebears and so on. That He was fully human. And when I think about it in terms of the adult version is when we look at the genealogy, we see that Jesus had some really interesting characters in his genealogy, some real scoundrels, right? And public sinners. Which is interesting because even Jesus’s family was dysfunctional. So that should give us hope, right? Where we can look at our families and say, “Oh, man, there’s so much brokenness or so much difficulty.” And yet, we look at the Lord’s genealogy and we see it. So the Jesse tree is a way of breaking down the genealogy. It makes it more engaging, children friendly, approachable for children to understand. It just tells the story of Jesus from His lineage.
Adam Wright:
So what are some of the components of this? Because I think of the advent wreath, we have the candles on the table. We light the candles each night, our family likes to light them at suppertime. We also have a little wooden one that we give to the youngest kids, especially when they were preschoolers. Like, here, you can use this because we’re not giving you fire. But what are some of the things that we would be putting on this Jesse tree then to recall the lineage?
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Yeah. So you can imagine as you mentioned, in your own family about receiving these ornaments from family and friends. Now I will say, there are variations to the Jesse Tree, and I’ll say to any young family who’s listening, if you have one version and you want to simplify, that’s great. If you have never done the Jesse Tree just to realize that there are different ways. So if you come across one, you that seems really complicated, then there are other variations. Again, some really creative people have broken down even the Jesse Tree to make it more approachable.
Basically, you can imagine making an ornament for Jesus’s genealogy. And then throughout the season of Advent, the story is told. So you can imagine, we talk about David and and his father, Jesse. So the root of Jesse, and then we describe how Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, and we describe Judah, and so on. So it’s basically the retelling, and you can place the little ornaments on the Jesse Tree where eventually you’re creating the whole genealogy of the Lord, so that by the time you get to Christmas, the genealogy is completed. So that’s the whole idea. And I’ve seen some very thorough Jesse Trees. Where it’s like, wow okay. And I’ve seen some very broader traditions of the Jesse Tree.
And again, whatever works for a family and sometimes maybe you go broader with young children and then more specific with older children and so on, so be it. But I think that as long as the story is being told, because I think it’s regrettable, Adam, when we have Christian children who can tell us all the reindeer of Santa Claus but they don’t know Bethlehem, Judah, David, Gabriel. They don’t know the basic lineage or the basic story from which the Lord Jesus came to us. And I think we can do better with that. And the Jesse tree can be a part of that for a young family, or for a Christian family in general.
Adam Wright:
I think that’s a fantastic idea. Now, Father, one of the things that so often, we will say things like we all trace our lineage back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. But when we talk about the lineage of our Lord going back to David in that Davidic line, and that actually, if I remember correctly, doesn’t that line continue through to Saint Joseph? So this is not just some abstract pie in the sky, oh, we’re all children of Abraham. Well, no, Joseph’s line, you can actually trace back to David.
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Absolutely. Very much. Not to confuse any listeners, but we’re not exactly sure of the tribal identity of Our Lady. We are pretty sure that she was of Judah. It’s possible that she was of the tribe of Levi. But in either case, in terms of Our Lady, the lineage of tribal identity would have gone to a son from his father. And let me clarify that in the Jewish tradition, adoption was not prominent. Adoption was very popular in Roman society, but not in Judaism. In the Jewish culture, when a man claimed a child on the eighth day by naming him, that child was his son. That’s it. There was no foster father, adopted father, we use these terms theologically in order to emphasize that God was our Lord’s father, that Joseph never had relations with Our Lady, but these terms really didn’t exist in Jewish culture. And I stress that because by the law of Moses, Jesus was the son of Joseph. Joseph was, as you’re saying, Adam, a direct descendant of David. In fact, you can look at the lineage and give it to us point by point by point by point by point. So when Joseph names Jesus on the eighth day, when the Lord’s being circumcised, that’s it. His lineage is the tribe of David. Now He may have gotten that from both parents, but from the law of Moses, it was from His father. It had to come from the father. We say the child received the identity from Abraham through the mother, but identity of the tribe through the father, and there are practical reasons for that. But yes, we can look at it, and Joseph was very much a son of David, as was the Lord Jesus.
Adam Wright:
Out in the middle of the desert, different desert though, out in Tonopah Arizona, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration have a monastery. Our Lady of the Solitude monastery, and in the sanctuary, the statue of Saint Joseph is actually wearing a crown. We asked them about that, and they said, “That’s because his lineage traces back to King David and to Jesse. So we decided we’re commissioning the statue, we can give him a crown.” I’m not going to argue with them on that.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
And I love that. That’s great.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. Well, this is really insightful and maybe, Father, the lesson for us in addition to doing the Jesse Tree custom at home and if nothing else, look it up online and find what works for you and your family, it’s an invitation to sit down with that lineage before Christmas Eve Mass and actually read that together as a family and see that lineage going back.
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Amen. Absolutely. I want to really encourage that, so that if children have the popular stories of Christmas, so be it. But more importantly, they know the sacred story of the background and descendance of our Lord. So, absolutely.
Adam Wright:
Beautiful. Father, could I ask you to close our time together with a prayer?
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of your Son, true son of Jesse, true son of David. We ask that you continue to work out your salvation in the midst of the human family. We seek you. We desire to do your will. May you bless us, and lift us up. We ask these and all good things through Christ our Lord. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father Kirby, we want to thank you for breaking open the Jesse tree tradition for us today here on Roadmap to Heaven. We wish you and all of your parishioners at our Lady of Grace a blessed Advent.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Alright. Thank you, Adam. God bless you.
Adam Wright:
Joining us all the way from Indian Land, South Carolina, Our Lady of Grace parish is Father Jeffrey Kirby. Father, it’s good to have you back with us on Roadmap to Heaven today.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Thank you, Adam. Good to be on the show.
Adam Wright:
Now the last time we spoke, I mentioned that the decorations are slowly starting to go up around the Wright house and one of the ones that’s now making its way up but not fully decorated, is our Christmas tree. And full disclosure, we’re a fake tree family because we have really bad allergies. One of the customs we love is as our friends and relatives and loved ones send us Christmas cards, we punch holes in them, and we tie a little ribbon around the card and hang that from the tree so that as we get closer and closer to Christmas, our home becomes decorated with the love and the tidings of our friends. But that’s not the tree we’re here to talk about today. We’re here to talk about the Jesse tree, which is a tree I actually don’t know much about other than from the scripture, “a shoot shall spring forth from Jesse”. So, Father, what’s going on here today?
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
And actually, Adam, your lead in actually really does fit very well with the Jesse tree, because as you described how family and friends bring ornaments and you place them on your tree and so on, and so your eventual Christmas tree is is very much surrounded by the love of family and friends, that is very much related to the Jesse Tree. The Jesse Tree is a great advent custom. It used to be very popular, it it’s kind of waned. I’m trying to bring it back. I see there’s some really great resources for young families about the Jesse Tree from some of our Catholic publishers. And I want to promote that because the Jesse tree is basically a creative way of giving the genealogy of Jesus. Now we’ve all been there where you know, the genealogy is read, and “So and so is the father, so and so is the father, so and so is the father” and it’s like, okay can we hurry this up? You know? And of course, I think it’s interesting that the church gives us that reading for the first Mass of Christmas, which just shows that sometimes it’s good to have pastors involved in these liturgical decisions, because that’s usually the Mass where all the kids are. Right? You know? And we have this extensive genealogy of Jesus. You know?
But that genealogy is very important, and of course it shows us that when the anointed Savior came to us, when the Lord was brought to us, He came from a mother, from a family, that He had grandparents and great grandparents, and he would have heard Joseph and Mary talk about His forebears and so on. That He was fully human. And when I think about it in terms of the adult version is when we look at the genealogy, we see that Jesus had some really interesting characters in his genealogy, some real scoundrels, right? And public sinners. Which is interesting because even Jesus’s family was dysfunctional. So that should give us hope, right? Where we can look at our families and say, “Oh, man, there’s so much brokenness or so much difficulty.” And yet, we look at the Lord’s genealogy and we see it. So the Jesse tree is a way of breaking down the genealogy. It makes it more engaging, children friendly, approachable for children to understand. It just tells the story of Jesus from His lineage.
Adam Wright:
So what are some of the components of this? Because I think of the advent wreath, we have the candles on the table. We light the candles each night, our family likes to light them at suppertime. We also have a little wooden one that we give to the youngest kids, especially when they were preschoolers. Like, here, you can use this because we’re not giving you fire. But what are some of the things that we would be putting on this Jesse tree then to recall the lineage?
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Yeah. So you can imagine as you mentioned, in your own family about receiving these ornaments from family and friends. Now I will say, there are variations to the Jesse Tree, and I’ll say to any young family who’s listening, if you have one version and you want to simplify, that’s great. If you have never done the Jesse Tree just to realize that there are different ways. So if you come across one, you that seems really complicated, then there are other variations. Again, some really creative people have broken down even the Jesse Tree to make it more approachable.
Basically, you can imagine making an ornament for Jesus’s genealogy. And then throughout the season of Advent, the story is told. So you can imagine, we talk about David and and his father, Jesse. So the root of Jesse, and then we describe how Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, and we describe Judah, and so on. So it’s basically the retelling, and you can place the little ornaments on the Jesse Tree where eventually you’re creating the whole genealogy of the Lord, so that by the time you get to Christmas, the genealogy is completed. So that’s the whole idea. And I’ve seen some very thorough Jesse Trees. Where it’s like, wow okay. And I’ve seen some very broader traditions of the Jesse Tree.
And again, whatever works for a family and sometimes maybe you go broader with young children and then more specific with older children and so on, so be it. But I think that as long as the story is being told, because I think it’s regrettable, Adam, when we have Christian children who can tell us all the reindeer of Santa Claus but they don’t know Bethlehem, Judah, David, Gabriel. They don’t know the basic lineage or the basic story from which the Lord Jesus came to us. And I think we can do better with that. And the Jesse tree can be a part of that for a young family, or for a Christian family in general.
Adam Wright:
I think that’s a fantastic idea. Now, Father, one of the things that so often, we will say things like we all trace our lineage back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. But when we talk about the lineage of our Lord going back to David in that Davidic line, and that actually, if I remember correctly, doesn’t that line continue through to Saint Joseph? So this is not just some abstract pie in the sky, oh, we’re all children of Abraham. Well, no, Joseph’s line, you can actually trace back to David.
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Absolutely. Very much. Not to confuse any listeners, but we’re not exactly sure of the tribal identity of Our Lady. We are pretty sure that she was of Judah. It’s possible that she was of the tribe of Levi. But in either case, in terms of Our Lady, the lineage of tribal identity would have gone to a son from his father. And let me clarify that in the Jewish tradition, adoption was not prominent. Adoption was very popular in Roman society, but not in Judaism. In the Jewish culture, when a man claimed a child on the eighth day by naming him, that child was his son. That’s it. There was no foster father, adopted father, we use these terms theologically in order to emphasize that God was our Lord’s father, that Joseph never had relations with Our Lady, but these terms really didn’t exist in Jewish culture. And I stress that because by the law of Moses, Jesus was the son of Joseph. Joseph was, as you’re saying, Adam, a direct descendant of David. In fact, you can look at the lineage and give it to us point by point by point by point by point. So when Joseph names Jesus on the eighth day, when the Lord’s being circumcised, that’s it. His lineage is the tribe of David. Now He may have gotten that from both parents, but from the law of Moses, it was from His father. It had to come from the father. We say the child received the identity from Abraham through the mother, but identity of the tribe through the father, and there are practical reasons for that. But yes, we can look at it, and Joseph was very much a son of David, as was the Lord Jesus.
Adam Wright:
Out in the middle of the desert, different desert though, out in Tonopah Arizona, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration have a monastery. Our Lady of the Solitude monastery, and in the sanctuary, the statue of Saint Joseph is actually wearing a crown. We asked them about that, and they said, “That’s because his lineage traces back to King David and to Jesse. So we decided we’re commissioning the statue, we can give him a crown.” I’m not going to argue with them on that.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
And I love that. That’s great.
Adam Wright:
Yeah. Well, this is really insightful and maybe, Father, the lesson for us in addition to doing the Jesse Tree custom at home and if nothing else, look it up online and find what works for you and your family, it’s an invitation to sit down with that lineage before Christmas Eve Mass and actually read that together as a family and see that lineage going back.
Fr. Jeff Kirby:
Amen. Absolutely. I want to really encourage that, so that if children have the popular stories of Christmas, so be it. But more importantly, they know the sacred story of the background and descendance of our Lord. So, absolutely.
Adam Wright:
Beautiful. Father, could I ask you to close our time together with a prayer?
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of your Son, true son of Jesse, true son of David. We ask that you continue to work out your salvation in the midst of the human family. We seek you. We desire to do your will. May you bless us, and lift us up. We ask these and all good things through Christ our Lord. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Adam Wright:
Well, Father Kirby, we want to thank you for breaking open the Jesse tree tradition for us today here on Roadmap to Heaven. We wish you and all of your parishioners at our Lady of Grace a blessed Advent.
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby:
Alright. Thank you, Adam. God bless you.
In this episode of Roadmap to Heaven, host Adam Wright is joined by Father Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, who delves into the concept of the Jesse Tree as an advent custom.
Father Kirby explains that the Jesse Tree is an engaging and creative way to explore Jesus’ genealogy. By breaking down the lineage, it becomes more accessible, particularly for children.
Fr. Kirby emphasizes that even Jesus’ family had its share of dysfunctional characters, offering hope to those experiencing brokenness or difficulty within their own families.
Throughout the conversation, the importance of knowing the sacred story and ancestry of Jesus is emphasized.
Tune in to this enlightening episode of Roadmap to Heaven and prepare to deepen your understanding of the Jesse Tree and its significance during Advent.
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