This is a lovely feast and the mass in the cathedral was beautiful. I suppose the long genealogy of Jesus Christ, with all the unpronounceable names in Matthew 1:1-16. 18-23, is boring – but it makes the point that his forebears were a pretty mixed bag.

Some were, frankly, bad. But at the end of it all we come to Joseph – a man so ordinary that his ordinariness is extraordinary.