In my nine years as a priest I have come to have a deeper devotion to St. Joseph. While he’s quite popular with those selling houses, and certainly I knew about him while I was growing up, he was not on my original list of top saints. The Blessed Mother was always a focus, as was St. Anthony (for obvious reasons), but St. Joseph always seemed to fade into the background, and was never very noticeable.
The Scriptures do not record any words from St. Joseph (perhaps wives would suggest this silence to their husbands!), but he does play an important role in caring for the Blessed Virgin Mary and the child Jesus. We hear about St. Joseph for the first time today in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: Joseph is a righteous man, and is visited by angels. He, like Joseph in the Old Testament, is given the gift of powerful dreams, by which God directs St. Joseph.
But I think it’s important to look, once more, or perhaps for some of us, for the first time, at St. Joseph and his circumstances. St. Joseph is engaged (betrothed) to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He is planning on marrying her. And then he finds out (I would guess Mary told him) that his fiancée is with child. Can you imagine, gentleman, your fiancée sitting you down, and maybe the conversation goes something like this: “Honey, we need to talk” (never a good phrase to hear if you’re in a relationship). “Dear, I need to let you know that I’m pregnant. But don’t worry! I wasn’t unfaithful to you. An angel appeared to me and told me that I am going to be God’s Mother, that the Holy Spirit will make me conceive and the child will fulfill the promises made to our father David so many years ago.” Can you imagine how you would have felt in such a circumstance?
Understandably, Joseph is a bit shaken up, and decides to divorce Mary, but, knowing that if she is found to be with child without being married, she could be stoned to death for being an adulteress, he decides that things are going to be done quietly so as not to shame her. This is part of the evidence of the fact that he was a righteous man. He must have cared for Mary, but couldn’t see past this new situation in her life.
And then, to make matters even more confusing, an angel appears to him in a dream, and tells him to take Mary as his wife, because the child truly was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And furthermore, Joseph is to name the child Jesus, Yeshua, which means in Hebrew, “God saves,” because Jesus will save the people from their sins. After this dream, Joseph obeys God, and we know the rest of the story.
It would have been easy for St. Joseph to walk away. In modern terms, we could say that all that happened was “too much.” Fiancées aren’t supposed to get pregnant before marriage. Children aren’t supposed to be conceived by the Holy Spirit. And most people don’t get dreams that come directly from God. And yet St. Joseph doesn’t walk away. He is obedient to God even in very difficult circumstances, which will become even more difficult, as Joseph and Mary have to leave Nazareth for Bethlehem, and then within two years they need to flee to Egypt, and then return to Bethlehem, and then Jesus stays behind on the family annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Following God is not always easy. There can be times where you want to walk away because things are not going the way we want them to go. But St. Joseph is our model, for men and women, to follow the will of God.
Of course, just because the will of God is difficult, does not mean that it’s self-contradictory. Sometimes people think that they are doing the will of God, when they’re really only following their own will or desires. How do we know if it’s our will or our desire or the will of God? Look to the Scriptures. In the first reading, the Prophet Isaiah spoke for the Lord, saying that “the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” So when Mary conceived without having relations with Joseph, it wasn’t the normal way to conceive, but it also wasn’t contrary to the will of God, since God himself had foretold it through Isaiah.
But, if what we think God is asking us is in accord with the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, then God will help us through, no matter how difficult things can be. It can even be that way with the Church. Over the past few years we have had some difficult times: new scandals, including even a former cardinal; misuse of donations by some bishops; even some bishops and priests teaching contrary to the teachings of the Church. We might be tempted to walk away, but St. Joseph encourages us to seek God’s will even in the midst of difficulties.
As we finish out these last days of Advent, may St. Joseph guide us to be faithful to God, no matter how difficult or how confusing. And may we, like St. Joseph, have the courage to care for Jesus in our daily lives by being obedient to God’s will.
