Saturday, March 19, 2022

Saint Joseph

 

Your father and I were looking for you in anguish, Mary says to Jesus in the temple. The Gospel passage repeats four times that Mary and Joseph were the parents of Jesus, with Our Lady herself here referring to her husband specifically as your father. In intimate union with his wife Mary, St Joseph “loved Jesus with a father’s heart”, as Pope Francis affirms in the rich Apostolic Letter Patris corde that he wrote about the holy carpenter from Nazareth. The Pope highlights the paternal mission of St Joseph. Although according to the Gospels, Joseph had only the status of a legal father, nevertheless he took his paternal vocation as divine grace and mandate, and so “he [truly] loved Jesus with a father’s heart”. Such intensity of love and commitment of heart wholly transcend the limits of the law. Joseph was, in fact, Jesus’ human father because of his tender love, his attentive solicitude, and his immense attachment to Jesus in every aspect of his life. Clearly, this is a case where the New Covenant’s bonds of heart and spirit fulfill and transcend the Old Covenant’s bonds of mere flesh. The anxiety with which Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus was the fruit of this solicitude and involved both concern and anguish at the absence of Jesus, the Son they jointly loved so dearly.

Pope Francis highlights Joseph’s gift of discretion. We see that Joseph’s is a presence that, while remaining in the background, yet is always very active and efficient. Neither in today’s gospel nor anywhere else do we have words directly attributed to Joseph by Scripture; only Mary reproaches Jesus and expresses the pain that she and her husband have gone through. Joseph, too, has suffered, and has supported Mary by sharing in her distressing search; yet Joseph lives out his own anxiety for Jesus wordlessly, in contemplative silence. This discretion, revealing a presence that is intensely aware yet also self-effacing, leads us to appreciate all those people in the world who in daily life, hidden from public view, nevertheless “play a unique leading role in the history of salvation. Many unassuming persons here come to mind, who help others in totally hidden ways, sometimes even at the risk of their own lives. For instance, the man just last week in Ukraine who, after seeing his own fleeing family safely across a bridge in the city of Mariupol, went back to see whom else he could help and was instantly killed by a missile…

Indeed, in the midst of the chaos that surrounds us, we should be in awe of so many people working quietly in the background, like St Joseph, for the good of others and for reconciliation and peace. This occurs at all levels, from health workers on their graveyard shifts to volunteers on international peace-keeping missions. St Joseph should be the patron of all those who work discreetly, from the sidelines of every drama, and thus contribute anonymously to the welfare of all. These are the Joseph presences in our world, manifesting God’s own discreet yet insistent and efficient manner of healing the ills of humanity.

Out of fidelity to God’s plan, St Joseph converts his personal human project of forming a family with Mary into an offering of himself. He thus places himself at the service of Jesus, God’s own beloved Son, and the mission that the eternal Father has entrusted to Jesus. Joseph sacrifices his initial life plan to follow the greater vocation entrusted to him. His fatherly heart must gradually learn how to love more radically and give itself away more thoroughly. In this way, Joseph grows in the obedience of faith. God’s plan of salvation somehow needed to unfold in the world precisely through the distress Joseph experienced in Jesus’ infancy (think of the flight into Egypt!) and through his anguish at losing Jesus as an adolescent, to name but two outstanding moments in the Holy Family’s life.

St Joseph thus “teaches us that having faith in God also includes believing that God can act even through our fears, our frailties, and weaknesses. And he also teaches us that in the midst of the storms of life we should not be afraid to hand over the helm of our boat to God”. Although many times we would like to have everything under control, God always has a wider view than ours and knows what is best for our good. That is why we must have trust in him, just as Joseph did, without laying down conditions.

Do not be afraid: these are the words of God’s messenger to Joseph when announcing his mission. The command Do not be afraid! applies also to us and gives us the hope-filled strength to accept all the events of life with courage, and to work for the common good in all the critical and painful situations that life presents to us. The existential anxiety caused by any stressful situation can be transformed, by grace and our cooperation, into a new opportunity. The anguish that Joseph and Mary experienced when they lost Jesus was transformed on the third day into a kind of Easter anticipation, once they had seen Jesus filled with the life and wisdom that came to him from being in the house of his heavenly Father fulfilling his mission. (Three days is an unimaginable eternity to search for a lost child. I know it well because my wife and I once lost our daughter at a mall for no more than 20 minutes and we thought we’d lose our minds. And she was not 12 but only 3 years old!)

From being the guardian of the child Jesus and his Mother Mary, St Joseph has become the guardian and patron of the Universal Church, which is “the extension of the Body of Christ in history”. May St Joseph intercede for the Church, all her members, and the whole family of humanity in this convulsed world of ours, so full of political strife at home and abroad, and of devastating wars and crises of faith. May Joseph teach us, through his discretion and hidden strength, to trust in God and to work for the building up of the Kingdom of God.

The sacrament of the Eucharist we are celebrating makes the whole saving Mystery of Christ present among us and in the world. Let us welcome this transforming Mystery with an ardent heart, as Joseph welcomed Jesus.    Reflection by Father Simeon.