Go to Joseph (Advent.4.A)

 

Whether it’s a Shakespeare play or a Broadway musical, the first page of a script or program always lists the cast of characters. Today’s liturgy presents a cast of three: Mary, Joseph, and an Angel. We will wait a week for Jesus to enter the Christmas drama.

I thought we might shine the spotlight today on St. Joseph, who doesn’t always get the attention he deserves. He appeared at the Christmas concert put on by St. Anthony’s School on Thursday, played very well by a youngster from junior kindergarten. But I heard about another school’s Christmas pageant where the boy who was to play St. Joseph took ill.

They didn’t replace him—and nobody missed him!

We don’t want that to happen as we reflect on Joseph’s role in the Christmas story. St. Matthew, whose Gospel is the only source of our information, tells us just how important he is—not just historically but for us today.

The first thing Joseph does is to conquer his fears. The Annunciation to Mary, which we hear about from St. Luke, is quite different. When the angel tells her “Do not be afraid,” he is simply reassuring her, telling her not to be afraid of him. After all, who wouldn’t be unnerved by such a strange encounter with a heavenly visitor?

But in today’s Gospel, Joseph is already in distress when the angel appears in his dream. His fiancée is pregnant, and he is not the father. In this difficult situation, the angel tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. God is at work!

Sometimes we must conquer our human fears before we can do what God calls us to do. We can have no better model of that than St. Joseph.

That’s not all we should imitate. Joseph is obedient to God. When he wakes up, he did as the angel commanded; he didn’t overthink or argue but put his trust in the word that was spoken to him.

In our second reading today, St. Paul gives us a nice phrase to describe Joseph’s reaction to his call: “the obedience of faith.”

St. Joseph’s obedience was formed by faith. In the passage we’ve just heard, Matthew quotes our first reading from the prophet Isaiah.  This is typical in his Gospel, since he wrote for Jewish Christians and often quotes the Old Testament to show how its prophecies are fulfilled in Christ. I wonder if St. Joseph made the connection? While we will never know, as a devout Jew he would have studied Isaiah’s text. It’s worth thinking about—the more we know our Bible the easier it is to see God at work.

The future foster father of Jesus Christ was not only an obedient and faithful man—he was a man of commitment. Even when he thought it would be necessary to dismiss Mary, he resolves to do so quietly as a mark of the past commitment to her that he wished to honour.

Commitment is in short supply nowadays, which may be one of the reasons for the falling marriage rate, and high rate of divorce, not to mention priests and religious abandoning their vows and public figures their responsibilities.

“Joseph could have walked away from his commitment to Mary and Jesus, even after this dream, but he didn’t. Christmas is a good time to renew our commitment to our families, our vocations, our work, and our Church.”

“Maturity is defined,” one of my favourite homilists says, “not by the number of options we keep open but by the commitments we keep even when it isn’t easy.”

Joseph “is a model of adult commitment which our culture desperately needs and a reminder to us to renew those commitments that shape our life and our soul.” (Captured Fire: the Sunday Homilies—Cycle A, Rev. S. Joseph Krempa.)

I should mention that these thoughts come only from this morning’s Gospel. St. John Paul, in his letter on St. Joseph titled “Guardian of the Redeemer” lists many other ways in which St. Joseph can guide us: as guardian of the mystery of God; as a just man—a husband; a worker; and a model of devotion and the inner life.

Speaking of keeping commitments, I want to keep my recent promise to provide a one-sentence summary of my Sunday homilies. I’ll even give it to you in Latin: Ite ad Joseph. “Go to Joseph.”

These words of Pharaoh to the Egyptians in the book of Genesis are about a different Joseph, but they are inscribed at the base of the statue of St. Joseph in front of St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, founded by St. André Bessette, who obtained many miraculous healings through the intercession of St. Joseph.

By declaring St. Joseph as its universal patron, the Church tells us to go to St. Joseph in our times of need, just as Pharaoh told the hungry to go to that other Joseph. 

Although I’ve left the Blessed Mother aside for now—she will take center stage at Christmas—let’s finish by recalling that her “yes” to the angel came before St. Joseph’s obedience to another angel.

Advent is the season when we too say “yes”—yes to the gift of Christ in our hearts, yes to the plan of God for our lives. Each of us also has our part to play in the joyful drama of Christmas.