by Fr. Tommy Lane
We are all busy preparing for Christmas. A lot of preparation had to be made for the first Christmas also by Mary and Joseph. They had to prepare by saying “Yes” to God’s plan for the birth of Jesus. Today our Gospel focuses on the preparation made by Joseph for that first Christmas (Matt 1:18-24).
It was a most difficult preparation for him. At that time, Jewish people were betrothed one year before they got married. When a couple were betrothed to each other one year before marriage, they were then legally united but did not live together. A year later, the wedding ceremony took place and then the couple came to live together. During the year before marriage after they had been betrothed, Joseph learned that Mary was pregnant. What suffering he must have endured. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary asking her to be the mother of Jesus and she said, “Yes.” Joseph too, like Mary, received a visit from an angel asking him to agree to God’s plan for Mary. The angel reassured him saying that the Holy Spirit was the father of Mary’s child. Our Gospel today says, “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home.” (Matt 1:24) Just as Mary said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me”, Joseph also did likewise when he obeyed the angel. Elizabeth said of Mary, “blessed is she who believed the promise made her by the Lord” (Luke 1:45) and the same could also be said of Joseph: “blessed is he who believed the promise made him by the Lord.” What consequences the actions of one couple, Adam and Eve, had at the beginning of the Old Testament and what consequences the actions of another couple, Mary and Joseph, had the beginning of the New Testament. Every time you say “no” to sin and “yes” to grace, you are affecting many others. What consequences our actions can have on thousands and millions of others!
Marriage and virginity are two signs of the love of God for us and we see both united in the first couple of the New Testament, Mary and Joseph. Joseph is a model of chastity. There has always been a tradition that Mary had an ambition to dedicate herself exclusively to God in virginity. Pope John Paul II refers to this in his exhortation Redemptoris Custos (Guardian of the Redeemer) about St. Joseph. How could Mary combine this wish with marriage? The Pope says they were combined through the virginal conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. In our times, sin is glamorized on TV and in magazines so much that people have come to accept sin as normal. The chastity of Joseph and Mary is a challenge to our times when the sanctity of marriage and fidelity to one’s spouse for life are no longer respected.
Although Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, he was fatherly to Jesus. When Jesus was found in the temple, Mary said to Jesus, “Your father and I have been looking for you.” (Luke 2:48). We can imagine the love and affection between Joseph and Jesus, and between Joseph and Mary. We can imagine Joseph’s pain at the poor circumstances of Jesus’ birth. We can imagine the pain he must have suffered when Simeon told Mary that Jesus would be a sign that would be opposed and that a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:34-35). We can imagine the pain Joseph suffered when he had to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safety to preserve their lives.
What gave Joseph the strength to endure all the trials his vocation brought him? It was obviously his life of prayer that gave him the strength to be obedient to God’s call to him. He was a just man, a man of honor as our Gospel today tells us. (Matt 1:19) He had to have been a man of deep faith to fulfill his high calling. There is no record of him being present at Calvary, so we presume he had died before Jesus. We can presume that this man of faith had Jesus and Mary present with him as he died. That is the way that all people of faith would like to die—in the company of Jesus and Mary.
In 1870, Pope Pius IX declared St. Joseph Patron of the Universal Church. He wrote:
in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ.
Pope Leo XIII prayed to Joseph in this way:
Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and
sin...graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of
darkness...and just as once you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now
defend God’s holy Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity.
(Oratio ad
Sanctum Iosephum, contained immediately after the text of the Encyclical
Quamquam pluries).
Joseph, in his role as Patron of the Church, is indeed defending her from the snares of her enemies. The following true story illustrates this. In the early 1980s a woman visited the Convent of the Religious of St. Joseph in Bessillon in France where Joseph had appeared. She was expecting her fourth child and was very ill. The doctors told her the only way she could survive was to have an abortion. They even told her it was her duty since she already had three children to mind. She went to a priest who told her to go to Mass for nine consecutive days at St. Joseph’s Convent in Bessillon. The child was born at full term with no defects, and she has given birth to another two boys since then. (I found the story in The Glories of Saint Joseph published by Traditions Monastiques, France, pages 79-80.)
St. Joseph is Patron of the Church. He had to prepare for the first Christmas, to submit to God’s plan in faith. As we prepare for Christmas, we can turn to Joseph asking his help so that we can prepare our hearts in faith to be worthy mangers to receive Jesus.
Copyright © Fr. Tommy Lane 2001
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
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