St Joseph Solemnity - Mark

Homily at Mass for St Joseph, 19 March 2011

St Joseph is renowned as a man of honour. In the bible that means he had firm beliefs and that he strove to do what was right in God’s eyes. It means also that he wanted to be just and yet to act with fairness and love. He had a great respect for Mary’s character and yet couldn’t understand how she had become pregnant.
The problem for us is to understand Joseph’s predicament and to interpret properly what scripture says about him and all the incidents we find in the early chapters of Mathew and Luke. Even modern biographers, when they have plenty of source material at their disposal, can find it difficult at times to explain clearly every aspect of their subject’s life.
Some think that Joseph was left in the dark about Mary’s condition; others that, Joseph knew either intuitively or from Mary’s own lips how she had conceived a child, even before the angel’s message in a dream. There are many gaps in the infancy narratives. Scripture Scholars and theologians have tried to piece together the various strands of Jesus’ infancy with greater or lesser success. I suppose we all tend to look at the story of this unique family with the critical historical eye of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. But that was not the way chapters one and two of Matthew and Luke were written. They were put together to show us the story of Jesus’ birth and of Mary’s and Joseph’s place in that life. And the two gospels look at the birth of Jesus from different angles. In varying degrees each one points out Jesus’ ancestry and reveal how he was the one through whom God’s love and the story of mankind’s future would unfold. Historical accuracy was not of particular importance to the early Church writers when it came to the things of God, but the theological implications most certainly were.
So we find many gaps in the infancy narratives. But what comes in between the gaps are the bits which are important for our understanding of God’s designs for our future.
Whatever Joseph knew about Mary’s condition, his initial reaction was to protect her from any innuendo and especially from severe retribution from the religious extremists who would have punished her according to the strict letter of the law. We might think Joseph’s plan of action would not have saved his betrothed. But his instinct was of the highest level and the true measure of the man.
Something unique happened when Gabriel announced that Mary would conceive without human intervention and give birth to the ‘Son of God’ who would save the human race for the glorious future that lay in store for them. He was the one who would show us human nature as it was meant to be. The experience of human love at its deepest level finds its meaning in this fusion of the human and divine. In Jesus, in God, human love and divine love meet and intertwine. That, at heart, is what true love and human life is about. In the child conceived in Mary, God reveals himself and puts his stamp on our lives. What to an outsider may appear to be natural love at its best is, in fact, the sign of God’s immersion in our human life.
We know from our study of theology that in the real world in which we live there is no such thing as a purely natural life. From the beginning of time God destined us to live in a higher dimension. And Jesus is the reason why that is so. Through him we are destined to be raised up to a life with God. If Joseph had any inkling of this as he reflected on the mysterious things that were happening to this young woman that he loved, perhaps it’s no wonder he wanted to put her away. He knew somehow that she wouldn’t have betrayed him, but he must have been very afraid of the implications this would have for him.
No one is born a saint. Joseph may have been afraid and feeling very insecure in the hole he found himself in. This is an understandably natural human reaction. But, when the angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream during the night, his attitude changed. It was Joseph’s response which made all the difference and made him worthy to be the father of Mary’s son. In spite of his feelings, Joseph accepted God’s call. That is where sainthood begins.
Joseph is a fitting father on earth of this amazing child. His example of obedience and faithfulness to God’s beckoning, even in the strangest of situations, is one that we can and ought to follow.