Joseph, the man who we celebrate today, certainly would have known of this promise. Of course, he was a righteous man. He was active in his faith, took his faith seriously. But what he did not know was how the promise was going to be fulfilled with his participation. Readings for Today.
Promises
Promises. There’s such interesting things, really, when we think about them. Some of them are small, some of them are great. Regardless, when a promise is broken, it can be destructive, small or great. I think, for example, of a destructive promise. A little boy, perhaps, whose parents are divorced and the father always cancels before picking up the son. Really destructive.
And then, of course, there are good promises. Religious promises. Promises people make when they marry each other. Promises of priests and religious. But the most important promises we learn today are not ours. They’re God’s. And God makes the promise to David.
Now, David was a complex figure, to say the least. He had a deep heart. He was a man of great courage. He was a passionate man. He was a good soldier. But in so many ways, each of these qualities also we get a picture of that weren’t so pleasant for David.
His passion, for example, in the rape of Bathsheba. The tremendous amount of killing he did, but perhaps none more destructive than the killing of Uriah. His impetuous nature at times, wanting to count the people so that he could have a place of pride in the size of his kingdom. But through it all, we see that when David sins, he doesn’t despair. He seeks forgiveness.
When God tells him that he’s not going to build a temple because he has shed too much blood, David doesn’t argue. He accepts. And when he’s going to build this house, he learns that his promise to God is not the primary one. God flips it upside down and says, “No, you’re not going to build me a house. I’m going to build you a house.” The promise is made to David, and it becomes the promise that the Jewish people hoped for its fulfillment for a long, long time, centuries and centuries.
Now Joseph, the man who we celebrate today, certainly would have known of this promise. Of course, he was a righteous man. He was active in his faith, took his faith seriously. But what he did not know was how the promise was going to be fulfilled with his participation.
Now I always have a soft spot for Joseph in my heart because I just think to myself, “Oh, this poor man. What a life. His family, he’s living with the Immaculate Conception and the Incarnation. That seems a bit overwhelming, right?”
But Joseph himself was righteous. Joseph himself was holy. And I suspect, first of all, I suspect that in so many ways, neither Mary nor Jesus primarily thought of themselves in that way. That was the later reflection of faith.
Joseph, though, is a mystery man. In some ways, we don’t know, we know his father, his parents. We know he’s a descendant of David. But in a lot of ways, we don’t know where he came from, what his life was like before he met Mary. But we do get little glimpses in the gospel from time to time about Joseph that help us to understand that just as it was fitting for the Blessed Mother to be the mother of Jesus, so too it was fitting that Joseph should be her partner, her spouse.
We see the righteousness of Joseph in today’s gospel. He dreams. Now I can certainly say that most of my dreams are anything but dreams from the Holy Spirit or God. Oftentimes, they bring people together in my life that have never been together from different periods of my life. They’re not the things that I wake up and say, “Well, this is definitely what God wants me to do.” And perhaps that’s true for most of us.
But this revelation of the Holy Spirit to Joseph in a dream had to have been so vivid that Joseph knew exactly what to do because he does it. He does exactly what he’s told. We know that Joseph also had to be a man of courage. He has to take his family, his wife first of all, while she is pregnant, away to be counted. He has to save his family by going into exile.
But perhaps the greatest mystery of Joseph is what happened to him at the end of his life. He disappears from the Gospels without any mention. There’s no point where we see that Jesus has to deal with Joseph who is sick. We don’t get any encounter of how Jesus might have had to deal with the death of Joseph.
It certainly seems unimaginable that Joseph could have still been alive at the crucifixion, for example. Such a righteous man, such a man who protected carefully Jesus and Mary so much, certainly would have been there at his death if he were alive.
Some speculate that Mary was Joseph’s second marriage, that he was an older man when he met Mary. Such an explanation could in fact explain brothers and sisters of Jesus. But we know the most important thing about Joseph, his faith. Throughout the Gospels, in the early parts of Jesus’ life, Joseph is a man of faith. Joseph is one who experiences these miraculous events with Mary and had to be deepened in his faith by what happened. And perhaps that’s the most important thing to know about Joseph. He was a man of God. May we too become men and women of God.
On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.
On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.