Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 Lectionary: 543

He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist. He believed, hoping against hope, that he would become the father of many nations, according to what was said, Thus shall your descendants be. That is why it was credited to him as righteousness.

In today's New Testament reading from Saint Paul's Letter to the Romans, the Apostle boldly declares that Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish people, is "our father in the sight of God." By his fidelity and God's gracious generosity, he has become "the father of many nations." 

He insists that "It was not through the law that the promise was made to Abraham and his descendants..." Rather, the promise comes to us by our faith in Abraham's son, Jesus of Nazareth. If some Christians would build an alternate "Judaism for Gentiles" with constricting laws about food, dress, and social customs, Saint Paul confronts them with his doctrines of grace and faith. 

On the Solemn Feast of Saint Joseph we can view Mary's husband as another binding connection to the Jewish people. While Jesus is certainly the necessary, essential link to God and God's people, we dare not claim him as Our Savior without acknowledging his people as our people, and his faith as our faith.  His Mother Mary, his foster father Joseph, and a cloud of witnesses welcome us into the assembly. (In Hebrew, qahal; in Greek, ekklesia; meaning "a called out group.") 

The Christian complaint against the Pharisees was their maniacal obsession with observing all the rules and regulations of the Mosaic Law without the least regard for the joyous freedom that comes with the Law. They were unhappy men and women determined to make everyone else equally unhappy. They seemed to believe that an angry, arbitrary, capricious God would be appeased by their persistent, willful misery. (Catholicism has seen the same thing among Jansenists.) Why this moody, belligerent deity should care about their state of mind, whether unhappy or not, was never explained. 

Fortunately, no one regards Saint Joseph as an unhappy man. Despite his platonic relationship to the Virgin Mary, the conundrum of her inexplicable pregnancy, and all the trouble this woman and her child cost him, he was faithful, earnest, and assiduous in fulfilling his role as husband and father. We remember how, he "rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt," abandoning his family, social connections, and career to save the Infant.
We can well imagine him dismissing all this personal sacrifice as "No problem at all! Happy to do it!" 

This free, happy fidelity is also our spiritual connection to the Patriarch Abraham. He too abandoned his "land, relatives, and father's house" to receive as his heritage "a land that I will show you." 

At the beginning of this century, Pope Saint John Paul II encouraged us to "set out for the deep" in the spirit of Abraham, Joseph, and all the saints.  

In the Spirit of Abraham, our Jewish father in faith, of Saint Joseph, and Saint John Paul II, we celebrate the freedom of our fidelity. It is guided but unrestrained, eager and disciplined, expectant and focused as we anticipate next week's Solemnity of the Annunciation.