Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Lectionary: 543

“Joseph, son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.
For it is through the Holy Spirit
that this child has been conceived in her.

Joseph of Bethlehem was certainly delighted to find himself betrothed to the lovely Mary of Galilee. If he knew little about her, she was young, attractive, pleasant, and of a respectable family. We can only imagine his dismay when he learned she had a past. There was more to her than met the eye, but that would become too apparent soon enough. He was suddenly afraid to take Mary into his home.

If he was the first to face this dilemma, he was not the last. Even in the fourth century, as the bishops approached Nicea, many refused to accept Mary into their relationship with the Lord. She was the mother of Jesus, they were willing to grant, but that made little difference to them. She had done her part in bearing Jesus of Nazareth, they supposed, now let her disappear into the past and be forgotten. They could not accept and would not use her title, Theotokos -- the Mother of God. 

And they had their reservations about Jesus. He was a good man, like many others. A saint! He had been possessed by the Son of God, but was not himself the Son of God. He too had done his part in manfully bearing God's Presence within him even to Calvary. He certainly cooperated fully and completely with God's plan of salvation for the human race. A hero! 

But not God. He was a man who'd been used by God to show his fellows the way of salvation. Act as Jesus acted and you too will be saved. An extraordinary man, a role model, an example! But not God. God had gone as far as God could go -- as God should ever go -- in using the man to demonstrate the way we should live. But God had neither suffered on Calvary, nor died on a cross, nor been buried in a grave. Nor would he descend into hell. Jesus might have, but not God. 

We can only imagine their consternation when they were shouted down by the roar of most bishops attending the Council of Nicea, and voted into obscurity. They must have suffered disgust when they heard the spontaneous festivity of the city celebrating Mary's new title -- Mother of God! -- throughout the night. 

But there are still many who are afraid to take Mary the Mother of God into their homes -- because she still comes with a past. Her past now includes all the sins of the Church that God her Son gave her with his dying breath. Those children, despite their sins, heard and obeyed his command, "Behold your mother." 

They include drug-dealing Mexican drug dealers with their images of Our Lady of Guadalupe; and Italian mafia who demand that images of Santa Maria di Polsi bow before the home of their crime boss. The Church denounces these abuses of her image, but that matters little to those who shun the company of sinners.  

To belong to Jesus we must belong to the sinful Church which loves the Lord and his Mother. We approach the altar through the narrow doors of the baptismal font and confession box. Idealists abandon their ideals and purists, their purity when they enter the Church to greet its people with a holy kiss. We might not like the people we meet in Church; we might hold grudges against former spouses, adulterous in-laws, and shady neighbors. But there they are, and here we are, together in Joseph's house.

Everyone has a past. If you love someone without knowing their past you love only an image of your ideal self. If we know little of Saint Joseph's past, we can admire the way he accepted Mary's and ours. True, he hesitated for a moment. But he never looked back as he fled his home and career in Bethlehem to take her and her son into Egypt. 

Saint Joseph knew Psalm 106 like everyone of his fellow Jews, and would pray with them, "We have sinned; we and our fathers have sinned." And by that prayer, he became a saint.