Good St. Joseph

This is my homily for today, the 4th Sunday of Advent, Cycle A.  The readings are here.

Isn’t that Gospel passage a wonderful story about St. Joseph?  I want to say a few words about Joseph, because, like his wife Mary, Joseph helps to prepare us for Jesus’s coming into our lives.

We Catholics seem to know three things about Joseph: (1) he’s Mary’s husband and the dad in the Holy Family; (2) he’s a carpenter; and (3) if you bury a statue of him upside down in your yard, you’ll sell your house quickly.  Okay, that last one isn’t in the bible, and frankly, it’ a little weird.  

But as interesting as those three things are, they’re not the whole Joseph picture.  So today I want to talk about three other aspects of this great saint, Joseph.  My three things all are rooted in what we know about Joseph from the Gospels, especially today’s Gospel reading.

The first thing to note about Joseph is that, as today’s Gospel states, “he was a righteous man”.  That word “righteous” is one that many of us may not use in our day-to-day lives, except perhaps as part of the term “self-righteous”.  To call someone self-righteous is to say something negative about him, but “righteous” by itself, without “self” hooked onto it, isn’t negative at all; it’s quite positive.  It’s a term of praise.  To be righteous is to be a person who tries to live a virtuous life by following God’s laws.  It seems Joseph was such a person.  He was a rule-follower, not a rule-breaker.    

Here in the Catholic church in our time and place, we have laws and rules which we’ve been given to help us in our lives and our religious observance - and none of them involve burying statues in the yard.  Some of our rules would be familiar to Joseph.  For example, he would have tried to follow the same Ten Commandments that we try to follow today.  Some of our Catholic rules are simple: when you come before a tabernacle, genuflect (if your knees will let you!).  And fast for an hour before receiving communion.  Some of our rules are a good deal more profound: if you’re conscious of serious sin, go confess it to a priest and receive absolution in the rite of Reconciliation.  Or – and this one is relevant to Joseph’s predicament in today’s Gospel passage – if you are married, then remain faithful to your wedding promises.  Don’t engage in marital infidelity.  

Marital infidelity wsa St. Joseph’s predicament in today’s Gospel passage.  I say, his "predicament”, but really it was much worse: it was a crisis.  Joseph believed that the woman who had been promised to him as his wife had been unfaithful to him.  She was pregnant, and he knew he was not the father.  How could he receive her into his home as his wife?  How could he ever trust her?  We can imagine the emotions he would be experiencing: shock, anger, betrayal, and shame.  

God’s Law, the same Law Joseph tried to observe, could be quite hard on those who broke it.  There is a law in Deuteronomy that Joseph might have tried to utilize against his betrothed who seemingly had been unfaithful to him.  That law would shock us today.  It’s quite short, so I’ll read it to you:

[The elders of the city] shall bring the young woman to the entrance of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death, because she committed a shameful crime in Israel by prostituting herself in her father’s house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. [Dt 22:21]

The idea seems to be: the unfaithful woman had dishonored two families: her own, and her betrothed's.  By killing the unfaithful woman, honor would be restored to her family, and the family of the groom.  We might think of this death sentence as a sanctioned honor killing.

Joseph might have tried to have that done to Mary.  But he didn’t.   He chose a different way, a way of kindness and compassion toward her.  Rather than have her humiliated and then killed publicly, he “decided to divorce her quietly”.  He was a righteous man, but also a kind and a good man.

So that’s my second point about Joseph: he was righteous, but also he was kind and compassionate.  If you think that all men in his situation would have chosen Joseph’s path of compassion, then I would have to disagree with you.  Honor killings still happen in the world today.  Through my work with Rest in His Arms, I know of at least one example in our own local community from a few years ago.  

I hope what I’ve said so far about Joseph is helping you to appreciate why I think he was an amazing man.  He’s one of the great saints in our canon, not simply because God chose him to rear the child Jesus, but because of who we was and how he lived, even before Jesus came into his life.

And we haven’t even talked yet about the crux of the story: the great plot twist in today’s Gospel: God intervened in Joseph’s crisis.  He sent an angel in a dream to tell him: You don’t understand all the facts.  Mary wasn’t impregnated by another man; this new life growing inside her was generated by the Holy Spirit.  Mary hasn’t been unfaithful to you; she’s been extraordinarily faithful to God.  So Joseph, don’t cast this woman away; marry her, and take this child to be your own.  

And that is what Joseph did.  He took Mary as his wife and took in Jesus as his own son.  And isn’t that something to celebrate?  Isn’t that something to fill us with joy?  I should pray that I can be as obedient to God's wishes, and as generous to others, as Joseph was.

Whenever we honor St. Mary for saying Yes to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation, we would do well also to recall St. Joseph doing the same to his own angel who came to him in the dream.  Because Joseph said yes, too.  O Holy Mary, and Holy Joseph.  O blessed Mother and blessed foster father of our Lord.

That’s my third point about Joseph: God chose him for something great, and Joseph cooperated in God’s plan.

I would guess that most of us haven’t had angels come to us in dreams.  But if we think God isn’t trying to intervene in our lives, we’re not paying close enough attention.  I think God is reaching out to us all day.  It may not be as dramatic as the appearance of an angel.  But God speaks to us, all the time: through our consciences, and through other people in our lives.  

This time of Advent is the time for us to prepare, because God is knocking on the door: of our dreams, our hearts, our lives.  St. Joseph shows us the way to be prepared: follow God’s rules; and live lives of love and kindness and compassion; and answer the door when God knocks.  St. Joseph, pray for us, that we’ll get this as right as you did.