SOLEMNITY OF ST. JOSEPH, Patron of the Church
Today’s gospel calls Joseph “a just man.” It is a title that the scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments give to people who try to live according to God’s plans. Indeed, he played an important role in God’s plan of salvation; God entrusted our Savior, Jesus, to his care. He experienced that his important role brought him many difficulties, but he stood the test and served God well, as a man of faith, generous, and indeed “just.”
Reading 1: 2 Sm 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16
“So here is what you are to tell my servant David: The God-of-the-Angel-Armies has this word for you: I took you from the pasture, tagging along after sheep, and made you prince over my people Israel. I was with you everywhere you went and mowed your enemies down before you. Now I’m making you famous, to be ranked with the great names on earth. And I’m going to set aside a place for my people Israel and plant them there so they’ll have their own home and not be knocked around any more. Nor will evil men afflict you as they always have, even during the days I set judges over my people Israel. Finally, I’m going to give you peace from all your enemies.
“Furthermore, God has this message for you: God himself will build you a house! When your life is complete and you’re buried with your ancestors, then I’ll raise up your child, your own flesh and blood, to succeed you, and I’ll firmly establish his rule. He will build a house to honor me, and I will guarantee his kingdom’s rule permanently. I’ll be a father to him, and he’ll be a son to me. When he does wrong, I’ll discipline him in the usual ways, the pitfalls and obstacles of this mortal life. But I’ll never remove my gracious love from him, as I removed it from Saul, who preceded you and whom I most certainly did remove. Your family and your kingdom are permanently secured. I’m keeping my eye on them! And your royal throne will always be there, rock solid.”
Reading 2:Romans 4:13-15
This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.
We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”
Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
Gospel: Matthew 1:16-25
Jeconiah had Shealtiel,
Shealtiel had Zerubbabel,
Zerubbabel had Abiud,
Abiud had Eliakim,
Eliakim had Azor,
Azor had Zadok,
Zadok had Achim,
Achim had Eliud,
Eliud had Eleazar,
Eleazar had Matthan,
Matthan had Jacob,
Jacob had Joseph, Mary’s husband,
the Mary who gave birth to Jesus,
the Jesus who was called Christ.
There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David,
another fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile,
and yet another fourteen from the Babylonian exile to Christ.
The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they enjoyed their wedding night, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.
While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic revelation to full term:
Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son;
They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God is with us”).
Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby. He named the baby Jesus.
Prayer
God our Father,
you entrusted your Son Jesus
to the dedicated care of St. Joseph.
Give us the faith of this just man,
the patron of your Church,
that we may always listen to you,
and serve you in everything you ask of us
also when we do not understand
where you are leading us.
Make us live close to your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Reflection:
20 March 2023 – St. Joseph
Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24
Leant to say, Go to Joseph
Today the Church celebrates the solemnity of St. Joseph, the head of the Holy Family of Nazareth and the Patron of the Universal Church. Pope Francis in his catechesis on St. Joseph explained that “Jesus and Mary His Mother are the most precious treasure of our faith, and this treasure is guarded by St. Joseph.”
Our dreams during a sleep allow us to free up our subconscious from negative experiences or satisfy hidden desires. Frames of our past occur in them. We also dream with open eyes and project ourselves into the future: We imagine our future is already concluded and anticipate the joy of success. Even if only for a few moments, we enjoy such daydreams to escape from the depressing reality that worries us.
Sacred Scripture speaks of a third kind of dream, the dreams of the Lord. They are the mysterious plans of his love revealed to people —as happened to Abraham (Gen 15:5)—or in the endless night of struggle with God, as happened to Jacob (Gen 32:23-33).
Joseph, the husband of Mary, came into this dream. Detached from himself and from his personal projects, he was available at all times, as Abraham and Jacob were, to accept the will of the Lord. God made him partaker of his dreams. In reflection and prayer, he discovered the heavenly dreams about his family.
Today’s Gospel passage from Matthew is the solemn conclusion with which the evangelist proclaims a fundamental truth of the Christian faith: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, is the expected descendant of David, the Messiah. Matthew highlights the figure of Joseph because it is through him that Jesus joins the family of David.
St. Joseph teaches us a beautiful mark of the Christian vocation: to guard. He teaches To guard life, to guard human development. To be a Christian is to be like St. Joseph: he must be a guardian. To be a Christian is not only to receive and to confess the faith, but also to guard life, one’s own life, the life of others, the life of the Church.”
The expression used to refer to the Joseph of the Old Testament, “Go to Joseph” (Ite ad Joseph) is applied to Joseph of Nazareth in the life of the Church. After all, God himself turned to Joseph and entrusted him with all that was precious to Him: Jesus and Mary. Let us entrust ourselves, our families and our Church to him as well. Let us decide today, to “Go to Joseph!”