St. Joseph at Christmas

In the Gospel of Matthew (Mt. 2: 18-25) for the last Sunday of Advent God’s plan for our salvation is at a pivotal moment. Mary is facing a grim future--she was found to be with child. In the Jewish law of the time she and the child could have been stoned or shunned for the rest of their lives, forced to live on the margins in poverty and destitution

At this point God’s plan for salvation depends upon Joseph. And what do we know of Joseph? Joseph is called a righteous man, a carpenter by trade.  He was of the lineage of David through Abraham. He was from Nazareth in Galilee. He was betrothed to Mary.

For a man who is pivotal to our salvation, he is remarkably quiet; he says nothing in Scripture. Basically, that’s all we ever know about Joseph. Except …that he has dreams to which he pays attention, dreams that he interprets as a man of righteousness and relationships as the voice of God breaking into his life.

In the first dream an angel appears and tells him what to do.  Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. It is a righteous thing. You are of the house of David. The Child has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son. You will name him Jesus because he is coming to save his people, your people. from their sins.  This will fulfill the prophecy by Isaiah in which a savior will come,  Emmanuel which means God is with us.

This Gospel has been called the Annunciation to Joseph but Joseph does not get to ask a question or dialogue with the angel. He wakes up and does what the angel tells him to do which is, in essence, extending protection to Mary and the child to be born. The rest of his three his dreams go the same way. In all of them he is told to protect Mary and the child.

Because Joseph says nothing in the Scriptures, it is tempting to assign him our own thoughts and words. And we do. Pope Francis says, “I have a great love for Joseph because he is a man of silence and strength.” Francis continues, “Joseph is a ‘protector’ because he is able to hear God’s  voice and be guided by God’s will; protecting, demands goodness, it calls for a certain tenderness.  In the Gospels, Saint Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness, which is not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit and a capacity for concern, for compassion, for genuine openness to others, for love. We must not be afraid of goodness, of tenderness!”

What about our own tenderness and strength? As I was working on this, I had been reading about the impeachment and other political and social news of the day. Tenderness is not in vogue in our society today. Tenderness is a fragile thing. For myself, I can let my ego, judgementalism and inattention to God’s voice get in the way of engaging my tenderness.

As we celebrate Christmas this year of 2019, a year of political and social division, a year of anger and rage, where is our tenderness engaged? During this Christmas season, as we pray for protection from all evil, where is the spirit of the silent, protective, tender Joseph in our lives?

Sr. Deborah Harmeling, OSB

Lessons from the Saints of March

This blog started out to be about some of the Saints of March.  Some well- known; others less well-known. But, every time I tried to write, the political issues of our times kept interrupting. So, what I wanted to be a clear article became a series of disjointed musings.

March 7:  Saints Felicity and Perpetua two young mothers who were martyred for their Christian faith. One was a slave the other her mistress yet they went to their death with their arms around each other.  Is this not religious intolerance?  Is it not the inhuman separation of mothers and children? 

March 17:  Saint Patrick captured, sold as a slave came back to Ireland when voices called him to “come and walk with us again.”  Is this not an example of human trafficking?  How would Ireland be converted?  Where would the monasteries be that preserved the world’s literacy?

March 19:  Saint Joseph, a carpenter, was known as “a just man.”  His call to be Mary’s husband and the foster father of Jesus was announced to him in a dream.   He did not know what he was being asked, yet he took Mary as his wife and supported her and Jesus by manual labor. Where are all the ordinary jobs by which people can support a family? How realistic is it to think that they will return and quickly?

March 21:  Saint Benedict fled the high life of Rome to seek solitude and closeness with God.  His holiness spread so that many followed him. But, his life was threatened several times by some of the same monks who wanted to follow him.  Saint Benedict’s simple rule respected people of all kinds. He taught respect for things as simple as the dishes. Where is our respect for life, for the earth, for the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land that supplies our food?  Can we still say that there is no such thing as global warming ?

March 25:  The Annunciation:  Mary was visited by an angel with a tremendous request; to be the mother of God.  As a young unmarried Jewish girl, this had to be complicated and perplexing.  What faith and courage it took for Mary to say “yes” not knowing what the future would bring.  Where is our courage? What kind of faith do we have?  Do we trust?  Can we, trust in a bigger plan?  Can we trust the plan of a loving God who created us in His image?

Perhaps it’s time to look to those who have gone before us.

   Sr. Kathleen Ryan, OSB

St. Joseph, Model of Faithfulness

On Thursday, March 19, we will celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph.When I think of St. Joseph, I am reminded of his faithfulness. This faithfulness was to God and to Jesus and Mary throughout his life.  He endured this faithfulness in spite of many hardships.

He had to find shelter for his family in Bethlehem, and he endured the flight into Egypt.  He sustained his family by his trade.Truly St. Joseph reflected the faithfulness of God in his life.

When I think of St. Joseph’s faithfulness, I am reminded of our vow of stability as Benedictines.  St. Joseph is a good model for us. Stability is faithfulness to our monastery and our life.  It is faithfulness to our work and duties that we have in our life.  It is faithfulness to our prayer and work as Benedictines, our Ora et Labora.

When I think of St. Joseph, I think also that he is a good model for families and that his virtues are needed today. As the Church reflects on the Synod on Families, St. Joseph is very relevant. St. Joseph, pray for us.

         Sr. Barbara Woeste, OSB

Thoughts on St. Joseph

     St. Joseph did not get a liturgical feast until the 15^th century in Rome, and it was only in the 16^th century that a feast was authorized for the Universal Church. As early as 150, however, the apocryphal writing, Protevanglium of James, tried to give more details to Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the infancy of Jesus, including the role of Joseph. Other apocryphal gospels written between the second and eighth centuries influenced the growing devotion to Joseph, and the iconography of Joseph holding a lily comes out of these gospels plus the story of his dying in the presence of Jesus and Mary. These writings are evidence of our interest in the human setting and details of the Holy Family, details lacking in the Gospels. Who was Joseph? What did he do? How did he live? How did he relate to his human and divine charges? How did he act as a father and guardian?

     Luke’s account of Mary and Joseph is from Mary’s viewpoint while Matthew concentrates on Joseph. Matthew looks at Joseph as a man of dreams like the patriarch Joseph in Genesis. Joseph is instructed in dreams to take Mary into his own home, to name the child, to go to Egypt (like his Genesis predecessor) to save the child’s life, and to return to the land of Israel after the danger passed. Karl Rahner notes that Scripture says of Joseph three times, “He rose up.”

     There are many views of St. Joseph. St. Bernard says, “When we do not know how to pray, we turn to Joseph,” and St. Teresa of Avila says she knows by experience that Joseph helps in every area. “…I know by experience [he] helps us in every need.” Jacques Bossuet contrasted the vocation of the apostles with that of Joseph

. “The apostles were lights to make Jesus Christ visible to the whole world. Joseph was a veil to hide him. …the apostles proclaimed the gospel so loudly that their words re-echoed in the heavens. …Joseph listened, wondered and kept silence.”

     Karl Rahner says that Joseph as the guardian and protector of the Son of God is our model as we are “called to be guardian of the Holy One in ourselves, in lives, in our work.” Rahner also says that Joseph is a good patron for us—“a patron of the poor, a patron of workers, a patron of exiles, a model for worshippers, an exemplar of the pure discipline of the heart.”

     Who is Joseph to you as we celebrate his feast today?

               Sr. Deborah Harmeling, OSB