Dear Parish Family,

As you read this note from me, you could be in the middle of decorating your house for Christmas. If you have young kids living in the house or coming to the house, please ensure a crèche depicting the nativity of Jesus is in the house. This really is a story starter. The infancy narratives of Jesus come to us from the Gospels of Mathew and Luke. The crèche looks quite crowded because we have included figures from both narratives. I hope I have evoked enough curiosity in you so that you could look into the Gospels to find the difference.

In the Gospel of Matthew, that we read today the focus is on Joseph.  This makes a great deal of sense.  Matthew’s main audience was Jewish Christians.  Joseph was of the line of David.  The Jewish people were very much aware that God had promised David that his Kingdom would never end. But the Gospel also makes it clear that Joseph was not the natural or birth father of the Lord.  Mary was a Virgin.  The child was conceived through the miracle worked by the Holy Spirit.  So, why is Jesus seen as part of the line of David through Joseph?  This is because Joseph names the child.  For the ancients this meant he had made the child his own.  We can even say that he adopted the child.  Now we view adoption as a legal procedure.  The ancients viewed adoption as both a legal act and a spiritual act.  When a man adopted a child, all that made that man who he is, his background, his ancestry, all of this poured out upon the child.  When Joseph named the child, adopted the child, King David, King Solomon, and all that was part of Joseph’s ancestry became part of Jesus’ ancestry.  The prophets predicted that the Messiah would come through the line of David.  This takes place through Joseph.
 We do not know much detail about Joseph. But the little we know speaks a great deal about him. He is described to be a ‘just’ man. This is rarely used in the Bible, since a person with this qualification became an intercessor between God and people because of his holy lifestyle. To add to this ‘righteous way of life’ Joseph received three dreams. In the first, and most important, he was told not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife.  A second dream took place after the birth in Bethlehem. Joseph was told to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt for the wicked King Herod meant to kill Jesus.  After Herod died, and while the Holy Family was in Egypt, Joseph had another dream, this one telling him to return to Palestine, which he did but avoiding Jerusalem.

There is a great deal that we need to learn from St. Joseph.  In the first instance Joseph acts in the light of the compassion of God rather than find an escape in the cruelty of the prevailing law of the land. So many times we invoke the law of the land rather than consider how God is calling us to behave.  We rush to sue someone who has offended us instead of consider how we can settle the situation in a Christ like way.  We hide behind the law and take advantage of many persons in dire need. Many times we are prone to place legal and political ideologies before the direct commands of our Creator who made all people in His image and likeness.

Joseph could have been exposed to ridicule as at least his immediate family will have known the pregnancy of Mary. There are no secrets in a close village setting.  But Joseph was just.  He was compassionate. He asked himself, “What would God want me to do?”  Then he made the decision to protect Mary, even though at that point in his mind, it appeared that she had offended him.  It was after Joseph made the decision to do what God would want him to do, that the angel appeared to him in the dream.  He was not only to care for Mary and the child, but Joseph was to name the child.  This child would really, perhaps not physically, but really be Joseph’s. The Church recognizes that by becoming the father of the Holy Family, Joseph became the father of the Universal Church. This could be our prayer today, “Give us the courage, St. Joseph, to choose the way of the Kingdom of Love over the ways of the kingdoms of man”. 

  Fr. Thomas Kunnel C.O.