This year the Church has shifted the celebration of the Solemnity of St. Joseph from 19 March to this Monday so as not to interrupt the Sunday liturgy and thus preserve the Lenten journey that we have been observing. The father figure of Joseph keeps coming to mind at an era where the same figure in our society is being put into question, especially by some modern medical technological measures whereby a lady can just walk into the hospital and ask to me made pregnant through seminal injection, with sperm gotten from someone whom they do not care to know, and whom the child will never know. Furthermore, Joseph stands as a figure of defence in the same society which offers death of woman and/or child as the solution to what has commonly become known as “unwanted pregnancies”. In the first case, no one cares to know the father of the child. In the second case, the father is known but his identity is hidden, so the elimination of the child becomes the immediate solution.
A journey through the bible tells us that not so much is said about this man, Joseph. In fact the gospel of Mark has just no mention of his name at all. John mentions the name only 2 times, and in doubtful negative situations: “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth’” (John 1:45-46). This means that Joseph cannot have such a son. In the second instance they are actually admitting that Jesus is the son of Joseph but doubting the son’s divine nature. The Jews “were saying, ‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know” John 6:41-42. On the other hand Matthew mentions Joseph’s name 7 times and Luke 5 times. Even as such, none of them gives any details. There is no mention of his place and date of birth, and worst of all, he is not said to have ever mentioned a word – one retreat mistress has said that “Jesus” is the only word of Joseph.
The members of the great association known as the Catholic Men’s Association (CMA) great each other thus: “St. Joseph, man of honour, pray for us”. This greeting is drawn from the Gospel text of today, which is one of the references of Matthew. There are 6 qualities that make Joseph a man of honour, and which we are invited to imitate: 1) Sparing other people’s publicity. There is a strong tendency in us to rejoice at talking about the faults of others thus exposing their faults to the world; 2) Listening to God: many of us find it difficult to obey God in the face of social pressure such as the one that Joseph found himself in; 3) Obedience: after listening to the word of God, the big challenge is to put it to practice; 4) Putting the word of God in practice: Joseph dutifully gave the name that the angel instructed when finally the child was born; 5) Responsible Parenthood: Joseph remained close to his wife and child, especially during the flight to Egypt and when Jesus got missing in the temple. Many men feel that fatherhood ends at reproduction; 6) Silent Listening: so many of us talk so much that we find it hard to listen to our interlocutor, especially when we have taken a few cups of alcohol. Talking too much cheapens the value of words because in the end, supply is always more than demand.
These qualities, and more, made Joseph to stand out as a shining example of an honourable man. Yes, honour is earned and not bought nor inherited; this happens when we live a virtuous life. As man of honour, Joseph was a man of virtue; he put together all the theological and cardinal virtues and lived them: he loved, lived in faith and hoped; he was prudent, just, temperate and courageous, and went just for what matters, the details. The name Joseph means “God adds”. Through his cooperation with the divine plan, God added another person into humanity, the person who was to change the history of the world. A man wrote a book and gave the title: “How to change your wife in 30 days”. By the end of one week he had sold 2 million copies. He later on discovered that he had made an error. He decided to correct the title: “How to change your life in 30 days”. For the next one month he sold only 3 copies. When it comes to changing other people’s life we are experts. But when it comes to changing ours it becomes a problem. Joseph would have loved to change the life of his wife, were he in our shoes, but he rather changed his own life and his plans to suit that of God, and took Mary into his home. This is a great act, it is his own “Yes” which perfectly married the great “Yes” of his wife, and which changed the course of history. Each and everyone of us can change others, we can change the whole world, but only if we each change our lives. Let us pray, on this solemnity of St Joseph, that God may give us a little of the spirit of Joseph, this great man of honour.
4th Sunday of Lent Year A
1 Sam. 16:1-13; Eph. 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Fr. Dufe Joseph OFM Cap.
God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart. What a challenge to us! This is the message from the first reading, which leads to the anointing of David as the king of the people of Israel. This message makes us appreciate the reason why Jesus did not allow himself to be defeated by the tricky question of the disciples concerning the blind man – as to who sinned in order to have provoked blindness in him. Even after being cured, the controversy did not stop. There were doubts right from his own neighbours as to whether this was the same man who was blind or this was another person. People had believed that since he was born blind he was destined to live and die blind – a kind of compartmentalisation that most of us are guilty of. This is how man thinks, yes, and not how God thinks. In fact, the controversy even included Jesus, as to whether he could be from God or was he some kind of sinner, infringing on the Sabbath – this was the confusion among the Pharisees to whom the cured man was taken.
In a way, the Liturgy of the Church, on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, known as the Laetare Sunday (Joyful Sunday) invites us to retrace one of the fundamental dynamics of our baptismal rebirth, which is the passage from the darkness of sin and error into the light of God, which is the Risen Christ. This is the experience of man who suddenly finds himself cured of his blindness. Already in the Old Testament Revelation, as seen in the anointing of David, the Lord God had shown the People of Israel how much the Creator’s judgment was deeper and truer than the thoughts of the creature. The Lord had thus indicated what the only true criterion for judging a man was, and where man could meet God’s gaze and enter into relationship with him. This place is the heart. By “heart,” of course, the Bible does not mean the center of the innermost drives or the organ that regulates blood flow in the organism-man, but man’s “sacrarium,” his conscience, where he is given the possibility to listen to the very voice of God and recognize it, and so produce the effects of the light which are complete goodness and right living and truth – no matter what others think.
However, unable to remain faithful to what is truest in him, man reverts back to his own petty criteria, producing every wickedness, injustice and falsehood, in order to govern himself, obtaining what, from time to time, he decides to be his good, and hoping to become thus “like God”. God, however, does not give up. He comes to each of us in the twofold way narrated by the Gospel. First, he does so through sacramental signs just as in the ritual performed by Jesus on the blind man. He cleanses us and then places us on the second pedestal, which is that of mission. Siloam is a pool which name means “sent”. We are not sent until we have been made clean. The cleansing process is a very difficult process, but we must go through it if we are to be who we are called to be, not blind people but people of light. Christ, sent by the Father, takes upon himself all our sins, even to the ultimate consequences of our blindness, right to the point of allowing himself to be stripped naked, crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross, rejected by his own people and abandoned by his closest friends. This unheard-of love of Christ can only definitively, in time, overcome all fear of our limitations, for there is nothing about us that can prevent him from loving us.
May it not surprise us that suffering humanity and suffering individual human beings could sometimes become objects of human experimentation. Did the disciples not use the blind man as their specimen for the determination of sinfulness! “Who sinned”, they asked. And did the neighbours of the man not use him as a specimen of identity and finally take him to the experts of human degradation, the blind Pharisees! “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” they wondered. And did the Pharisees themselves not use Jesus as the specimen for their religious hypocrisy! “This man cannot be from God: he does not keep the Sabbath… How could a sinner produce signs like this”! And only the man who had benefitted from the healing could tell his personal story, even if he was to know the complete version only a short while later.
We are always on the way, but sure that one day we will reach. This is the virtue of hope. Even until now, like the man whose eyes were opened, we may not claim to have known Jesus fully; at least we do have some knowledge of him, based on what he has done for us, and this makes us bond to him. It is precisely this indestructible bond, based on his love and faithfulness to us that encourages us to seek to know him the more. Let us ask, through Mary Most Holy, the grace to be faithful to the truth, to the facts of our lives, grasping the hand that, in every circumstance, Christ extends to us; let us, thus, be shaken out of the torpor or inertia that always undermines us, in order to live totally by Christ, the crucified and risen Love, in this life and in eternity.
