Fr. Glenn Jones:

One of the things we find frustrating is traffic—it always seems worse when you’re running late, or the traffics lights conspiring against you, or someone is piddling along in the fast lane. “Darn it!” … or words to that effect. But then … we go up a little farther and there’s an accident that occurred just a few moments before. And we find ourselves grateful for a little delay.

Or have you ever been the right person at just the right time, or had someone help you at just the right moment. Priests and ministers and social workers often have people say to them years later: “That which you said that day to me just struck me, and I turned my life around”—definitely one of the most rewarding things that we hear. It is such a privilege for anyone to be an instrument through which God’s grace flows—with no particular merit due to ourselves, but simply a conduit through place the spring’s water may flow.

Now, at this time of year, of course, we prepare for Christmas and to celebrate the birth of Jesus two millennia ago. Christians reread the nativity accounts of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, in which a more background yet essential character is Joseph, the betrothed, and subsequently the husband, of Mary, and foster father of Jesus.

In Matthew’s account (Matthew 2), Joseph is described as “a just man”, at least partially because—discovering that his betrothed was with child, and knowing the baby was not his—“decided to divorce her quietly” with no public condemnation or vengeful retribution, even though she might have been sentence to death by stoning by the Law. And thus we see a likeness of the virtue of magnanimity and forgiveness that Jesus Himself would later explicitly not only require, but embody.

Matthew then tells us that an angelic messenger assured Joseph that Mary was with child supernaturally—through God’s Holy Spirit. And so Joseph abandons his plan to divorce her, and obediently takes her into his home as wife.

One of the very notable things about Joseph in the Gospels is that he is the silent man … not questioning the command of God, not complaining, but rather responding to God’s message through the angel with his whole effort, and no doubt as a “just man” following the teaching of God with his whole heart. Joseph simply acquiesces to the will of God, becomes foster father of Jesus, and protector, provider, support and friend to Mary.

Joseph’s unquestioning obedience to God’s will, his immediate and positive response to God’s grace, and devoted service to Jesus and Mary, is why Catholics and some other Christian denominations see Joseph as one of the greatest of all the saints, Mary being the highest of all as the pure vessel prepared by God to be the tabernacle of God’s Word in the flesh. Concerning Mary, we read in the Old Testament account of the composition of the Ark of the Covenant, of it being made with the purest of gold possible, all for a couple of stone tablets upon which God’s Commandments were inscribed. But Mary would contain within herself the living Word of God in the flesh, to bring Him forth into the world for His mission … to rear, support and travel with Him, finally to endure the agony of being devotedly at His feet as He died His gruesome death for the redemption and salvation of the world. She is very model of motherhood.

And for many years Mary’s companion was faithful Joseph as they reared Jesus in little Nazareth—Joseph guiding His hands in the carpentry shop, taking the family to Jerusalem for the annual holy days, providing and protecting. And so very privileged. Like Moses, the prophets and countless others, Joseph was given an often difficult task which would last the remainder of his life, and yet he fulfilled it with his whole being. And so, rewarded for his fidelity, St. Bernadine of Siena wrote of Joseph: “In him the Old Testament finds its fitting close. He brought the noble line of patriarchs and prophets to its promised fulfillment. What the divine goodness had offered as a promise to them, he held in his arms.” 

Of course, many Christians believe that the saints assist us with their prayers to God for us, just as do our friends and neighbors. Thus, St. Josemaria Escriva wrote: “St. Joseph really is a father…He protects those who revere him and accompanies them on their journey through this life – just as he protected and accompanied Jesus when he was growing up. As you get to know him…he teaches us to know Jesus and share our life with him, and to realize that we are part of God’s family. St. Joseph can teach us these lessons, because he is an ordinary man, a family man, a worker who earned his living by [daily] labor.”

And so Joseph … silent in life, silent in death … a fatherly model working quietly to fulfill his privilege of caring for his family … passes silently from the scene as a supreme example for all of us of humility and service—one of the greatest of saints.

“Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21)

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.