What about Joseph?

THE SLEEPING JOSEPH, DREAMING OF HIS MISSION

Today about Joseph, the steady and quiet Joseph.  A dream moves Joseph to take care of Mary and become the legal father of her child Jesus.  He is told quite distinctly in the dream that this child is to save the Jewish people from their sins. 

Pope Francis keeps in his own bedroom a statue of St. Joseph reclining in sleep as a reminder that the Spirit of God sometimes speaks with us in the quiet solitude of our rest or our prayer.

I dream every night.   Once in a dream a few years ago, Pope John Paul ll appeared to my mother and me in her kitchen and we were supposed to provide him with breakfast.   We were totally unprepared.  (To be clear, no other recognized saint ever appeared to me in a dream.)

IN THIS MULTI-MEDIA ON BROWN PAPER, JOSEPH IS SCRATCHING HIS HEAD IN WONDER!

(From the Brady Collection at Wernersville, artist unknown,  Dated likely in the 1920's)

Notably Matthew depicts Joseph as silent even when he is not asleep.   He has none of his own lines in this drama of Jesus’ birth and growth.   He comes on stage and does his duty fully and generously.   But we never hear him say a single word.  In fact after the young family settles in Nazareth, there is only a brief mention of him, years later, when the townspeople refer to Jesus as the carpenter’s son.

But think of the possibilities.   Jesus’ Mother Mary is the one who finally voices the possible and asks Jesus to do the extraordinary at the Wedding Feast of Cana where she pushes the adult Jesus to change the water into wine.  

But what was Joseph thinking all those years before in his carpenter shop?  Typically a son like Jesus would have helped in the shop and would have been a student at a school in the town synagogue.   But Joseph kept it a secret that his son was destined to save his people from their sins.   Joseph accepted patiently the role he was given.   The father in heaven asked him to live an ordinary life with an extraordinary son.   He did not use this relationship to boost his own standing in the community.  He must have been happy to have his son recognized as a good student and a young man with excellent social skills.   But he himself stays in the background.   There is no evidence that Joseph even lives to see their son as a recognized religious leader.

I think of Joseph as a patron saint of shall-we-say ordinary fatherhood if we can even think of fatherhood as ordinary.  He protected his wife and child.    He accepted the gift of his wife and loved her.   He taught his child the skills that he knew, even the social skills at which Jesus excelled.  And his patient love helped to build a world best defined by his son, the gift of God with us.