We interrupt this Lent for a very
special celebration – the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin
Mary.
Okay, perhaps many of us don’t think
of this as the big “saint day” this week.
After all, how many were “wearin’ the green” on Monday? The St. Patrick’s Day parade made the front
pages of the newspaper, but today – meh!
Each year at Christmas, I get a New York Times Crossword Puzzle Calendar. At the bottom of the page they note special
holidays. On Monday, of course, it said
“St. Patrick’s Day.” Today – nothing.
As I kid, I was well attuned to the
relative disparity in mid-March celebrations.
My mom’s family was all Irish. Her
father had emigrated from Ireland, so St. Patrick’s Day was a major
celebration. Yet, St. Joseph was my
patron saint and we never celebrated that at all. My consolation was that I attended St. Joseph
School in Endicott, New York. My feast
day was a day off from school!
Even in religious art, St. Joseph has
often been relegated to the background.
In the early church, there was virtually no veneration of St.
Joseph. It was not until the sixteenth
century that his feast day was celebrated throughout the Church. And yet, it is right and just that we pull
out the liturgical stops today and celebrate this day with great solemnity, for
humble St. Joseph played a vital role in our salvation.
When the Mary says yes to the God’s
invitation, she places herself in mortal jeopardy. In the Jewish law, an unmarried woman who
became pregnant was subject to stoning.
While Joseph, who was a righteous man, may have spared her from that
fate by his plan to quietly divorce her, she would have certainly been
subjected to severe exclusion from society.
God had another idea. Joseph was
told to take Mary into his home as his wife – implicitly telling the world that
this child was his, and that Mary and the child should be accorded proper
respect and dignity.
In essence, Joseph’s humble obedience
– his “yes” to God – was almost as crucial to our salvation as was Mary’s fiat.
We celebrate today to learn from
Joseph’s humility, to learn from Joseph’s obedience, that oftentimes our own
plans just aren’t good enough. We pray
with St. Joseph that we recognize God’s will in our life. We pray with St. Joseph that we, like he,
have the courage to say “yes” to God.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
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