Vigils Reading – St Joseph

THE GUARDIAN AND PROTECTOR

OF THE SON OF GOD

From a homily by Fr Karl Rahner

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“Joseph, the husband of Mary, being a just man, and not wishing to

expose her to reproach, was minded to put her away privately.”

Why should Joseph have wanted to put Mary away? Could it have been

perhaps for this reason: that he felt himself, was bound to feel himself, somehow

shut out from this mystery which had come to pass between Mary and heaven?

Since she had now been claimed by someone higher, indeed by God himself, we

may well suppose that Joseph felt he could have no further claim of any kind

upon her and resolved, therefore, to put her away privately.

If we interpret the text in this way – and it is at least a possible

interpretation of an obscure and difficult text – then the message that Joseph

received from heaven, the angel that appeared to him in a dream, takes on a new

and different light. The angel does not merely tell Joseph that Mary has

conceived her child through the power of God – though this fact, which Joseph

already knew from Mary, is confirmed by the apparition – but has as his

principal message: “Take Mary as your wife.”

Be a father to this child, heaven is saying, fulfill the duties of a father

towards this child which heaven has sent to your bride. Protect, watch over,

love, shield, take care of this child. This duty is laid on Joseph by God himself.

We can say, therefore, that he is the foster-father and guardian of the child, not

just because his wedded bride has conceived a child from heaven, but because

God himself wished him to take the place of a father to the son of God who had

come to save the world… Through this message from above Joseph is drawn into

the great, public, official story of salvation. He acts no longer in the purely

private capacity of bridegroom and later husband of Mary, but plays an official

role in the salvation story. He is the guardian and protector of the Son of God,

directly appointed to that office, and not just drifting into this relationship with

the divine child through the accident of his betrothal to Mary.

We too are often called to be guardians of the Holy One in ourselves, in

our lives, in our work… We are being called upon to be the guardians of

something holy, something great: God’s grace in us and about us. For us no

angel from heaven appears, no dream-apparition bids us: Take the child to

yourself. And yet it seems as though through purely earthly incidents we are

made responsible for what is heavenly and divine, for God’s grace in our own

hearts and in our earthly surroundings. In all these the Son of God who became

man continues his life, and we are all asked whether the task of guarding this

Son of God, whom we meet in others, will find us as true as Joseph, of whom it is

said: he was faithful, he took the child and his mother to himself, he spent his

whole life guarding the child so that it might become in truth the savior and the

life of the world.