Everything around the life of St Joseph is steeped in silence, something that seems to be an outstanding trait of his personality. We don’t read of Joseph speaking a single word in all of the gospels. It’s not that he is just a quiet sort of guy, withdrawn from the rest of society, but he is one, as one author puts it: “who lets God speak and answers by obeying eagerly without discussion, without asking the least question (even an explanation), without expressing the slightest objection.” After his dream, he simply did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him.
We see in Joseph a “righteousness that comes from faith” that St Paul writes about so eloquently in his letter to the Romans that we just heard. Along with Mary, he provides the climate in which the long awaited heir, the promised one by the prophet Nathan, would find a home to live in. The temple that Solomon built was no lasting one. It was only in the person of Jesus that David’s house, David’s kingdom would come to endure forever. This is the Temple of which Jesus was later to speak, that if destroyed, God would raise up in three days.
Joseph’s mission is closely tied up with the early life of Jesus, with his infancy and early years. Joseph carries with him a continual awareness of God’s abiding presence, is so attuned to God’s word that one feels he is ever listening to it in the middle of everyday events. We live in a world that can overwhelm us with words and noises to where we risk losing a taste for silence, to where one wonders if God has much of a chance to get a word in edgewise. Joseph serves as a timely example, of one whose quiet interior arises out of a profound faith that makes us ever attentive to that divine design at work in each of our lives.
This is captured in the middle of our gospel this morning where we heard of Mary who before she and Joseph “lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.” Not knowing how this could have happened, Joseph was “unwilling to expose her to shame” and decided to divorce her quietly. What pain must have pierced him, to think that one he so deeply loved and trusted, had betrayed him. His faith intervened, purifying his righteousness so as to live with the mystery of what had happened to her. Only then does an angel appear to him in a dream.
“When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.” Had Joseph acted not on the righteousness based on the law he would have exposed Mary to possibly being put to death by stoning. By faith he opened himself to divine mystery. Joseph has a beautiful message for each one of our lives as we too find ourselves immersed in divine mystery.
It is the mystery we are about to celebrate at this altar, that of God’s continual love surrounding each of our lives. There becomes present here Christ’s very dying and rising that took place two thousand years ago but which continues to become the very inner movement of our lives as believing Christians. We partake in God’s very own life and love as we let Christ’s life grow within us. As Joseph’s faith allowed him to embrace what was happening in Mary’s womb, so it is this faith that allow God’s life to grow in us.