Solemnity of St. Joseph, husband of Mary, foster father of Jesus.
The Bible pays Joseph the highest compliment: he was a “just” man. The quality meant a lot more than faithfulness in paying debts.
When the Bible speaks of God “justifying” someone, it means that God, the all-holy or “righteous” One, so transforms a person that the individual shares somehow in God’s own holiness, and hence it is really “right” for God to love him or her. In other words, God is not playing games, acting as if we were lovable when we are not.
By saying Joseph was “just,” the Bible means that he was one who was completely open to all that God wanted to do for him. He became holy by opening himself totally to God.
The rest we can easily surmise. Think of the kind of love with which he wooed and won Mary, and the depth of the love they shared during their marriage.
It is no contradiction of Joseph’s manly holiness that he decided to divorce Mary when she was found to be with child. The important words of the Bible are that he planned to do this “quietly” because he was “a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame” (Matthew 1:19).
The just man was simply, joyfully, wholeheartedly obedient to God—in marrying Mary, in naming Jesus, in shepherding the precious pair to Egypt, in bringing them to Nazareth, in the undetermined number of years of quiet faith and courage.
This time last year we celebrated the feast of Saint Joseph and sadly Canon Stephen commented that this may be the last time we could come together as a community to celebrate Mass before the impending lockdown.
To celebrate this day we have recorded a service at Saint Joseph’s Parish with Canon Stephen and a number of our Caritas students. Unfortunately the sound is not as good as we would have hoped. So we would ask that you turn up the sound and follow the service with the attached programme.
(Please click on the image below to access the service.)
