Dear Friend,
Happy Saint Joseph’s Day! This is a great feast day, indeed. In fact, even though we are in the midst of our Lenten penances, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph ensures that today is that rarest of things, a “Meat Friday”. Hence, there is to be no fasting as we celebrate the earthly life and heavenly protection of the patron saint, among many other things, of the Universal Church, families, married couples and, of course, fathers.
By the time my own father, Earl, was 50-years-old he already had ten children, the oldest of whom was a priest and the youngest were twin girls aged ten. Five still lived at home and the rest were off in the world. The thought that occurred to me at that time was this: That dad, when he married my mother in 1950, had no idea what was in store for himself. His fathering over those subsequent 30 years was not of his own creation, but was given to him.
Saint Joseph is called a “just man” in today’s gospel account from Saint Matthew. What exactly does this mean? To answer this question, I would like to make a couple of assumptions. First of all, I presume that Joseph found out about Mary’s pregnancy because she told him and that she told him the truth, that this was God’s doing, that this was God’s Son. Secondly, I presume that Joseph’s justice is not a function of his selfishness, but rather of his goodness. Therefore, to call Joseph a just man means that Joseph, knowing that Mary was pregnant and that the child was the Son of the Most High God, also knew that he could not wed Mary and claim that child as his own – for it was God’s child, and he, Joseph, was unworthy to claim to be his father. Joseph’s justice meant that he had to drop all claims to Mary and to any future progeny with Mary.
When the angel then speaks to Joseph, the angel tells Joseph that God needs Joseph: God needs Joseph to bring this child into the House of David and God needs Joseph to name this child, Jesus.
So, Joseph was given a wife, a child, a family that was not his own and Joseph was told to be the father of this family. Is this not how it is with all of us? We all like to think that our families are ours but, really, they are gifts to us. We were gifts from God to our parents and any children will also be gifts to us. And as for me, a priest, I too have always had a strong desire to be the father of the family. My promise of celibacy does not obviate that desire; rather the desire is recast in the promise of celibacy with the grace provided by God.
This desire to be father has touched my own life. When I was asked to be the Rector of the Josephinum seminary, it came as a great surprise (below is a photograph of the seminary’s 2002 commencement). It became clear that this was what God wanted me to do. God had given me a family which was not my own in Columbus, Ohio. And then, sure enough, he brought me back to Detroit as an auxiliary bishop to help care for that family. And, finally, he brought me here to the Diocese of Lansing in 2008 to care for this family.
Why should I or any of us be surprised by this turn of events? Is this not really the nature of all parenting?
First, it is always given: David wanted to build the house, but Nathan spoke clearly for God when he told King David, “I will raise up your heirs after you….” God gives us the house, the family. We carry out His Fatherly love in parenting what he provides. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, reminds us that this was also the case with Abraham: “I have made you father of many nations.” In a sense my own earthly father was given a family. There is no way he could have anticipated what that gift would be, or how difficult it would be. And every one of us is given a family as well – one we know not, one which is not really ours.
Joseph models for us the kind of parents we are all to be. He sacrificed any dreams he may have had, any plans for the kind of family he may have wanted, in order to be the father God wanted him to be. His whole self was sacrificed to Mary and Jesus. This is the role of every parent: we are to pour ourselves out to bring about God’s dreams and plans and not our own. This is no small thing. God entrusted to Joseph the entire mystery of salvation. Is not that mystery far greater than any of our own human dreams. That mystery penetrates all of us – God’s will and plan are not something any earthly parent can predict or control. Most of the time we can only look on in awe at what God does to those entrusted to us – how God makes them holy, sometimes in spite of ourselves. To be a good parent, all any of us can do is allow God his way and to give ourselves over completely to his will.
Joseph also models parenting for us in that he is “a man of action”, as Pope Saint John Paul II observed on this day in 1980. When Joseph awoke from his dream, we are told “he did as the angel of the Lord had directed him.” He did – Joseph was one who acts. This would have been one of the primary ways Joseph would have taught Jesus, by acting, by doing, especially by acting upon the will of God. So, we teach those in our charge to be persons whose words bear fruit in action, because we are willing to do what is required of us, no matter the cost to ourselves.
Joseph is, finally, a model for us of parenting because he does name the lad – he names him, true enough, with the name he received from the angel, but Joseph is needed to do this naming: Jesus. Joseph does not accept the angel’s request to take Mary as his wife and to fulfill his role with a tired resignation or sadness. Rather, he is given this task and he will do it. He will name, he will teach, he will guide, he will protect, always aware that this child and this wife are given him. They are not his. No one of us grudgingly accepts the family given to us; rather, we embrace that family with our all, knowing not how it will turn out, knowing it is not ours but God’s.
My brother and sisters, we are given that family, that responsibility God wants us to shoulder in our lives. For the time we are so given, we are to do this with all that we are, with a full heart, acting, naming, sacrificing ourselves. My dad was doing this when he was 50-years-old and continues to do so to this day; I am to do this now, perhaps in slightly different ways; but all of us are called to do the same. Saint Joseph, pray for us!
Assuring you of my prayers, I am sincerely yours in Christ,
+ Earl Boyea
Bishop of Lansing
Amy McEntee
Kimberly Kay Cox
Mark Mogilka
Armando Cervantes
Anna Betancourt
Andrea Chavez-Kopp