Robert Barron - Go to Joseph
Peace be with you. Friends, we come to Holy Family Sunday today, wonderful feast day. And over the years, I've certainly preached on the dynamics of the Holy Family. I've preached on Mary. I've talked a lot about the Lord, of course. But it occurred to me: I don't think ever in my 38 years as a priest that I really focus on St. Joseph on this Feast of the Holy Family. Well, that ends today. I'm going to talk about this great saint. Something that Josemaría Escrivá said has always stayed in my mind. He said that the greatest male saint in the history of the Church was not a pope, not a bishop, not a priest, not a deacon, not a hermit, not a monk. The greatest male saint in the history of the Church was a husband and layman and a simple worker: St. Joseph.
And I think that helps to explain the universality of his appeal. So he should appeal to, I mean, the 99% of Catholic laity. He's one of your own. Now, what makes him, besides his universality, so important? First, we should note we know almost nothing about him. We have a few references, a handful of references in the Gospel, mostly concentrated in the Gospel of Matthew. And a very interesting thing, a curious thing, Joseph never speaks in the Gospels. There's no account of Joseph ever saying anything.
Now, think of the great "talkers" in the Bible, Abraham and Jacob and Moses and Joshua. Not to mention the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. Or think of King David and his great speeches. There are a lot of great talkers in the Bible. And of course, nothing wrong with that. They're sharing the divine Word. But Joseph, at least as he's portrayed in the Gospels, is not a talker at all. He doesn't say one word. Rather, he listens and does what he's told. It's the heart of holiness, everybody. He listens to the word of God, and then quietly, without fanfare, without protest, or "Hey, look at me," he does what he's told. Hans Urs von Balthasar, I've quoted this to you before, I think, but one of my favorite lines from him, he talks about the saints are those who disappear into the mission of the Church. It's lovely, isn't it?
A saint isn't drawing attention to himself or herself. That's a worldly thing. We're all taught that from the time we're kids, it's like: "Make sure people notice you, and they see you, and make sure you're the star of the show". Not the saints. They tend, Balthasar says, to disappear into their mission. Well, I think the example par excellence of that is St. Joseph There's no crowing. There's no "Hey, look at me". There's no "Let me tell you what I'm doing". He listens, does what he's told, gets about the mission that God gives him. That makes him a deeply attractive and appealing figure, I think, to a lot of people.
Here's a second dimension to his holiness, and this is so typical of the Bible. And the biblical authors, both Old Testament and New, will suggest a character to us in a few deft strokes. You know what I mean? They don't spend paragraphs and chapters laying out the complex psychology of their characters. But rather in a few simple descriptive moves, they clue you in to what's motivating a given figure. Well, a good example of this now in the story of Joseph is he's betrothed to Mary. So that was the custom. He's betrothed. He's engaged to her, but before they live together. He discovers that Mary is pregnant. He knows he's not the father. He's a man of the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law said this was an outrage.
In fact, if you follow it strictly, that person should be stoned to death. Joseph was a man of the law. He was righteous, which is a very high quality in the Jewish culture of his time. But we hear he doesn't press the law all the way to that rather grim conclusion. Rather, he decides to divorce Mary quietly. Now, why? So she would be free of the terrible humiliation, and ultimately of this penalty of death. What do we see there? A very interesting coming together of what I'd call righteousness and mercy. He's a righteous man, believes in the law, you bet. And, and, he sees the ultimate purpose of the law is to align us to the divine mercy.
Now, look here at two extremes that have been on display all throughout human history, very much on display today. You can be one-sidedly a person of the law. You reverence the law of God, the law of the Bible, the laws of the Church, and that's terrific. But if you do it in a one-sided way, you can become, in short order, a kind of legalistic bully. And we know the type, don't we? People that they know the law, and they're willing to use the law as a weapon against others. That's a one-sided legalism.
All right, go to the other extreme. Someone who embraces, in a one-sided way, a sort of ersatz mercy and doesn't care about the law. "Oh, who cares? God is love. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it", a sort of laissez-faire attitude toward the law. Well, a plague on both your houses, right? We don't want a brutal legalism. We don't want a sort of namby-pamby indifference to the law. What do you find in Joseph is a very delicate balance, suggested in that one scene, but a very delicate balance between righteousness and mercy. And that, I think, makes him very attractive and a wonderful model for all of us trying to make our way through the thickets of religious life.
Here's a third dimension of Joseph that I think is wonderful. He's a dreamer. So several times in the brief account we have of Joseph, we hear that God communicates to him in a dream, and he listens to that communication and abides by it. Look at dreamers in the Bible. Jacob rests his head on the rock, and then he dreams of the angels ascending and descending, Jacob's ladder. Think of St. Joseph's forebear in the Old Testament, Joseph, who's an interpreter of dreams. He understands the dreams of Pharaoh. Think of Daniel, the same thing many centuries later, who interprets the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.
What does it mean now in the Bible? I'd say something like this, dreams represent a sort of higher consciousness. If that sounds a little too New Age-y, maybe a deeper perception. So, there's the ordinary world that we take in with our senses and we figure out with our calculating minds, and we understand it politically, sociologically, psychologically, et cetera. Fine, that's the world of ordinary experience. But then there's a deeper perception: In and through all of that, what is God up to? What's God doing? What's God saying?
Well see, to get to that level, your mind has to be opened up. A new dimension has to emerge. There's a depth of perception that has to happen before you can see. Think of the Bible talking about hearing the word of God. Well, look, I'm hearing things all the time within my ordinary experience, and somehow amidst all of it, I hear God's word. What enables that is this capacity that Joseph had to dream. Think of it this way too, everybody, to imagine a new possibility. So he's looking at his situation with his betrothed, and things look pretty disastrous, don't they? She's pregnant out of wedlock. She's subject to the full penalty of the law. This is a very grim situation. But in his dream, he's opened to another possibility, another perspective. Would that all of us would become dreamers in that sense, sensitive to the word of God.
Now, what's next is, I think, what most people think of when they think of Joseph. So what did he hear in the dream? What is God saying to him? doesn't he? Well, God gives him a mission, His mission is to be the protector, listen now, of the two most important people who've ever lived, Mary and Jesus, the two sinless from the moment of their conception, the two most important figures in the history of salvation. And Joseph is given this extraordinary privilege and task to protect them. And now think again that the Bible just hints at this, but fill in the details a little bit with your imagination. What did this involve? This man has to escort this heavily pregnant woman from Nazareth down to Bethlehem. Read some accounts of what travel was like in the ancient world. It was not a walk in the park, dangers attendant upon the travelers at every turn.
Joseph conducts her to Bethlehem. Then, no room at the inn. If you've ever had the experience of arriving someplace and the room you thought you'd booked is not available, there's no place to stay, now, multiply that times about a thousand. You know what it would've been like in the ancient world not to have a place to stay, with a pregnant woman about to give birth. He has to bring her to a stable or cave, whatever that was. And there amidst the animals, she gives birth. All this time, Joseph is the one charged with protecting this mother and child. And then the most terrible part of the story: almost immediately afterwards, Herod, the king, the guy with all the power in the country, with armed soldiers is coming after this baby, is seeking to kill this baby.
So Joseph has to get up and get out of Bethlehem and make his way to Egypt. Oh, that sounds nice, a little trip to Egypt. Think again in the ancient world, crossing the Sinai desert. What did they eat? What did they drink? Where did they get provisions of any kind? She's just given birth. Here's a newborn baby in her arms. The land is no doubt crisscrossed by spies and agents of Herod. Joseph gets her safely to Egypt and gets the baby there, and then, has to bring them back. That's just one moment in his life as protector. I bet a lot of people listening to me right now have intuited that that's a role God's given you. Maybe you're not the star of the show, maybe you're not the one getting all the attention, but God's given you the task of protecting some very important people.
I'm talking about every father listening to me right now, every grandfather, anyone playing that role of protector. Joseph is your man. Joseph is the one who played that role. And then see, here's the beautiful connection, everybody. We refer to St. Joseph as the "Patron of the Universal Church". That's why he's such a high saint. Now think, his mission while he walked this earth was to protect the body of Christ, literally, the body of Christ. He was protecting the Lord. He still does, but now he's protecting the Mystical Body of Christ, which is the whole Church. See, that's why he's so powerful. That's why, go to Joseph. You're looking for something. You're looking for help and protection, intercession, whatever it is, "Ite ad Joseph", "Go to Joseph." right Because he still protects the church. Just one more point I want to make. Because under this rubric, my favorite title that Joseph has is he's the "terror of demons".
Thank God we got the terror of demons on our side. Paul said that we fight against not just flesh and blood but powers and principalities. There were the agents of Herod. To be sure, they were enemies of Christ that Joseph had to protect him from, but there are invisible enemies too, spiritual enemies. Thank God we have this warrior on our side, this protector who is the terror of demons. So everybody, might I suggest on this Holy Family Sunday, focus on St. Joseph, this dreamer, this man that saw at a higher level of perception, this protector of the Body of Christ. Reach out to him in prayer. And God bless you.