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| The Dream of Saint Joseph Antonio Palomino, 1697, Public Domain |
December 22, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Isaiah 7:10-14
Psalm 24:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-24
King Ahaz was a clever politician. He had been invited by two other hostile but larger kingdoms to enter an alliance against the super power of the Assyrians who had crushed all other smaller and neighboring kingdoms. He refused the entrance into an alliance against the Assyrians not out of fidelity to God but out of a recognition that such an alliance could not overcome the Assyrians. These two smaller kingdoms then decided to march against Ahaz and his kingdom of Judah and threaten the life and existence of Ahaz and Judah. So, Ahaz decides to outdo his enemies in cunning and negotiates a truce with the Assyrians that guaranteed the protection of Judah by the Assyrians against these enemies, but also demanded that Judah worship the false gods of the Assyrians. Ahaz cuts a deal for survival. Ahaz trusts more in the power of a king than in the power of God. What Ahaz truly has is a problem of faith and not a political problem. What Ahaz lacks is the gift of the Holy Spirit that is known as the “fear of the Lord.”
Advent in many ways is about this gift of the Holy Spirit, the “fear of the Lord.” The Blessed Virgin Mary sings of the fear of the Lord in her Magnificat recorded in Luke’s Gospel, “He has mercy on those who fear Him in every generation.” As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “Perhaps this is a phrase with which we are not very familiar or perhaps we do not like it very much. But "fear of the Lord" is not anguish; it is something quite different. It is the concern not to destroy the love on which our life is based. Fear of the Lord is that sense of responsibility that we are bound to possess for the portion of the world that has been entrusted to us in our lives.” It is the sense that we are accountable to God and we do not want to fail Him because He loves us. The fear of the Lord offers us the willingness to do whatever God asks of us.
Ahaz is unwilling to ask God for a sign in the face of an attacking enemy. He has made up his mind, and he is unwilling to seek recourse with God. Ahaz is unwilling to listen to the prophet Isaiah who tells Ahaz not to fear the two smaller kingdoms, but to remain faithful to the true and only God. Isaiah challenges Ahaz to ask the Lord for a sign; Ahaz refuses to do so with pious language but not out of authentic piety — he refuses out of his unwillingness to trust in anything but his own political bargaining. Yet, Isaiah declares the sign of contradiction as the sign of the Lord, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, God is with us.” Because of his lack of willingness, Ahaz sees the prophesy of Isaiah as a riddle and not as a mystery — he has no time for mystery. Ahaz dies as a defeated king, the result of his own idolatry.
Joseph is a descendant in the line of Ahaz. Joseph is a just man. He is rich in faithfulness to the Law. Not simply compliant, he fears the Lord, the God of Israel. Joseph possesses the richness of fidelity that manifests confidence in the Lord’s faithfulness to Israel expressed in the Law of the Covenant. The richness of justice in the old covenant included a sense of authentic piety in the face of mystery. Joseph is confused by Mary’s situation precisely because he is a just man and not only procedurally compliant. Joseph knows Mary. Joseph knows Mary to be truly who Mary is — pure and undefiled — even if he does not fully understand the cause of the purity of Mary. Joseph encounters a mystery. He is not baffled by a riddle, so he decides on the measured course of the Law so as not to presume upon God but to rely upon God. He proposes to himself a quiet divorce because he is unwilling to expose Mary to the treatment of the Law which Joseph knows Mary does not justly deserve, though he does not know why she doesn’t deserve such treatment.
God speaks to Joseph the just man, filled with righteousness, in a dream. He is told in his dream by God through an angel not to be afraid to take Mary into his home as his wife because it is through the Holy Spirit that Mary has conceived her child, whom Joseph is entrusted with the mission of naming him Jesus. As a righteous and just man, faithful not to his own negotiating skills but to God, Joseph is able to recognize what Ahaz was unwilling to do. Joseph recognizes the sign of Emmanuel, the sign promised by Isaiah the prophet — a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel. There is no chance for the bargaining with a false god in the disposition of Joseph who becomes the husband of Mary, and through the marriage with Mary becomes the foster father of Jesus and the guardian of Jesus and Mary. The fear of the Lord prompts Joseph to enter into the mystery of redemption. The entrance into this mystery involves a willingness to trust God and not simply a mistaken course of pride not to rely on God’s love and faithfulness — the course that Ahaz chose out of pride though expressed deceptively in pious language.
Karl Marx once said that human beings are not free if they owe their existence to the goodwill of someone else. If human beings are not autonomous, they are not free, they are dependent. Marx’s words underscore the problem that we are faced with today when we treat the mystery of God’s salvation of us as a riddle to be mastered by us and not a mystery for us to enter into with fear of the Lord — to live as Marx suggests is to see faith as naiveté, to see hope as wish, and to see love as slavery.
Advent is about our preparation for entering into the mystery of Christmas, not about the solving of a riddle through a course of pious compromise. Advent is about asking God for the willingness to do as He asks us to do without self-assurance but with reliance upon the confidence of love. The annunciation of Mary and the annunciation of Joseph of which we read in today’s Gospel show us how we should enter into the mystery of our redemption by Emmanuel. Mary’s annunciation is direct. She converses through the angel Gabriel directly with God. There is no room for doubt about the reality of Grace and the clarity of her call and of the freedom of her “yes” to God to be His Mother. By comparison, Joseph’s annunciation happens in the fog of a dream. He hears God’s mission conveyed through the angel, but he does not converse with the angel. Joseph responds with silent obedience, a characteristic of the fear of the Lord. Obedient silence is required for entrance into so profound of a mystery.
Joseph represents the faithfulness of the old covenant which manifests God’s fidelity. Yet, it is a faithfulness that in itself lacks the saving power of Grace — the Grace that fills us with God’s life because Mary was first filled with God’s Life, full of Grace, totally dependent on God. Faithfulness to the law and dependence upon Grace are both required of us for our willingness to be saved by God as God desires to save us through the humanity of His Son. As the theologian Joseph Ratzinger wrote, “The human agents who bear the promise are of great importance: Joseph and Mary. Joseph stands for God’s faithfulness to His promises to Israel, but Mary embodies the hope of mankind. Joseph is father according to the law, but Mary is mother with her own body: it is on account of her that God has been able to become one of us.”
At every Eucharist, we approach the mystery of our salvation. We don’t solve the riddles that baffle us in our efforts at achieving autonomy. At every Eucharist, we receive God’s uncompromising love for us through an act of faith and a sacrifice of hope that seals for us our participation in the new and eternal covenant of perfect love. In this sacrifice God fulfills the righteous fidelity of Saint Joseph that is brought about through the truly free and grace-filled “yes” of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At every Eucharist, we tremble at the gift and mystery of Emmanuel, who nourishes us with His Body and Blood that we might reject the idol of self-serving compromise and instead receive the grace of willingness to live in the mystery of God’s salvation of us through unconditional love.