I think it fair to say that we all pray with regularity that we and those we love might live a life free of adversity. I think it also fair to say that God’s response is not always to shield us from all adversity, but to grace us with the strength, patience, and perseverance that empower us in the face of adversity.
Scripture witnesses the love, compassion, and courage with which St. Joseph, venerated in a special way this year, embraced Mary at the beginning of their life together, and embraced Jesus who would be entrusted to his care during the tender years of his young life. While we don’t hear or read words of care and wisdom he might have shared with the young Jesus, we do read and hear of the courage and fortitude with which he provided for the care and safety of his wife and young son in the midst of the adversity of an imperial census that forced them into questionable circumstances just as their son would be born. We read and hear of the same obedient courage that would bring them all to safety in a foreign land when the child’s life was being sought in their homeland, and of the courage required to go home when God’s messenger prompted Joseph to do so.
Those human qualities of courage, fortitude, of obedience and loving compassion are most certainly witnessed in the man nurtured by Joseph, who would be experienced in this world as the revelation of the Kingdom not of this world. In every adversity that gripped him directly, and in the face of adversity that gripped those around him, terrified in a boat on a stormy sea, terrified at the prospect of being stoned to death for sin, beaten down by physical deformity or some manner of possession over which there seemed no power to free or heal...Jesus speaks and enacts the very saving power of God.
With Joseph’s prayer, and the Son’s blessing, Happy Father’s Day!
Fr. Tom