Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 5:13 - 16

There was a very insightful article recently by the New York Times columnist David Brooks. He talked about the fact that there are two extremes; in one, it’s rugged individualism, the idea that every man is for himself. If you get to be a billionaire by climbing over other people, that’s fine. If you are starving on the streets, it’s probably your own fault, but certainly no concern of mine. It’s everyone for himself or herself. This individualism is behind the rise in suicide and drug addiction and the epidemic of loneliness we see in so many so called “advanced” societies. The other extreme is tribalism. It's the idea that you belong to a group that thinks alike, acts alike, and sees every other tribe as a potential enemy that should be wiped out. It’s like being part of an ant colony. Life is war, and the worst thing that can happen is for you to be ejected from your tribe. This certainly characterizes our politics these days, and it’s an attitude that’s encouraged by the internet, where you can find support for your own ideas without ever having to consider whether they might be wrong.

Brooks points out that these two extremes have one thing in common -- they make people miserable. It turns out, however, that we are social animals, meant to cooperate with each other. And when we are doing that, there are all kinds of hormonal changes in your brain that make you feel better. There was a time when the American flag was a symbol of the underlying unity among Americans, regardless of their political differences. Now of course, even the flag is seen as divisive.

If we hadn't celebrated the feast of the presentation last Sunday we would have heard the gospel for the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, in which Jesus gives us the eight beatitudes. You remember, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are the merciful … “ and so on. A better translation of the Greek is the word “happy” or “most fortunate”. Jesus gives us the way to be happy – and it isn't individualism and it isn't tribalism.

Today Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth. He doesn’t say “we should be” or “we are becoming” -- we are right now. There is no way we can exist and not be. Salt is essential for human life, but too much in your blood will kill you just as quickly as too little. And salt is important in food -- but too little leaves the food tasteless, and too much makes the food taste terrible. Salt is best when it is just right, where it is almost ignored because it is doing its job. When we are salt, we recognize that our goal is to work for the common good in the best way we can, rather than our own. Happy are the meek.

Jesus tells us we are the light of the world. We are not expected to hide our light, but it should shine where the whole world can see it. Light is meant to be shared, to eliminate the dark places. Almost the opposite of salt, right? But I think Jesus wants his followers to live conscious of the fact that they are being watched -- by children, other adults; by Christians and non-Christians alike.

This gospel passage is part of the sermon on the mount. Jesus had just finished giving us the eight beatitudes -- kind of like the ten commandments for the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew is very interested in telling the story of Jesus so that it will encourage the churches that are composed of and being persecuted by both Jews and gentiles. And he is saying that if we in our churches live as Jesus teaches, we will not only be happy and blessed, but we will begin to make over the world.

And that brings us back to the article by David Brooks. It isn’t rocket science to point out that people are generally happier when they are working cooperatively toward a common goal. That’s one of the things that churches are supposed to be -- places where people can cooperate in acts of charity and spreading the gospel -- kind of a super family. Our churches are obviously places of worship, where the community prays and receives the sacraments. Our parishes are also meant to help form us into disciples of Jesus Christ. But do we ever consciously set out to give the world an example of a way to live, a way that leads to true happiness, a way that makes the world a better place?

In our parish we have a few such efforts -- Food for the Soul, the Knights of Columbus, the St. Mary’s guild. Periodically throughout the year we raise money for good causes. But you and I know that most of these efforts are carried out by a small fraction of our parishioners. Maybe as we ask ourselves how we are being salt and light, we might ask whether there is some activity we could devote an hour or so to every week.

Make no mistake, Jesus tells us that we have a mission, a mission which he will later on compare to leaven as well. Salt, light, leaven; he wants us to show the world that there is a better way, there is a way to escape individualism and tribalism, and be happy rather than angry or fearful. The kingdom of Heaven is the answer to the world’s problems, and you and I are the ones to whom it has been entrusted. Like it or not, we are the salt, we are the light, we are the world's only hope.

The Presentation of the Lord

Luke 2:22 – 40

Today is Superbowl Sunday and many of us will be celebrating this unique American holiday by eating salty foods, drinking beer, and screaming at the television set. To our surprise, we were recently contacted by one of our children, who offered to get us a flat screen television and even install it for us in time to watch the Supeerbowl. I didn't have the heart to tell her that we probably wouldn't watch the superbowl. And as for the flat screen tv...

We bought a new television set 36 years ago when we moved here. It still works, and I had it all rigged up to do everything I wanted it to do, although I don’t have any vcr tapes anymore and precious few dvd’s. We don’t watch the news and any entertainment comes from netflix. Our antique television set annoys our children. Which of course is another reason to keep it. My wife and I have different temperaments; she doesn’t like change and I don’t like to replace something that’s working, so we said no, not now.

But it got me thinking. What do we do with gifts? We’ve given and received many gifts down through the years, and many of them have gone unused. They were accepted with thanks, but weren’t things we used and so gathered dust.

Some gifts are forced upon you. My daughters many years ago decided their mother would be lonely without them so they bought her a parakeet. My wife was re-learning the organ in those days and the parakeet either thought it could sing along or was protesting. But my wife was happy when the parakeet lived out its short life span.

And there are those people that if you give them a gift, they feel obligated to give you something back that is worth more. My in-laws were like that.

The feast of the presentation which we celebrate today is all about the greatest gift of all. As per custom, Mary and Joseph are giving back to God the gift they have received -- their first-born son. The average couple would have then symbolically offered a couple of birds or if they were well off, an animal, and then would have taken the child back. This was recognition that the child came from God. But the difference here is that someone places the child in the arms of Simeon, who is a symbol for the righteous people of Israel, the people who have been waiting. And Simeon recognizes the gift that is the child. Luke turns our attention to Anna as well. Her age, her seven year marriage, the tribe she came from and her father’s name all are heavy with symbolism, but we don’t have time for that here. Anna is a symbol of the rest of humanity who have been waiting for Israel to lead them out of the darkness. And these two elderly people accept the gift of the child with joy.

There are times, I think, that we don’t fully appreciate our Lord as a gift. Sometimes we flat out refuse the gift; we don’t want to have to change our ways; to accept Jesus fully is a commitment. There are times when we make an effort to accept the Son of God into our lives, but eventually we find ourselves going through the motions in our religious practices; we even sometimes wish that we could be like our neighbors who have no faith and yet seem happy. And there are times when we don’t treat God’s Son as a gift at all. We have the attitude that unless we meet the standards, unless we do good works and lead sinless lives, we won’t get the gift; we feel as though God is asking a quid pro quo, to use a term that has been in the news a lot.

But the truth is that the gift of God’s Son to humanity is a gift without strings, a gift given to make us happy forever, a gift that we only have to accept.

When you think about it, every Mass acts out exactly what God does for us. We take ordinary bread and wine, and through God’s power it becomes the real presence of His Son. We offer this gift to the Father because we can offer nothing greater; and he gives it right back to us as food for body and soul.

Today on the feast of the Presentation let us be filled with gratitude that we have been given God’s son because the Father loves us so much and wants nothing from us but that we love him back. And let us resolve to spend our lives loving him back.

Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle A

John 1:29 - 34

Have you ever asked “Why am I a Catholic Christian?” Most of us would say, we were born into a Catholic family. But every one of us probably knows many people who were born into Catholic families who have left the Church, who don’t consider themselves Catholics anymore. Some believe in nothing; some have joined the Assembly of God across the river, which has a sizable population of former Catholics; and some have drifted into other religions, other denominations. So being born into a Catholic family doesn’t cut it. Some of us would say that it’s because being a Catholic is the best way to come into a relationship with Jesus -- but that assumes we want such a relationship, which in turn means that somewhere along the line we decided that was better than not having a relationship; we experienced the testimony of someone else. I grew up in a Catholic family. My mom and dad were serious Catholics. I think we all expect our mothers to be religious, but my dad was as well, and that's been shown to be a predictor of whether the children will remain in the church. He went to confession; he sometimes went to Mass on weekdays in addition to Sundays. He was a knight of Columbus; and he knew why he believed and could tell us kids why. His testimony and a major effect on me. When I look back on my life, I can see how every now and then someone would testify, and I would be influenced.

Somewhere between grade school and college most of us go through a transition between our childhood faith and an adult faith. This is a very dangerous time, because many never make the transition, or lose their faith. At that time they especially need testimony. When I went to college I remember one professor who was kind of famous because he had been one of the scientists who worked on the development of the atom bomb. He was brilliant and knew physics backward and forward. And he went to mass daily. And during my internship one of my teachers was a cardiologist -- and we all knew where to grab him for a consultation -- outside the hospital chapel after morning mass. These people testified to the importance of their Catholic faith..

So if you put all the accounts of Jesus’ baptism together with this post-baptismal account in the gospel of John, the sequence is like this: First, God himself testifies -- This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” then Satan testifies, in a way, by trying to tempt Jesus away from his mission; and finally, John testifies to his divinity as well as his role in our salvation.

Each one of us is a Christian because of someone else’s testimony. It may have been a parent or grandparent, a teacher or a priest. It may have been a good friend. But had they not testified, we would not be Christians. And if no one testifies, there will soon be no Church.

It’s interesting that John tells us twice, “I did not know him, but…” And we all say, “What do you mean? He’s your cousin. '' But John did not know him as the Lamb of God, as the Son of God, until the event of his baptism and times afterward. And even when John was in prison, he wasn't sure; he told his disciples to go and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” John identifies why we do not testify -- we are not certain. But John still testified. Because if no one testifies, there will be no church.

So we need to ask, how are we testifying? Testifying means that we make known to others that Jesus means something in my life. For Catholics we find Jesus in the Church, his body extended through time and space. I think a lot of us fall back on the idea that if we live good lives, if we are generous, if we help our neighbor, we are testifying. But to testify means that the person to whom we testify knows that Jesus is the reason for our actions and that we find Him best in our Church. If he does not know this, he won’t turn to Jesus, he won’t have a chance to enter into that relationship which is his only hope of fulfilling his humanity, of reaching his true goal in eternity.

We need to tell people that we actually believe what Jesus teaches; that Jesus is the reason for the good we do. It’s definitely hard in our culture. It’s hard to say, “God Bless You” instead of “goodbye” when we leave a friend. It’s hard to make the sign of the cross and say grace before you eat in public. It's hard to offer to pray with someone who is ill or in trouble. But we need to show that our faith is behind our actions, because if no one testifies, there will be no church.

Last Friday we celebrated the feast of Saint Anthony of the Desert, who lived about 300 years after the birth of Christ. Anthony was a rich young man who heard the words “If you would be perfect, go sell all your possessions, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me.” Anthony did that and went out in the desert by himself. But his testimony was so effective that soon he was surrounded by others who wanted to imitate him and learn from him.

And that’s what testimony is all about. We have to live in a way that people will see us and want to imitate us -- especially important for our children, our close friends, our spouses. And we have to do it so that others see that it is our faith that moves us, and our faith comes from our Catholic identity. And it’s never easy, but the more we realize that we are here to testify, the more we practice testifying, the easier it will become and the more fruitful it will be. Because if no one testifies, then there will be no church.

Baptism of the Lord, 2020

Matthew 3:13 - 17

After 2000 years we still don’t completely understand baptism.  For example, a Catholic and a Baptist were arguing one day. The Baptist said, “You Catholics aren’t really baptized, because they only pour a little water on the top of your head. .”  The Catholic said, “If I went down into the water up to my waist, would that count?” “No” said the Baptist. “How about if I went up to my neck?” “Still wouldn’t count.” How about if I went into the water so deep that only the top of my head was sticking out?”  “Wouldn’t be a real baptism”. “So you admit that baptism only counts if you get the top of the head wet?”

Baptism is the first of the sacraments, and like all sacraments, we don’t fully understand it because it’s a mystery.  We can never quite answer all the questions it raises. And that goes back to the beginning, when John said to Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”  And Jesus replied, “allow it for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Most of us have heard the notion that Baptism results in the removal of all sin, original and personal, and of course Jesus had neither.  Some of us have heard the idea that baptism causes a change in our very being, a change we describe as being born again; the old me is gone, the new me, sinless, is now here. But Jesus does not become a new being with baptism. And I don’t think Jesus was baptized just to go through the motions.   Think about this. When Jesus is baptized, a voice from the clouds calls out, “This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

The Father is not pleased with Jesus because He is Jesus; the Father has loved the Son from eternity, and can’t love him more.  And Jesus hasn’t done anything yet; we have no record of him preaching or healing or doing much of anything before his baptism. No, the Father is pleased because Jesus, true God but also true man, has freely chosen to follow the path God has set out for him.  Jesus is not a robot; as a human being with a free will, Jesus could have said, “I’d rather not suffer on a cross and really and truly die.” But in the moment of baptism, Jesus accepts the Father’s plan for him. And as Henri Nouwen said, that plan was to be taken, blessed, broken and given.  Jesus allows himself to be taken by the Father, to be set upon a path to do His will; Jesus in that moment of baptism says, “Not my will but yours be done.” And he is then blessed. Blessed is related to the word “benediction” which is Latin for “saying good things”. When Jesus submits to God’s plan, God recognizes him as beloved son.  It isn’t clear from the gospel whether only Jesus heard this or the people around him as well, but Jesus is confirmed in the knowledge that he is beloved, that he is Son, that he pleases God -- even though he has done nothing but resolve to allow God to set his path.  

And Jesus is broken.  The Gospels only hint at the fact that Jesus’ life had its share of bad things.  People try to kill him; he is misunderstood; he has nowhere to lay his head; he is ridiculed and scorned by the authorities; his best friends disappear when they are most needed.  And of course he is turned over to the authorities and beaten and put to death. His status as beloved of God does not spare him from pain and suffering and even death.  

And of course he is given.  The very nature of putting yourself in God’s hands means that God will give you away.  And Jesus was given, and is still given today. He is first of all given in the Eucharist, to feed his people.  He is given in the scriptures; and he is given in his body, the Church, in those very gifts which God puts into each of his people for the building up of the Church.

So one of the reasons Jesus is baptized is because in that moment he surrenders his body, his mind, his whole being to the Father.  

And that reminds us, of course, that our baptisms have something in common with that of Jesus.  Because when you and I are baptized, we also hear in our hearts “You are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  When we choose to be baptized, when our parents choose baptism for us, we first of all become God’s beloved son or daughter, before we’ve done anything.  We choose, imperfectly, of course, to allow God to direct our lives rather than ourselves. We are blessed because God himself speaks of his pleasure in us, that we have allowed him to take us out of the world for his purposes.  And we know that like Jesus, we too can expect to be broken. Since being broken is part of God’s plan for us, we begin to understand how a martyr could go to his death singing; we see how great saints could laugh at death, like Thomas More, who asked the executioner to spare his beard, because it had done nothing wrong; or Saint Lawrence, who told his executioners to turn him over on the griddle, because he was done on one side.  When we are being broken, we draw so close to Jesus, like the good thief. And we are given. The nature of being a Christian is to be a gift, to be part of God’s fatherly looking after his people; and our baptism initiates that as well.

And finally, we see another reason why the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life.  Every time we celebrate Mass, we enact the taking, the blessing, the breaking and the giving of Jesus Christ and in receiving his body and blood, we affirm our part in the mysterious plan of God that began with our baptism.  

Feast of the Epiphany, 2020

Matthew 2:1 - 12

For many families, ours included, the Christmas season is a time when we go out of our way to be with those we love. In our house by the time the season is over we will have been to several parties given by our children or ourselves; we will have had house guests every day for about three weeks; and we will have our days disrupted in other ways. And when everyone is gathered together our thoughts will go to those who can’t be with us as well. And yet, in this age of the internet, why could we not have simply gone to our computers and set up a skype conference or something like that. We could still see and hear each other, and we would not have to put ourselves out to be in each other’s presence.

Of course no one wants to skype when you can be in each other’s actual presence. We human beings are designed that way. And all of us know that even though we can’t explain it, being in the presence of someone beats phoning or skyping or communicating in any other way. In fact, it’s one of the last things to go in patients with dementia. They lose the ability to talk or feed themselves, but another person’s presence is often the one thing that will bring them peace, will calm them down when they are upset.

The Feast of the Epiphany celebrates God’s presence among us. The Magi learned from their studies that someone really important would be born in Bethlehem at a certain time and place. But when you read the whole story from Matthew, it turns out that they weren’t the only ones. The Jewish scholars had the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel to tell them the same thing, and thus they were able to answer Herod’s questions, which eventually ended in the slaughter of all the boys under two years of age in Bethlehem. The Magi went to great trouble to be in the presence of the Messiah, the promised one. And when they found the little boy and his parents in a decidedly lower class home, they did not go away disappointed; they rejoiced exceedingly. They saw the child with the eyes of faith. The Jewish scholars knew that the prophets had predicted that the Messiah would come at a certain time, and this was the time; and in a certain place, and Behtlehem was the place. But they are not moved to travel eight miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem; and if they had, they might have been disappointed in what they found; they did not see with the eyes of faith.

Do you believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God from all eternity, at the same time the son of Mary who walked the roads of Palestine two thousand years ago, is made present in the form of bread and wine at this Mass and at every Mass through the words of consecration pronounced by our pastor? If you don’t, you are in good company. Only one third of those who identify as Catholics actually believe that. About seventy percent believe that the bread and wine are symbols, not reality. And yet Vatican II proclaimed that the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. When I deal with elderly people in nursing homes, I’m surprised at how many of them are Catholic, but have long ceased to practice their faith. I’m sure you have as hard a time as I do when you wonder how a young man who once wanted to dedicate his life to Jesus and the Church can become a serial abuser. In 1960, latin Americans were 90% Catholic; today it’s closer to 65%. The statistics are depressing. And I wonder whether much of this can be blamed on the fact that we no longer appreciate the unique nature of the Eucharist, the very presence of Jesus Christ, God and man, in our midst.

Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, was on to something when he proposed his wager -- If we behaved as though revelation was true, and it turned out we were wrong, we’d just be dead. If we behave as though revelation is false, and it turns out we were wrong, we would be in hell for all eternity. I think we could say similar things about the Eucharist. If Jesus is really present in a unique way in the Eucharist, how are we demonstrating that in our words and actions? If it is possible to be in the physical presence of the Second Person of the Trinity who became man, died for our sins, and rose again to conquer death for us, what are we doing that shows we believe this? If we believe Jesus feeds us with his body and blood so that we have the grace to become other Christs, adopted children of Jesus’ Father, how carefully do we prepare to receive this great gift?

I know I’m preaching to the choir here. But I wonder, if you and I made a resolution to increase our devotion to the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament during the coming year, what might happen? Would some of our fallen away parishioners return to our fellowship? Would some of our children decide to become priests or religious? Would couples living together feel called to sacramental marriage? Would we ourselves experience a more vibrant faith, a faith that would give us strength to make a difference in our world?

God is everywhere; but Jesus, who is God made Man, is always truly present in our Eucharist, always here in our Church. Jesus stands before us in the Blessed Sacrament during formal adoration. Are we like the wise men who physically and at great personal expense came into his presence? Or like the Jewish scholars who knew what the Magi knew, but did not leave the comfort of their homes to visit the living God made man?

Christmas, 2019

Luke 2:15 - 20

My mother was a very bright woman. She had a marvelous sense of humor and on a good day could bring tears of laughter to the people around her. But she would have mood swings which were unpredictable, and when they swung low, she could lash out at everyone, including my poor dad. We learned that if we waited a bit and stayed below the radar, she would swing back up again and everything would return to some sense of normal. None of us, of course, had an idea of what her inner life was all about; to my sisters and I, she was just Mom.

A cousin in Montana just sent me a sort of autobiography my mother had written. This was in response to another cousin’s attempt to collect these from my mother and her nine siblings. So I was reading through this document, written in 1993, before the Alzheimer’s, after she had buried two husbands and was living in California with her third. And I was struck by the way certain life events stood out. How when she was in grade school, her shoes were damaged, and her mother made her wear an old pair of her brother’s to school. Until she got a new pair of her own, she made sure no one could see her feet. She remembered the tears in her father’s eyes when he told his children about their stillborn brother. She wrote about when she met my father -- she a just-graduated nurse and he a young man on the surgical unit after an appendectomy, and how it was love at first sight.

There were a lot of other events that stood out in my mother’s mind; and it was obvious that they were things that must have affected her deeply. I could see a reason for her mood swings, for her sense of humor, for many things about her that I had always taken for granted. They were mere moments in her long life, but they were things that she must have reflected on in her heart, that had become part of her story.

We are coming to the end of the Christmas story. Although part of that story is told in the Gospel of Matthew, that part focuses on Joseph. The telling of the story in the Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, seems to be made up of things Mary would have remembered -- in fact, things that only she or she and Joseph could have remembered. Things like the annunciation, the visit to Elizabeth, the taking shelter in a stable, the birth of her baby, the appearance of the angels, the adoration of the shepherds, the presentation in the temple, ,,, and we imagine that some time many years from the actual events Mary recalls them for the writer of the Gospel. Surely there were many more things Mary could have told Saint Luke about Jesus; maybe she did. Down through the ages many people, including Mohammed, added things to the story of Jesus’ childhood. But Saint Luke wrote down those things that Mary would eventually reflect on in her heart, things that would have shaped this first, this perfect Christian, the one who first bore Jesus within her body and soul.

There have been many thinkers who came to the conclusion that the best explanation for why we are here is that there is a God, one God. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and indeed many others before and since the lifetime of Jesus’ mother were convinced of this. But the greatest of these thinkers concluded that God was without limits, that he had no form; that he was unchanging because to be capable of change would be to be limited; that he had always existed, that he was all powerful, that he was all good -- and it is not easy to love a God like that.

Human beings are designed to love. We have been loving each other since before history began. Genesis points to the ideal love between husband and wife, a love that would forshadow the love of Christ for his Church, and such a natural thing that most human beings attempt to enter that kind of relationship, even though the reality is always marred by original sin. But all of us long for love and long to be loved.

The memories of Mary are recorded by Saint Luke so that we too can reflect on them, so that those memories can shape us and make a difference in our own lives. The almighty God who has an infinite love for all of his creation, and indeed each of his human children knows that it is almost impossible for us to love a God without limits, a God we cannot see or hear or touch; so he became a baby, helpless, limited by time, born and destined to die, because it is easy for you and I to love a baby.

When we reflect on something with our hearts, we take it into ourselves, we allow it to change us, we keep going back to see if there is more there than we thought the first time we reflected. And on this Christmas morning Mary invites us to reflect again on the miracle of the incarnation, when God entered history as her newborn baby, so that we could love him and become one with him.

Fourth Sunday of Advent, cycle A

Matthew 1:18 - 24

When we read the gospel today and indeed all that the gospels tell us about Joseph, we can’t help but form an impression – obviously colored by the various pictures we've seen. Sometimes he is pictured as a grandfatherly figure with a long beard, someone who is no threat to Mary’s virginity; and sometimes he is pictured as a young, handsome man who works steadfastly in the carpentry shop, leads his wife and her child through the desert to Egypt, or stands silently behind Mary as she hears the prophecy of old Simeon that a sword would pierce her heat, or is upset with Jesus when they find him in the temple. Joseph’s lack of any speaking parts makes him seem bloodless, something other than human; and where does that leave us? What do we learn from Joseph?

I sometimes think we overlook the human being here. First of all Matthew tells us he and Mary are engaged. This meant that a wedding was in the planning; it meant that at some level the young couple were attracted to each other. Maybe it wasn’t the stuff of a Hallmark movie; people thought about marriage differently in those days. But the way it worked was that Joseph was preparing a home for them to live in, and the ladies of the town were helping Mary get things ready for that day. And I suspect both of them were eager to please each other, and when they got together, supervised, of course, the two of them would talk about the future. We Catholics emphasize Mary’s virginity, but in those days being a mother was the pinnacle of a woman’s success, not virginity, and Mary, like all young ladies, was looking forward to that. And then one day, Joseph is shocked because Mary is with child. If he didn’t love her, he could simply accuse her of adultery, but because he loved her, it was with a broken heart that he planned to divorce her -- meaning that he was willing to let friends and neighbors believe Mary was carrying his child, but he no longer wanted to spend his life with her. Did he feel relief when the angel told him this was the child of the Most High, who was destined to save his people? I think on one level Joseph may have felt cheated; God had stepped in and changed everything. Joseph had no say in the matter. But he soldiered on -- and the next several years were one unsettling thing after another. Mary had the child in a stable, probably unattended by a midwife. He would be sleeping peacefully and an angel would tell him to get up and take Mary and Joseph to Egypt. He would finally get established in Egypt and an angel would tell him to go back Israel. He wondered about the prophecies of the two old people in the temple; he grieved with Mary when Jesus remained behind; and he must have felt a special pain when Jesus said “I must be about my Father’s business” -- this child who had grown precious to him, this child he worked with every day, passing on the skills of his trade.

We hear nothing more about Joseph after the finding of Our Lord in the temple. Some people who are amazed at Jesus’ preaching ask each other, “Isn’t this the son of the carpenter?” But Joseph came on the scene, cooperated with a plan he had nothing to do with, and just as silently stepped off the stage. In the Cathedral of Saint Helena which was my church as a child, there is a stained glass window in a side chapel which shows Joseph lying on his death bed with Mary at one side and Jesus on the other. But, we only imagine that scene. Joseph may have fallen off a roof or died of some more gruesome cause than old age; or he may have lived long past Jesus’ crucifixion. No one knows.

John Lennon wrote a song with the line “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. I think that describes Joseph’s life. And ours as well. You and I are like Joseph; we think we know what we are going to do tomorrow, where we will be next year. If we are mature adults we know there is a lot of uncertainty in our predictions; but emotionally, we still cling to the illusion that we are in control. And not being in control is upsetting.

Joseph discovered very early in his relationship with Mary that he was not in control; that God was doing the directing. Matthew says that Joseph’s life was directed by angels -- God’s messengers who told him where to go and what to do. I wonder if we are as well. Angels are simply messengers of God and every one of us has been directed by things that happen to us. God still speaks to us through such angels even if we don't realize it at the time..

For Christians Joseph is seen as the model protector, the ideal provider. He was essential to the survival of Mary and Jesus. But I wonder how he felt when all this was going on? I suspect that at some point he realized that he was not in the driver’s seat; he realized that Mary and Jesus did not belong to him, but he belonged to them. And for those of us who have raised families and are well into our twilight years, like Joan and I, we can look back and see that God’s hand directed our lives, despite our own plans; and we can say, that’s a good thing; I only wish I had been more cooperative -- like Joseph was.