The Nativity of the Lord

December 24, 2008

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

Matthew 1:18-25

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

            With regard to the voice of St. Joseph, the Gospels are silent.  They do not tell us a word of what St. Joseph said.  We can learn his genealogy from the beginning of St. Matthew’s Gospel, and we know from the same source that the people of Nazareth called Jesus “the carpenter’s son.”  Thus, we know       Joseph was a carpenter.  We know, also, from St. John’s Gospel that Joseph was dead before Jesus was crucified.  Otherwise, Jesus would not have given John the responsibility of taking care of Mary as He hung dying on the cross.  That is most of what we know about Joseph, except for what we heard today.

            Our Gospel this evening informs us that being a just man, Joseph had resolved to put Mary away quietly when he found out she was pregnant with a child that was not his.  But an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told Joseph to take Mary as his wife because the child was of the Holy Spirit.  Moreover, the angel told Joseph what to name his foster son, Jesus, because “he will save his people from their sins.”  Joseph did as he had been commanded, took Mary as his wife, yet had no relations with her, and when the child was born, he named the baby Jesus.

            What we learn about Joseph, therefore, is more important than anything he might have said.  We learn that he was obedient, just, and faithful.  First, his obedience:  later in the Gospel, we learn that the obedience of Joseph saves Jesus’ life.  Because December 28^th falls on a Sunday this year, we will not observe the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when we remember the slaughter that King Herod undertook in an effort to kill the new-born Savior of the world.  But St. Matthew recounts for us how Joseph, again commanded by an angel of the Lord in a dream, took Jesus and Mary to Egypt in order to escape the soldiers who were killing every boy in Bethlehem under the age of two.

            Joseph’s obedience, therefore, enabled the later obedience of his stepson Jesus.  Without Joseph’s willingness to do as God told him, Jesus would have perished along with all the other boys who Herod killed.  Without Joseph’s obedience, Mary would have had no one to protect her and her newborn son.  Without such protection, Jesus could never have been obedient to His heavenly Father, laid down His life as a sacrifice for sin, and saved all of us from eternal death.  The final result of Joseph’s obedience was the salvation of the world.

            We thus learn something about obedience from the Gospel we heard tonight.  We learn that the weak require the obedience of the strong.  Jesus was fortunate because His foster father was obedient because he was just.  Jesus had someone to love Him, protect Him, teach Him a trade, and give to His mother Mary the security she needed to nurture her son as only a mother can.  How many children today do not have obedient and just men to love them, protect them, teach them and give their mothers the security they need to create a nurturing environment for their offspring?  Far too many, actually.  Far too many strong men do not live with their weak children.  Far too many strong men are disobedient and unjust and leave their weak children vulnerable to the caprice of predators that prey on easy targets.  Abandoned by the disobedient and unjust, these children have no fathers to love them, protect them, teach them, and make sacrifices for their mothers.

            This absence of security in the home, the very security St. Joseph, as a just man, provided, means that children without fathers tend to focus mostly on how they are going to get by from day to day.  Whereas a child who is secure can contemplate the purpose God has given him, the reason for his existence, and the particular way he is called to serve his fellow man, the child of the unjust and disobedient man wonders where he is going to get the affection, the material needs, and the education we so often take for granted.  Without a strong father to provide stability in the home, weak children are often set adrift and never get to discover why God put them on this earth.  Because of St. Joseph, Jesus did not have this problem.  The stability, the income, and the security that Joseph provided for their home meant that Mary and Jesus could contemplate the transcendent and hear God calling them to give their sacred hearts for the salvation of the world.

            St. Joseph was obedient and just, making sacrifices for his family, only because he was a man of faith.  He believed the angel when told his stepson would save his people from their sins.  Of course, it was difficult to see that a child still in the womb would be the Savior of all mankind, but Joseph believed what he could not see.  He was assured of what the Jews had hoped for from time immemorial.  St. Joseph is silent in the Gospels, and thus we never hear him complaining, nor do we hear him ask for a sign.  Rather, we see his faith reflected in his obedience and in his commitment to justice.  We never hear St. Joseph confess his faith as we do St. Mary (“Let it be done unto me according to thy word”).  We only see St. Joseph live out that same faith.

            Herein we see the reason that so many of the strong in the world today are both disobedient and unjust.  We see the reason that so many children are abandoned by their parents, why so many are destroyed instead of cherished and protected, why the weak are more vulnerable today than they have ever been in the whole history of Western civilization.  The weak fall prey to the disobedient and unjust because so many of the strong have either lost their faith or never had it to being with.

            The world needs more people like St. Joseph.  Unlike Jesus and Mary, Joseph was a sinner just like you and me.  He struggled to do the right thing, just as we do.  But because he was a man of faith, the world’s first Christmas ended with joy and singing, rather than as a tragic tale of yet another weakling victimized by a faithless, heartless king.

            Herod did not spoil the first Christmas because when Jesus came to us as a weakling, He appointed an obedient, just and strong man of faith to protect Him, to cherish Him, quite simply to love Him.  Faith, we wee, in the end, is what enables us to love.  Had Joseph been devoid of faith, he would have had no love for Jesus, and absent that love, Jesus would not have been alive to share with us His love for the whole world.

            So, if you lament the shortage of love in the world, if the strong victimizing the weak angers you as much as it does me, begin to transform the world around you by being obedient and just.  Do what the Lord requires by being St. Joseph to the vulnerable Jesus.  You are here tonight because you are a person of faith, and thus you have the capacity to love as St. Joseph loves, as Mary loves, as Jesus loves.  So make Christmas merrier and the New Year happier for the vulnerable by living out in your life the faith that together we are about to profess.  St. Joseph shows us that what we do is more important than what we say.  So be obedient.  Be just.  And by this love, be faithful.  You never know how many lives your faith may save.