Merry or Shalom

A Catholic Advent Mass Reading:

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.

When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph,

but before they lived together,

she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.

Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man,

yet unwilling to expose her to shame,

decided to divorce her quietly.

Such was his intention when, behold,

the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.

For it is through the Holy Spirit

that this child has been conceived in her.

She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus,

because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,

which means “God is with us.”

When Joseph awoke,

he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him

and took his wife into his home.

Joseph van House, O.Cist, says that his namesake Joseph has no words in the Gospels. I think in this is the key for what I would imagine as a natural explanation for the above. There are those who might talk with pressure, have mood shifts and, in an excited state, think so fast that they don’t lay down memories for what they are thinking or doing. Perhaps Joseph was such a man. He had a betrothed who was a virgin, in the original Hebrew meaning young attractive woman. Do a movie fade in and fade out, and you have him wondering, in the words of the Gospel, why his betrothed is pregnant. And later Jesus’ thinking is challenged by the Socratic and thinking Joseph. But when the story is written, the Joseph of history has so many words which would pressure through the story as they did sometimes in life, the writers didn’t know where to begin and didn’t want to upstage the Son. All of this they dealt with by only giving the reflected words of Joseph.

And yet first of all for Joseph, and first to Joseph, Jesus is Emmanuel. May we welcome Jews, family of Joseph, and on their own terms as Joseph would only accept, on Christmas.