19 March 2018

Solemnity of Saint Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary

In an audience with young men and women in formation for priesthood and consecrated life—at which I was present—Pope Francis told us that we would not know what it meant to be men or women until we became fathers and mothers. The pope then raised an objection to his own statement: “but you might answer, ‘I will be a priest one day, I will never be a father!’” Francis then explained that young people in formation should give themselves to the Lord and to his people no less than a good father and a good mother give themselves over to their family and their children, with all of the sacrifices that such a love entails. When we do this, the pope said, then we can become true spiritual fathers and mothers, with spiritual children; only then do we truly begin to understand what it means to be a man or a woman.

Today, we celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph, spouse of the Virgin Mary. Unlike the more recent feast that we celebrate on May 1, where we celebrate Saint Joseph as worker, today’s feast emphasizes Joseph’s special role as Mary’s husband and as the patriarch and provider of the Holy Family. If what it means to be a man is as closely linked with what it means to be a father as Pope Francis suggests, then perhaps young men today would do well to ask Saint Joseph to help them enter more deeply into the mystery of man that Joseph lives in his life. The “machismo” that so many people associate with being a man actually leads us off track, since a “macho” man, concerned with his own knowledge and pride, and perhaps with his sexual virility, hardly makes a good father. The marriage between Mary and Joseph is a real marriage, perhaps the most genuine marriage that ever existed, in the holiest of families, and yet it was never sexually consummated. God entrusted Joseph with the special task of providing for and protecting the Holy Family ( Mt 1-2). The sacrifices that this entails make Joseph a genuine father in the sense that Pope Francis indicates, and therefore a true model of a man, even if Joseph is not Jesus’ biological Father, as Jesus gently reminds the Holy Family in Luke 2. It is Joseph’s silent, sacrificial love, and his devotion to his family and the task that God has to entrusted him that make him the man to whom God the Father can entrust the care of his only Begotten Son. Through Joseph’s intercession, may we, too, learn what it means to be men and women by becoming true fathers and mothers to the children whom God wishes to entrust to our care.