St. Joseph – The Days After Christmas
December 28, 2010 by admin
Filed under Blog, Faith, Fatherhood, manliness, Scriptural Examples, Virtue
If you’ve spent any time on the website, you surely know that I am a huge fan of St. Joseph. He is, besides Christ Himself, the best model of authentic masculinity for a man to emulate. Wanna be a TrueMan?… be like St. Joseph. After all, he raised Jesus! Quite obviously, St. Joseph knew what he was doing. Have you ever thought about his role in the days following Christ’s birth?
Picture this… Mary gives birth to Jesus. Joseph then sees shepherds, visitors and Magi from the east come to adorn his foster son. Then, angels appear and sing praises about this baby boy. What would be going through your mind, if in the hospital labor and delivery room, people come and sing songs praising your child? We can’t really fathom what was taking place before Joseph’s eyes, nor what was going on in his head. Then, imagine that an angel comes to him, again, and tells him that someone (King Herod) wants to kill his newborn son. If you’re anything like me, your first inclination in this situation would have been to grab the firearms and ammo and go on the offensive. Not Joseph. He heeded the warning from the angel, then he WALKED HIS FAMILY TO EGYPT! That would have been approx 300 miles, or more! They walked! A woman who had just given birth, a new born and this holy, faithful, virtuous man called Joseph. He did this to protect his family and the salvation of all of us.
Now imagine being in Egypt. Joseph has no idea how long they’d be there. He left his carpenter shop, tools, projects, friends and home behind, back in Judea. What did he do for work in Egypt? How did they worship? Where did they live? How did he continually protect his family in this foreign land? What and where did they eat? Did you ever think of these things? Have you ever thought about how St. Joseph did all this? Have you ever thought how you would react in a situation like this? What you would do if your family was in danger? In need of shelter, food, protection?
St. Joseph did all of this, and quite handily. There are good reasons why St. Joseph is the patron saint of so many manly things, like workers, carpenters, fathers and holy death. His virtue was incredible. Learn about him, follow him to his son.
TrueMan up!
Amen Bro….the priest alluded to this on Suday in the homily…that he had to leave his business/regular clients and find a way to earn $$ in a whole new land.
Did not realize it was 300 miles!!
Thanks for the post.
It is interesting that so little is said about Joseph in Sacred Scripture. We know that he was a carpenter and a just man, and that’s about it. We’re not even told when, where, or if he dies. Nothing he says is recorded. One may think, “Well, he must not be very important.” But clearly he is, as Dave makes clear in this article. Then why isn’t Joseph in the Gospel more? Why isn’t more about him said? Perhaps because more didn’t need to be said: The Gospel is not about him; it’s about Jesus and God. (And Jesus makes clear that it’s not about him: It’s about God.) Perhaps this is true of us: It’s not about us. It’s about God. Perhaps here is one of the best lessons about being a man that St. Joseph has to teach us: It’s not about us. The role of the husband is to serve his wife, not himself; it’s never about him! Looking at archetypal manly images, e.g. the knight, firefighter, policeman, military, father/husband (many protector-roles come to mind), we see they’re all about serving others. Jesus provides the most dramatic and bodily example of serving us, culminating with giving us his very body. To be a man, then, is to not focus on oneself, but rather to serve others.