Year of St. Joseph: An Obedient Father

This is the 3rd reflection on the seven aspects of Saint Joseph’s fatherhood in the Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde (With a Father’s Heart) by Pope Francis.

Previously, we considered Saint Joseph as “A Beloved Father,” whom the Church continuously honors and venerates, and as “A Tender and Loving Father,” constant in his attentive care and detailed service to Mary and Jesus. Both Mother and Child saw in Saint Joseph “the tender love of God” in action. Here we “Go to Joseph!” once again; this time, we want to see him as “An Obedient Father.”

In this “Year of Saint Joseph” we want to increase “our love for this great saint, to encourage us to implore his intercession and to imitate his virtues and his zeal.” to discover in Saint Joseph the same father’s heart that Jesus and Mary knew.

[NOTE: Here is a link to our blog post about the plenary indulgences available this Year of Saint Joseph, including a free printable to post on your fridge!]

An Obedient Father

Not a single word of Saint Joseph’s is recorded in Sacred Scripture, and yet we are told about four instances, four critical moments in his life, in which God spoke to him through an angel in a dream. In each instance, Saint Joseph listened and obeyed.

It is so easy to gloss over that phrase, “Saint Joseph listened and obeyed.”

How simple and unremarkable it sounds, yet how difficult it is to actually do. It is hard to listen, truly listen, to others, let alone to God. We are surrounded by noise that too often drowns out the still small voice of God in our hearts, and we are too often preoccupied by our passing pleasures to tend to God’s plan for our lives. As a result, we often hear only what we want to hear and do what we want to do. Saint Joseph was different, and the Pope invites us to listen closely to the four exchanges between God’s angel and Saint Joseph, so we can hear and do as Joseph did.

When Joseph was confronted with Mary’s mysterious pregnancy and did not know what his part should be, God intervened through an angel in a dream, telling him, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:20-21). By means of this message, God did not just solve a predicament, He confirmed Joseph in his role as husband to Mary and as father to the Child. It was as if God said, be husband and father, Joseph, that is your part.

Scripture tells us that Joseph’s response was immediate: “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him” (Mt1:24). Joseph listened to what he was told, believed it, and obeyed. He acted on the duties of his married state by taking his wife into his home, and he acted on the fatherhood God conferred upon him by welcoming the unborn Child placed in his care and naming Him, which is the responsibility of the father according to Jewish custom and the Mosaic law.

After the Child is born the angel comes again to Joseph in a dream: “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him” (Mt 2:13). Again, Joseph listens and then does what he is told, accepting the immensity of the tasks that lay ahead: “He got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod” (Mt2:14-15).

Recognize that Joseph is engaged in a life and death drama. By listening to the angel’s message, Joseph is made aware of an imminent threat to his family and the extent to which he must go to protect them from it. Without delay, he packs his family’s “go bag” and leads them, under cover of darkness, across a foreign border to an, as yet, undisclosed safe location. Truly, Joseph had been entrusted with a perilous covert operation and a critical mission.

We are not given any details about the life of the Holy Family in Egypt. We don’t know where they lived, for how long, or under what conditions. But we can imagine that Joseph lived in anticipation and readiness for the night that the angel would return as promised. In God’s good time, the angel did return, twice more, to Joseph, informing him that Herod was dead, that it was time to return to the land of Israel, and that he should make his home in a Galilean town called Nazareth. As before, Saint Joseph listened and obeyed God’s will; “Rising up, he did as he was commanded.”

This is the point: God entrusted Saint Joseph with an important mission because He knew he was the kind of man who could and would accept it. Saint Joseph was silent because interior silence is needed in order to listen attentively. We can see, rather than hear Saint Joseph’s “yes” by looking at his actions; Saint Joseph obeyed. The Pope tells us, “In every situation, Joseph declared his own “fiat”, like those of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.” Not my will, but Thy will be done.

Recall what Our Lord told his disciples, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in Heaven.” (Mt 7:21) Saint Joseph was the epitome of an obedient disciple, whose actions are his words. Joseph said, “yes” to God repeatedly from within his vocation as husband and father. By fulfilling the duties of his state of life (which is God’s will for each of us) Saint Joseph participated in God’s plan of salvation.

Pope Francis concludes this section on Joseph, an obedient father, with these words:

All this makes it clear that ‘Saint Joseph was called by God to serve the person and mission of Jesus directly through the exercise of his fatherhood’ and that in this way, ‘he cooperated in the fullness of time in the great mystery of salvation and is truly a minister of salvation.’” Saint Joseph was “the shadow of God the Father. And if the man Jesus learned to say ‘daddy,’ ‘father,’ to His Father Who He knew as God, He learned it from life, from the witness of Joseph, the man who took care of [Him], the man who raised [Him], … but took nothing for himself. (Patris Corde, 3)

Let this be an encouragement to fathers everywhere to live the fatherhood they are entrusted with, with selfless zeal and the fruitfulness of obedience. Go to Joseph!