Advent 2024 – Saints of the Season – Joseph the Silent Saint
Don’t you just love the weekly radio show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” the NPR news quiz? One holiday season a few years ago, Peter Sagal, the host, posed this question to panelist Tom Bodett, “People are always looking at predictors for kids to see how they’re going to fare later in life. Well, one new study out of the U.K. shows that a surprisingly reliable predictor is what your child did – what role they had—in what common childhood activity?”
Bodett’s first guess was “nose picking,” but after a few hints, he got it right: the role kids have in the Christmas pageant is a reliable predictor of what their jobs will pay when they’re adults. The study asked 2,000 adults what role they had played in their childhood nativity pageants and then asked them about their jobs and their income. When the data was correlated, it turned out former Josephs and Marys tended to be, later in life, the highest earners. (“And,” joked host Peter Sagal, “Marys were the most likely to claim they were still a virgin even though they were pregnant.”)
“Wait, Wait” panelist Tom Bodett then revealed that he had played Joseph in his 3rd grade Christmas pageant, adding, “I had no lines, though.” Sagal, who is Jewish, was genuinely surprised that Joseph was not a speaking part. The rest of the panel confirmed it was true. “I mean, he’s the least important character in the entire thing,” panelist and comedian Maeve Higgins explained. “He’s not the dad. He barely has a job.” “He can’t get a hotel room!” Luke Burbank added.
Poor old Joseph. He’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the Nativity scene—he gets no respect.
It’s actually not surprising that Joseph doesn’t have even one spoken line in most Christmas pageants—because he never speaks a single word in any of the four gospels of the New Testament. Not one word. In fact, one of his official titles is “Joseph the Silent Saint.”
Though he is a man of few—actually no—words, Joseph is kind of a big shot in the world of saints. According to official Roman Catholic doctrine, he is to be venerated more highly than any other saint except one—his wife, the BVM (“Blessed Virgin Mary”), who is numero uno in the line-up of saints. In 1870, Pope Pius IX even named Joseph the patron saint of the entire, universal church, saying that God put him in charge of God’s greatest treasure, the Christ Child, so he can once again be entrusted to protect the body of Christ which is the church. (Joseph is also the patron saint of 2 continents (including ours), 11 countries, and a host of cities and regions, as well as the patron saint of workers, immigrants, fathers, pregnant women, house sellers and buyers—some realtors even tell their clients to bury a statue of St. Joseph in the yard of a house they’re trying to sell!—and he is the patron saint of “a happy death”?! because it is assumed he died in the arms of the aforementioned BVM and their son, Jesus.)
Unlike our previous three saints of Advent, there are no stories of road-tripping skeletons when it comes to Joseph. There actually aren’t supposed to be any bones of his left on earth at all. That’s because he and only one other saint (three guesses and the first two don’t count—yes, it’s Mary) are said to have experienced an “assumption” at the time of their death—being taken, body and soul, directly up into heaven the moment they died. So, the only relics of Joseph’s that exist are “second-class” relics (that’s an actual official label—what did I tell you, he is the Rodney Dangerfield of saints!); these second-class relics are primarily pieces of his robe, one of which is housed at the basilica on the campus of Notre Dame in Indiana, of all places.
We just don’t know very much about Joseph, our silent saint. What little we do know comes from the 28 times he is mentioned by name in the gospels. Half of those come just from the gospel of Matthew. And it’s thanks to Matthew’s gospel that we learn Joseph was a carpenter (no other gospel mentions this). The actual Greek word Matthew uses, tekton, refers to any artisan who makes a living working with wood, iron or stone. However, Justin Martyr who died in 165 CE specifically mentions that Jesus earned a living making wooden yokes and plows, so it’s reasonable to assume Jesus’ father, Joseph, was, in fact, a woodworker or carpenter.
Most of the 28 mentions of Joseph by name in the gospels are in the stories of Jesus’ birth, the Christmas stories that appear in Matthew and Luke (Mark and John don’t have birth stories). Joseph also appears by name in several gospel stories about how people reacted to the adult Jesus as he began to preach, when all four gospels report that some in the hometown crowds grumbled about Jesus getting too big for his britches, wondering just who he thought he was—“Isn’t that just Joseph’s son?” Poor Joseph! Yet another putdown—this Jesus is a nobody just like his father, Joseph, is a nobody. No respect, I tell you….no respect!
There is a detail that appears in Luke’s gospel that indicates Joseph, though descended from King David’s line, lived in poverty. Luke tells us that forty days after Jesus’ birth, Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem to offer the customary sacrifice all observant Jews were required to make after the birth of a son. They offered two turtledoves. The prescribed sacrifice was supposed to be a lamb, but especially poor families were allowed to substitute two doves, as Joseph and Mary did.
We don’t know how old Joseph was at the time he married Mary—though you often hear people say that he was “much older” than she was. There is absolutely no evidence of that in the gospels. It seems that this claim about Joseph developed when the church began to obsess about Mary being a virgin when she conceived and bore Jesus (an obsession based on a complete mistranslation of a Hebrew word that only means “young woman”). In order to emphasize that Mary and Joseph did not have marital relations during her pregnancy, church leaders in Rome decided that argument was easier to make if Joseph was portrayed as quite old. The other reason some people jump to the conclusion that Joseph was so much older than Mary is that it appears he died before she did—and likely died before Jesus began his public ministry.
Although the gospels don’t tell us when or how Joseph died, most scholars concur that he must have died some time before Jesus began his public ministry because he does not appear in gospel accounts of events like the wedding at Cana or the crucifixion, though Mary is there. In the gospels, Joseph’s turn in the spotlight is very brief—he appears before and at Jesus’ birth, again (in Matthew only) when an angel warns him to take his family and flee to Egypt to escape from Herod, and for the last time when Jesus is 12 years old and gets separated from his parents in Jerusalem during Passover. So, it seems likely that Joseph died some time after Jesus was 12 but before he turned 30 and began his ministry.
What Matthew tells us for certain is that while he was still very much alive, Joseph found himself between a rock and a hard place on the day that Mary, his fiancée, told him she was expecting a baby. Matthew describes Joseph as a “righteous man.” That means he takes his religion seriously, lives his religion every day according to the law of Moses, Torah. When Mary tells him she is pregnant, Joseph knows he is not the father. He also knows that the law offers two options in cases like this. The more severe is the penalty of stoning Mary to death for the crime of adultery (the law regarded people who were betrothed as married). The less severe option the law allows is divorce. Joseph would have to go to the rabbi and explain why the marriage contract has to be broken.
Joseph is righteous, but he is also compassionate. He decides to divorce Mary as quietly as possible to limit her public shame. Then the dreams start: an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream and says, “Joseph, son of David, 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.”
And Joseph does the most extraordinary thing. He trusts the dream. He sets aside his deepest social and moral convictions. Caught between his religion’s rules and his heart, his love for Mary, he goes with his heart. Whatever his hopes were for his own life, his marriage, his future—he gave them up and trusted God enough to do what was asked of him.
In his Christmas oratorio, “For The Time Being,” British-American poet W. H. Auden captures what a difficult decision this must have been for Joseph. In the section titled “The Temptation of St. Joseph,” Joseph prays, asking God for: one important and elegant proof that what my Love had done was really at Your will and that Your will is Love. The angel Gabriel responds to Joseph: No, you must believe. Be silent and sit still. As Joseph continues to pray, a choir offers these responses: Joseph, you have heard what Mary says occurred. Yes, it may be so. Is it likely? No. Mary may be pure, but, Joseph, are you sure? How is one to tell? Suppose, for instance…Well…
But, says theologian and Christian blogger Sam Guthrie, the angel Gabriel insists that what combats this kind of doubt is what we are all so reluctant to do. For Joseph and Mary, for Sarah, for Nicodemus, for Thomas, for the parent whose child is off the rails, the cynic whose faith has shriveled up, the addict who can’t kick the urge, the success story who runs toward self-sufficiency in life’s sinking sand, we are called to give up, be silent, sit still, and believe that God always keeps the promise, that nothing will ever be able to separate us from God’s love. In Advent, we are reminded that in stillness, silence, and the darkest of doubts, the light of the world shines.
Poet (and Mainer) Steve Garnaas Holmes, in his poem “Joseph’s Dream,” imagines what the angel Gabriel says to Joseph in that dream, and what God is saying to us this, and every, Advent season:
I have hidden blessing in your life, wonder concealed in what you reject, glory waiting on the path you resist. I know, you want to understand, and to control things, and this is beyond those. You are afraid of what others will think. But that is not real. This is real: I am asking you to be faithful without proof, loving without assurance, humble without protection. I am asking you to trust.
Joseph’s story teaches us how to respond when God asks us to play a part in the incredible, improbable inbreaking of God’s kin-dom come to earth. To play our part in the Christmas pageant, we must be faithful without proof, loving without assurance, humble without protection. God is asking us to trust.
As Advent 2024 draws to a close, I invite you to reflect in a prayerful spirit on another of Steve Garnaas Holmes’ poems, this one entitled simply, “Joseph”:
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,
for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
The question is not whether you love her. The question is whether you will marry her.
You have been given only glorious ambiguity, darkness marbled with starlight, possibility breathed in silence. You seek assurance; none is given.
Your life will not be as you wish it. Those you love will let you down.
This world is full of flaws and disappointment. It is also full of the Mysterious One.
Give yourself without knowing. Betrothed, beloved, to uncertainty,
pledge your loyalty to this one you cannot know.
Do not pray to understand: pray to be present, to be faithful, to be loving
when you cannot know what will come of it.
Do not be afraid … Amen.
Like Joseph, may we accept the gift of “glorious ambiguity.” Accept that when we seek assurance, none will be given. Accept that our life will not be as we wish it. Let us not pray to understand, but to be present, faithful and loving, though we cannot know what will come of it. And, dear friends, let us not be afraid.
