The Cornerstone
Parents are a significant aspect of our understanding of the Christian faith. Our understanding of God Himself in the Trinity can only be understood when we use the language of a father and a son. The foundation of the Church as we know it is the family, composed of parents with authority and obedient children. When God came into the world as one of us, He did not come in mystery or miracles; rather, He came humbly like any of us would through a mother who gave birth to him. As he grew up, he learned just like we do. He learned how to love from his mother and how to serve through his foster father. Our relationship as Catholics with Mary is properly venerative as she deserves, but we can sometimes neglect just how formative Saint Joseph was to the literal formative years of Jesus Christ, when he learned how to be himself and when he came into his identity as the Messiah.
We should begin speaking of Joseph because March is his month; on Wednesday this past week, we celebrated his feast. Also, Joseph plays a fundamental role in the stories we hear in today’s first reading and the Gospel. The first reading tells us of the other famous biblical figure named Joseph, the one from the Old Testament. Scripture has plenty of examples of Old Testament characters either prefiguring or paving the way for characters from the New Testament: Adam, Abel, Seth, and Melchizedek all prefigure Jesus, Eve prefigures Mary, Elijah prefigures John the Baptist, the 12 tribes of Israel prefigure the 12 apostles, etc. Unique in this case, however, is that Joseph prefigures Joseph, the only time the one who is prefigured has the same name as the one who prefigures. The story of Joseph in the Old Testament follows a beloved son of Israel who is forced into slavery and must rise up to greatness, saving his people from famine, and showing love and forgiveness to his brothers. The story of Joseph in the New Testament, although there is very little to be said of his background, follows a humble man who is thrust into a situation of potential greatness for which he was not prepared. In both cases, Joseph was set apart from his brothers of Israel. In both cases, he was particularly beloved for being a child of an old Israel. When it comes to the foster father of Jesus, Israel had been in a state of long expectation for deliverance. There must have been a virtue and a humility in Saint Joseph, manifested in his acceptance of God’s Will, that was not seen in any other man at any point in Israel’s history until him. Serendipitously, he lived at the same time as the greatest and holiest human woman, giving the opportunity for Israel to finally receive their long-awaited Messiah, handed on to them through the hands of the two most loving and perfect parents in history.
Joseph taught Jesus his trade, which Jesus would have undertaken until abandoning it for his public ministry. They were builders, specifically homes for their communities. Jesus would have learned both the trade and the prayers of their Jewish faith from his foster father. In today’s Gospel, Jesus preaches publicly the one verse from Psalm 118 that perfectly encapsulated these two things he learned from Joseph: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” We may not know much about the life story of Saint Joseph, but if the Old Testament Joseph is any indication, he may have experienced rejection himself. Jesus learned from his earthly father what it meant to assent to God’s Will. He learned from his Heavenly Father who were the ones that accepted him as their own when the world rejected him. Saint Joseph embodies fatherhood because he accepted our humbled Lord and made him his own.
Today's Readings:
