Feast of the Holy Family (Year B)

Readings: Genesis 15:1-6; 21:1-3; Psalm 105; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

Some years ago the Christmas picture I sent to friends was Lorenzo Lotto's painting of the Nativity. One friend commented on how in that painting Saint Joseph is 'sturdy, reliable and unusually present'. He did not mean that it is unusual for Joseph to be present because he is always present. What my friend meant was that it is unusual for Joseph to be as engaged with Jesus as he is in Lotto's painting, bent over the child and watching him intensely. Normally he stands back, as a reliable fixture in the nativity scene, there if you need him, as essential to the scene as the ox and the donkey but precisely because of that his importance can easily be forgotten.

The recommended readings for today's Mass focus on Abraham, our father in faith, inviting us to think of Joseph too as 'a father in faith'. Abraham showed his faith on three occasions: when he left his own home and country for a land the Lord promised to give him, when he believed that the Lord would give him descendants who would be of his own flesh and blood, and when he was ready to go ahead with the sacrifice of Isaac in spite of the contradiction it involved. Saint Joseph showed his faith on at least five occasions: at the conception of Jesus, at his birth, in fleeing to Egypt, at the presentation in the Temple (today's gospel reading), and at the finding in the Temple when the words of Jesus, 'did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?', must have been a sword piercing his heart.

Joseph is Patron of the Universal Church. He is not just another father in faith among the many others we admire, are inspired by and seek to imitate. He is all that, but he also has a unique and very remarkable role at the centre of the world's salvation. He is the just man whom God found sturdy and reliable enough to be entrusted with the most precious human cargo imaginable, the Incarnate Word of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. We are told just enough about him to draw a first character sketch: faithful and dependable, just and honourable, creative and hard-working, tender and loving, observant and prudent.

To inaugurate the Year of Saint Joseph in 2021 Pope Francis spoke about Joseph's character in a letter called With a Father's Heart. One of the most interesting questions he raised is to what extent, in his human nature, Jesus learned about God the Eternal Father from the character of Joseph, his earthly foster-father. Francis refers to the beautiful text of Hosea 11:3-4 which speaks of the tenderness of a father towards his infant child, and also to Luke 15 and the father of the prodigal son, a fictional character in one of Jesus' stories but whose tenderness and compassion, it is reasonable to think, might have been inspired by what Jesus saw in Joseph.

Why a Year of Saint Joseph? Because the Church and the world were, as they still are, in a perilous situation and it is precisely in such times that Christians turn to Joseph as a protector and helper, one who responded creatively to the difficulties he encountered, one who remained faithful and tender in spite of danger, loss and the unusual sacrifices he was asked to make, one who had to protect his family in the face of violence and arrange for them to go into exile, one who has always been looked to as a helper in temporal and physical need.

There is this further reason the Pope gave for thinking of Joseph some years ago: in the time of the pandemic we became aware of the many thousands of people on whom the world relies every day but who are never celebrated and are often not even acknowledged for what they do. Dazzled by the glitter of celebrity and fame we easily forget the ones who work in the background. Francis said that his desire to share some reflections on Saint Joseph grew stronger during the months of the pandemic when we experienced 'how our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people often overlooked. People who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines, or on the latest television show, yet in these very days are surely shaping the decisive events of our history. Doctors, nurses, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caregivers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests, men and women religious, and so very many others ... fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers showing our children, in small everyday ways, how to accept and deal with a crisis ... praying, making sacrifices and interceding for the good of all'.

A Dominican brother spoke to me in this way about the vocation of the brother, the friar who is not a priest, and whose contribution to our way of life we appreciate the closer we get to having no more brothers in the Order. The brothers have generally been solid and faithful, practical and prudent, very often the approachable faces in our communities. But they were and are often background people, working behind the scenes, making things possible and keeping things running. Just like people in families who do not seek the limelight but who are steady and reliable, making sure all that is needed is in place. Pope Francis' point about St Joseph was that it is not the elites that make the world function, in spite of their seductive power, but the ordinary people whose work is often taken for granted, who are fixtures in the background of the world picture, and so are easily overlooked.

We pray to Joseph, then, today and during the coming year. In his Letter, Pope Francis shared with the whole Church his own favourite prayer to Saint Joseph:

Glorious Patriarch Saint Joseph, whose power makes the impossible possible, come to my aid in these times of anguish and difficulty. Take under your protection the serious and troubling situations that I commend to you, that they may have a happy outcome. My beloved father, all my trust is in you. Let it not be said that I invoked you in vain, and since you can do everything with Jesus and Mary, show me that your goodness is as great as your power. Amen.