Posted by Christmas Eve/Fourth Sunday in Advent
When Mary the mother of Jesus was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Whereupon Joseph her husband being a just man and not willing to publicly expose her, was minded to put her away privately. But while he thought on those things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, Son of David, fear not to take to thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost
Today is Christmas Eve, and we are also commemorating the Fourth Sunday in Advent. At the opening of St. Matthew’s Gospel we hear first the genealogy that shows how Joseph traced his descent from King David. We then hear that when Mary the mother of Jesus was espoused to Joseph he found her expecting a child. He naturally assumed that there had been an illicit union between Mary and another man, but did not wish to publicly expose her. He therefore decided to divorce her privately. While he was deliberating about this matter he had a dream in his sleep in which the angel of the Lord appeared to him telling him not to be afraid to take Mary his wife because what she conceived was not from an illicit union with another man, but from the Holy Spirit. She would give birth to a son and he would be called Jesus because he would save his people from their sins.
Whereas the narrative of the virginal conception of Jesus is told in St. Luke’s Gospel from the perspective of Mary, in St. Matthew’s Gospel it is told from the perspective of Joseph. In St. Luke’s narrative we hear of the annunciation to Mary and her visit to her cousin Elizabeth. In St. Matthew’s narrative we hear of St. Joseph’s anxiety about what he understandably feared was an illicit union between Mary and another man. It is important to observe in this context that the custom among the Jews at this time accorded much greater significance to betrothal than we do today. The betrothal was treated as just as solemn and binding as the subsequent marriage itself and it was therefore necessary to initiate divorce proceedings if a man was espoused to marry even if an actual marriage had not formally taken place. Since Joseph was a just man he sought to exercise charity rather than the strict application of the letter of the law and thought it best to divorce her privately. He did not, despite his suspicions about her behaviour, want to make a public disgrace of her and destroy her life. Perhaps he had heard from her about the annunciation but doubted her story. It was at this point that he himself received intimations in a dream that the child was not the result of an illicit union but of the Holy Ghost.
St. Matthew does not explicitly state but rather implies that Joseph was much older than Mary. The early Church tradition was that Joseph was himself a widower and had already had children by his previous marriage. These are the brethren of the Lord such as St. James (later leader of the early Church in Jerusalem) and St. Jude. This is the view of most of the early Church fathers and is still maintained in the Eastern liturgies (Greek, Syrian and Coptic). This tradition was rejected by St. Jerome in the fourth century because it was based on the apocryphal gospels such as the Protoevangelium of James. Instead he proposed that the brethren of the Lord were not sons of Joseph by a previous marriage but rather cousins of Jesus, making Joseph a virgin as well as Mary. This view was later adopted in the subsequent Latin liturgy. This matter is highly uncertain, but the older tradition of Joseph as an older man who had already been widowed and had children by his previous marriage seems more probable, and is certainly more in accord with the custom of the Jews at the time. It seems clear that Joseph died before the public ministry of Jesus began. Perhaps he left some form of record recording what had happened and St. Matthew was able to draw on this account in his gospel.
It is also interesting to observe in the context of the genealogy that precedes this narrative in St. Matthew’s Gospel that the four women who are mentioned, Tamar, Ruth, Rahab and Bathsheba were all involved in illicit unions of some sort. It would therefore seem that St. Matthew is making the point that God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. The purposes of God were often wrought through events that caused scandal at the time. In the light of this it is not surprising that Jesus was conceived in circumstances that seemed to suggest that something scandalous had happened. Indeed, in the early days of the Church, critics of Christianity, both Jewish and pagan, made much of this point. They did not try to say that Jesus was conceived in the normal way as modern critics of Christianity usually do. Rather, they accepted that there was genuinely something unusual about the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth, but spoke of Mary’s adultery rather than accept that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost. It seems clear that it is just such a charge that St. Matthew is concerned to rebut at the outset of his Gospel.
In many ways it is fitting that the circumstances of Jesus’ conception initially caused scandal to those who did not know the full story. His public ministry would often cause scandal and he would be denounced by the leaders of his people as a false prophet and blasphemer and would die by crucifixion under the curse of the Law. But when viewed through the eyes of faith it was possible to see that this was all part of the mysterious workings of the providence of God. God had initially chosen a people who were despised slaves in Egypt to be the recipients of his covenant through Moses. The agent of their future deliverance would not be a warrior and conqueror like King David, but one who was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The Gospel was a stumbling block to the Jews and a foolishness to the Greeks, as St. Paul put it to the Corinthians. St. Paul himself had initially been scandalised but came to see that God had chosen the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, and the weak and despised things to shame the strong. For the foolishness of God was wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God was stronger than man’s strength.
Let us therefore not be disheartened that the world sees the preaching of the Gospel as foolishness, but rather follow the example of St. Joseph who trusted in God in the most difficult circumstances. For in not divorcing Mary, but rather trusting in the providence of God, he was playing his part in the history of his salvation. As we prepare to celebrate the great feast of Christmas, let us pray for grace to persevere in our own trials and tribulations today.