Today we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph, the husband of Mary, the Mother of God and the foster father of Jesus. In today's Gospel, Matthew 1: 2q6, 18-21, 24a, we learn that Joseph found Mary pregnant prior to their marriage and decides to divorce her privately so as not "to expose her to shame." An angel intervenes and says to Joseph in a dream: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." Joseph did "as the angel of the Lord had commanded him..." When Jesus is born out in the cold in a manger where animals took shelter and after being visited by Magi from the East, the Lord again appears to Joseph in a dream at night and says to him: "Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him.'" Joseph does as the Lord commanded him. In Egypt, after Herod's death, the Lord again appears to Joseph in a dream at night and says to him: "'Get up, take the child and his mother with you and go back to the land of Israel, for those who wanted to kill the child are dead.'" Joseph does as the Lord asks of him. As he approaches the land of Israel, Joseph learned that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as ruler of Judea. Joseph is afraid to enter that land. "[B]eing warned in a dream, he left for the region of Galilee" instead and settled in Nazareth.
May you and I be as attentive to the warnings that God sends us, as Joseph was. May we, like Joseph, recognize God's voice and the ways in which He directs us, protects us from evil, and guides us to make choices that are safe and which enable us to thrive as we care for others!
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