Do you trust enough to accept God’s plan?
Try to put yourself in Joseph’s shoes, just for a
moment. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph has
just learned that his betrothed, Mary
has been found with child, and,
knowing the child is not his, he is struggling to see a path forward. In his confusion, Joseph is bolstered by his
own sense of what is right: unwilling to expose her to shame, he decides to divorce her quietly. What stops him? Well, it is true that he is visited in a
dream by an angel of the Lord, but it
is still up to Joseph himself to follow through on the angel’s command. Why might he do that? Remember that Joseph’s community has been seeking the face of the God of Jacob, as
Psalm 24 notes, for centuries, and those who seek God’s face must stand open, ready to trust that one day God
will fulfill the promise of Isaiah, the promise of a Messiah who will deliver
the people of Israel. One can only
imagine, therefore, that it is Joseph’s faith, his profound trust in the Lord’s
promise, that allows him to believe the angel’s explanation of Jesus’ divine
conception – for it is through the Holy
Spirit that this child has been conceived in her – an echo of the prophet
Isaiah who had long before revealed that the
virgin shall conceive and bear a son… Hence, Joseph, son of David, accepts the angel’s reasoning because he is
open, because he chooses to trust – to trust in the Scriptures, to trust in
God, to trust in God’s promise.
What does this trust imply for those who seek God today? Paul reminds the Romans that (as Joseph was
aware) through his prophets in the holy
Scriptures, God promised to send
his Son, Jesus, the very embodiment of the
gospel or Good News. Jesus, descended from David according to the flesh,
is the Messiah they have been seeking for so long, as revealed in his resurrection from the dead. So, too, must we recognize that our salvation
lies in Jesus Christ: through him we have received the grace of apostleship, a call to belong to Christ, a call to
be holy. To do so, we must first
trust in God’s promise, seeking the face of God in the infant Jesus to come, Emmanuel, God-with-us, opening our
hearts so that he may be born in us as he was born of Mary. Mary and Joseph understood the need to open
in trust to God’s loving promise; do we?
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: Wordle
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