Watching Francis

It was the Feast of St. Joseph, 19 March, Tuesday and Joseph is heavy in my thoughts today. I went in to do my work out and stepped on the elliptical to start. I plugged in my headphones and saw the Bishop of Rome in a live feed on the occasion of his installation as Pontiff. He was in the middle of a moving sermon on St. Joseph. I though how appropriate was the fact that the “Holy Father” was giving a talk about what it means to be a Father centered on love, gentleness and service. 

The Gospels are not meant to be definitive biographies but in Luke and Matthew use the Greek work “Tekton” to describe him which is a general word for anyone who makes things and can mean a carpenter, a builder, a smith, handyman, a song writer or even a poet. Justin Martyr in 135 AD, more than a century after Joseph’s death, suggests that Joseph made plows and yokes. We know very little about him and from in the mid 2^nd Century a writer comes up with an  apocryphal Gospel of James which is mostly interested in legends about Mary  but suggests that Joseph was a very old widower who already had children and chosen by lot to watch over the young girl Mary.  By the 7^th Century there is a popular apocryphal devotional book “History of Joseph the Carpenter” which has Joseph die at the age of 111. 

How do we know anything about Joseph?  Matthew 7:16 gives us a clue “ You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?” We are told that sons learn how to act like a man from imitating (or not) their fathers and are affirmed (or not) in that imitation by their mothers. What love there must have been between Joseph and Mary that produced a man like Jesus!  Our task as families is to provide homes (and church homes) for our children and grandchildren where we teach them by example how to care for the vulnerable, be gentle and forgiving and find power in service.

I continue in my prayers for Francis and my hope that this 76 year old child will tame  and raise the church to re-present Jesus to the world.