Having properly celebrated the Christ child’s mother yesterday, Father James Martin thinks it’s only right that, during the Christmas season, we should remember to celebrate His earthly father, too.
Poor St. Joseph gets short shrift sometimes — he appears in only one carol that I can think of, and it’s not a very flattering picture; most often, he’s either crammed in the back or completely absent from most nativity scenes and Christmas cards. Which is a shame, as Father Martin explained in a column for Slate last year:
His personality shines through wordlessly. “Here is a model of someone who represents all the virtues in the Hebrew Bible,” says Perkins. “He is asked to do something shocking, but because he’s righteous, he follows God’s guidance. And it’s no fun—not only to deal with that, but with the rest of the story—the flight into Egypt, too.”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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During that latter part of the Christmas story, when the holy family flees from the murderous King Herod, Joseph was responsible for protecting Mary and her son in extreme conditions. Moreover, says Perkins, “To have to take your family into Egypt—that’s not a direction that Jewish stories want to go. It’s the wrong way.” She calls him a “model for how people can follow God through difficult times.”
Maybe it’s time to take a fresh look at this “model” and restore him to his rightful place in the Christmas story. Remember his natural age. Reimagine him in our art. And recall his very human example of “following God through difficult times.” That’s something that can offer encouragement not only to fathers but to every believer.
Read the rest here, or watch Father Martin’s video on the “patron of the hidden life.”
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