December 30th

Happy Birthday to me! I love celebrating with a treat from Frost Me Sweet!

One of the coolest things about having a birthday on December 30 is sharing it with the Feast of the Holy Family. In fact, there have been many times when people get excited about sharing their birthdays with other significant feasts or popular saints and I wait until the end of those conversations to make my claim of closeness to Jesus, Mary AND Joseph.

Today's Gospel reading from the Finding in the Temple from Luke 2:41-52 made it doubly special since I love the image of Jesus as a 12-year old in the Temple. I usually look at that particular story and make a comment about how Jesus was pretty much in middle school youth group. But today I saw it in a completely different light. Rather than focusing on the adolescent child, my brain zeroed in on this line:

"Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?"

As silent as St. Joseph is throughout Scripture, I have to imagine what his face looked like at this moment - and what was going through his mind. He and his wife, Mary, were going back home to Nazareth before realizing their son was missing. This was the home that the tekton had prepared for his family. He was the father to this child, and while I'm sure he and Mary talked about Jesus as the Son of God, I think it's fair to wonder if they understood what that may have meant. (In fact, the verse right after that one says "But they did not understand what he said to them.") We know from Scripture that after this incident, Jesus was obedient to his parents and Mary "kept all these things in her heart," (Luke 2:51) but we hear little about St. Joseph's reaction. As his father on earth, I find it hard to believe that he thought nothing of it and just let Mary handle their Son.

The only thing I come to as I try to reconcile this is that God knew better. He had a plan, and it was perfect. He wouldn't have picked just any guy off the streets to be the earthly father of Jesus. He, in His great wisdom and providence, would have picked a righteous and faithful man. So it leads me to wonder if maybe Joseph understood his role better than I realize. He had to know, even in his uncertainties, that while his job was to care for Jesus here on earth, the Father in Heaven had a will that completely and perfectly trumped his. St. Joseph was faithful. In this story, the Holy Family provides us with a beautiful example of what our families should look like: Grow in holiness with your family here on earth but know that we ought to be in our heavenly Father's house.