Patron for the Pandemic
About six years ago I was sitting on the beach with my friend Monica when I had a startling idea. “Why is there no 24-hour adoration chapel in Manhattan?” Surely a city which hosts eight million people on any given day could, should, muster enough adorers for an adoration chapel! And sitting there with my hair full of salt water and sand in my toes, I began to make plans to make that happen.
By coincidence other young adults had the same idea, and I joined their efforts and we began to plan. I worked feverishly to research options and funding ideas and to extend inquiries to various churches. As my ideas took form I grew more and more excited. This was really going to happen! Until one day I noticed that something felt off.
I felt energized, but not completely at peace. Little things that shouldn’t have bothered me instead brought out the worst in me—I found myself easily angered, impatient, driven. I felt passionate but at the same time unsettled.
“Did God give you this task, or did you give it to yourself?” my spiritual director asked.
I was stunned. What kind of a question was that? Surely, God would want me to build an adoration chapel! How could such a thing NOT be God-willed?
As I was mulling over this odd question, a friend (in whom I had not confided this story) let me know she had a word for me from God. It was from the 2nd Book of Samuel, which begins with God asking David (through Nathan): “Would you build Me a house to dwell in?” and continues ultimately with rather “The Lord will make you a house…”
Ouch.
This divine smack-down put an end to my planning, but was just the beginning of a new spirituality. I am still learning what it all means—to receive, to let God do all the heavy lifting, to let Him lead and instruct and ultimately be God.
To effect these plans, God sent me Saint Joseph, whose feast we celebrate today.
Of course, it is Joseph who would literally help complete the promise actually written in Scripture about the house of David. It is he who legally gave to Jesus his title as Son of David, fulfilling for all time the prophecies of a royal dynasty that would live forever.
Saint Joseph knew about planning. And he learned about letting go of his plans, for God’s sake.
He was not given a superhero cape. Rather, he was given, repeatedly, situations that were beyond his power to control.
Tasked with providing for the Blessed Virgin and her unborn child, he was forced by government edict to travel to Bethlehem during her third trimester of pregnancy, where, when her time came, he was unable to procure for her even a room and a bed. Instead, he kept vigil as the Queen of Heaven gave birth to the Maker of the Universe and laid Him, not in a carpenter’s cradle, but a feeding trough for animals.
When it was time to present the Child in the temple, he could offer only the poor man’s sacrifice, a pair of turtledoves, and heard Simeon prophecy not only joy but sorrow, for his wife and small son. Did his heart break a little, even then, wanting to protect them from the promised pain?
And then came another edict, this one from Higher Authority: “Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt.” How it must have pained him, how his heart must have wrung with fear and anguish, to learn that Herod’s soldiers were seeking his tiny son. I wonder, if for a moment, he was tempted to stay and fight, to resist, to protect the child and his mother with his own strength. How strong he must have been, to obey God, to put aside his pride and flee with his family to safety.
And then he found himself distanced from everyone he knew, alone in a foreign country, away from the temple and synagogues and the life he had known before. He found himself without work, without his carpenter shop or clients, starting all over again in Egypt. And then a few years later, he returned to Nazareth and began yet again.
We don’t know anything else about the hidden years with Jesus, apart from the time that he lost him, seeking him anxiously with Mary. After he was found, we know only that Jesus was obedient to him.
Surely, there must have been a fearsome marvel in itself—to be the teacher of the Incarnate Wisdom.
Joseph never said a word, but his life was a continued yes to all that God gave…and all that he did not.
It was not given to Joseph to share in Jesus’ public ministry, or in his passion. Instead, he was asked to sacrifice his desire to protect them, to say yes to the goodness of God, entrusting them to the true Father above, of whom he was only an image.
If there were ever a patron for this pandemic, it is Saint Joseph.
As he was tasked with protecting and providing for the earthly Body of Christ, the boy Jesus, let us entrust him with the spiritual Body of Christ, the church. Let him teach us, like Jesus, to always say yes. To always trust. To embrace humble and hidden tasks. To embrace wood, even of the wood of the Cross.
And like Joseph, let us say yes to all that is given to us to do, and surrender to Jesus and Mary all that is not.
Featured Image: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
