HOMILIES PREACHED BY FATHER ALTIER ON THE FEAST OF SAINT JOSEPH, MARCH 19 (HUSBAND OF MARY)

What a glorious feast we celebrate today in the middle of Lent. We take this time to celebrate the Feast of Saint Joseph, a man whose holiness is so exceeding that God chose him to be the guardian of Our Lady and of His own Son. Think about the holiness and manliness of the one man in human history that Jesus Christ learned to be a man from. Joseph gave Him the example; not only of the gentleness that Jesus learned, but the firmness of what it means to be a man. But we also see the justice of Saint Joseph.

The Church gives us this reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans telling us about the faith of Abraham and that God credited it to him as righteousness.

Remember, righteousness is the Greek word, justice is the Latin word, but it means the exact same thing. We hear in the Gospel reading that Joseph is a just man. It called him an upright man but it means that he is a just man, a righteous man.

Monday March 19, 2001 Third Week in Lent

Reading I (2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16)

Reading II (Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22)

Gospel (St. Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a)

What a glorious feast we celebrate today in the middle of Lent. We take this time to celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph, a man whose holiness is so exceeding that God chose him to be the guardian of Our Lady and of His own Son. Think about the holiness and manliness of the one man in human history that Jesus Christ learned to be a man from. Joseph gave Him the example; not only of the gentleness that Jesus learned, but the firmness of what it means to be a man. But we also see the justice of Saint Joseph.

The Church gives us this reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans telling us about the faith of Abraham and that God credited it to him as righteousness. Remember, righteousness is the Greek word, justice is the Latin word, but it means the exact same thing. We hear in the Gospel reading that Joseph is a just man. It called him an upright man but it means that he is a just man, a righteous man.

It means that he is one who followed the Law perfectly. That is what it implies. It doesn’t just mean he was a nice guy, he was a good man. It means he was perfect; he had achieved perfection. And not merely an external perfection in following the Law. Saint Paul says there is justice with regard to the Law, but particularly with regard to faith.

So it was his faith that made him truly perfect. His faith in God. It is that faith we see when the angel appears to Joseph and says, "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife." We see the faith preceding that: Joseph did not doubt Our Lady for one single second. Anybody who thinks that Saint Joseph thought Our Lady had been unfaithful and was with child through some man is totally wrong. That thought never would have crossed his mind because he knew Our Lady’s holiness. He knew the vow of virginity that she had made. There was no such thought. Joseph recognized what was going on within Our Lady, the mystery of the Incarnation that was happening. He recognized that even though he had achieved perfection, he was a man who was born with sin. He was like us, a sinner. More than likely he never committed a mortal sin in his entire life, but nevertheless he had Original Sin and would have had some venial sins. And he saw this mystery happening before his own eyes in his own betrothed spouse and he backed away out of reverence, out of awe, and out of fear. Not servile fear, but fear of the Lord. And he backed away from that. When the angel of the Lord said, "Do not fear to take Mary as your wife," Joseph, in his faith and righteousness, immediately obeyed what God had told him.

So again we see the faith of Saint Joseph. It is that faith, the faith that made Abraham the father of many nations. It is that same faith that makes Saint Joseph the father of many nations, the father of us all. We have to understand that in Jewish Law the moment Mary crossed the threshold of Saint Joseph’s home to become his wife, the child within her womb automatically, legally, became his son. So Jesus truly is, in a legal sense, the son of Saint Joseph. He is the son of the carpenter as He is called in Scripture. So if Mary is our mother and Jesus is our brother (we are united to Jesus, we are members of Jesus), we can call Saint Joseph our foster father. That is why the Church calls him the patron of the Universal Church - because he is our father by faith. His faith is credited to him as justice and righteousness.

He became the father of many nations and it is through him that the promise God made to David is fulfilled. It would seem in the historical context that when Nathan says to David, "After you die, your son will take over your throne and he will build a house for My Name," it happened with Solomon, physically, when Solomon built the temple. But it is Jesus, the true son of David, who is enthroned forever and who has built this house of which each one of us is a living stone. Each one of us is a member. Jesus has built this house and Saint Joseph is the one through whom that comes, he is the son of David. So we see these promises fulfilled most perfectly in Joseph: the just man, the righteous one, the holy one.

There is so much that we could say about this great saint, but time does not allow, unfortunately, so that will have to suffice for now. But ponder Saint Joseph throughout the day, and think of the gratitude we should have for this man whom God chose to be the spouse of Our Lady and to be the father of the Son of God. What an incredible gift God has given to each of us in Saint Joseph. And what trust God has in this wonderful man. He has entrusted the two greatest gifts that He has ever given humanity to the care, guardianship, and love of the great Saint Joseph.

Note: Father Altier does not prepare his homilies in advance, but relies solely upon the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Saint Joseph: Righteous, Faithful, and Obedient

Wednesday March 19, 2003

Feast of Saint Joseph

Reading I (2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16)

Reading II (Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22)

Gospel(St. Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a)

As we celebrate today the feast of the glorious Saint Joseph, we look at the Scriptures and recognize that there is very little said about Saint Joseph. But what is said about him is critically important. There are times when we have to be able to look at the fact that when almost nothing is said the little bit that is said has an importance beyond that which many words would be able to say. And so, in the reading today from the Gospel, we see a couple of things.

First of all, we see that Joseph is a righteous man. In the second reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we see that, regarding Abraham, his faith was credited to him as righteousness. And for anyone who has the faith of Abraham that becomes the means of righteousness for them. The fact that Saint Joseph is righteous means that he had achieved a certain level of perfection, and so of great holiness. He had overcome sin in his life and he had become perfect. Not the kind of perfection that Jesus and Mary had because theirs is without sin completely (Jesus, of course, complete perfection; Mary, a relative one). But Saint Joseph, then, achieved a perfection meaning there was no more sin in his life; he had completely overcome all venial sin. I am sure Saint Joseph, due to the holiness of the man, never once committed a mortal sin in his entire life; and his venial sins were probably pretty minute. Nonetheless, he was born with Original Sin and he had sin in his own life; but by this point, he had overcome that and he is now called righteous. And so we see something of the holiness and the perfection of the man that God chose for His mother and for His Son.

We also see with regard to Saint Joseph that he was a man of holy fear, a man of filial fear, because the angel has to tell Joseph, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” Clearly, he was not afraid of having a wife, as he was already betrothed. He was not afraid in the sense that he thought he would get in trouble somehow if somebody found out that Mary was with child and the child was not his. But rather, it was out of a holy fear: the recognition that what was happening in his wife was so holy that he himself was unworthy to be in the presence of something so profound. And out of fear of the Lord – that is, the true filial fear of the Lord – Saint Joseph was willing to get out of the way and was able to recognize: “I do not belong in this because I am a sinner. And who am I?” Just think, if Elizabeth would say, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” what is Saint Joseph’s attitude going to be? “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should be my wife? Who am I that God would be considered my son? Who am I that this would be happening in my life?” He recognized his own unworthiness which made him want to back away so that God’s designs would be worked in Our Lady and Saint Joseph would not interfere in any way.

But then we see the next point: He was obedient. The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. This is not the kind of dream where he was lying there at night sound asleep and suddenly having some dream; that is not the kind of dream being spoken of. Those dreams we need to reject. But the kind of dream that is being spoken of is more along the lines of a vision of something that would seem more like a daydream, if you want to think of it that way; but it is not a dream as if we are not aware of what is going on. And so the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, informs him of what happened for this child to be conceived, and tells him to take Mary, his wife, into his home. Saint Joseph immediately accepts. So we see the faith of Saint Joseph, now the second human person to believe and to know about the mystery of the Incarnation – our Lady being the first. Saint Joseph, without hesitation, believes completely what the angel said and is obedient to the direction of the angel.

We see, then, the pattern that is there. We see the fulfillment of the promise that we heard in the first reading about how God was going to raise up the house of David and keep it before Him always because of the faithfulness and the righteousness of this one Shoot that was going to be raised up; and the pattern for each one of us, because Saint Joseph is the patron of the Universal Church and each one of us is a member of the universal Church, members of Jesus Christ, and he is the patron, the father of Jesus Christ (legally and as the foster father), and therefore, he is the father to each of us and he is our patron. Therefore, we are to learn from our father, just as we are to learn from our holy Mother.

From Saint Joseph, we learn these critically important lessons in this little passage: that we are to be righteous, that we are to be faithful, and that we are to be obedient. If we will learn these three lessons from the man who is never recorded as having spoken in Scripture – yet the essence of this man is captured for us in this one little reading – and if we will be able to be obedient to God, to be faithful to His word, like Saint Joseph our faith will be credited to us as righteousness. We will overcome sin in our lives and we will be holy. And we, as members of that new house of David, will stand before the throne of God forever.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

Saint Joseph: A Man of Faith, Hope, and Love

Friday March 19, 2004

Feast of Saint Joseph

Reading (2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16)

Reading II (Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22)

Gospel (St. Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24a)

Today the Church celebrates the solemnity of the man whom God Himself chose to entrust Our Lord and Our Blessed Lady. It is to Saint Joseph’s care that we owe so much because we see the faith of Saint Joseph, the faith which Saint Paul tells us is similar to that of the great patriarch Abraham: because of his faith, we are told, God credited it to him as righteousness. He believed and he hoped. Saint Joseph had the hope of the people of Israel; he had the hope that God was going to fulfill all of the promises that He had made. He did not see how it could possibly happen; after all, we heard in the first reading that the throne of David and his house would stand before the Lord and stand firm forever, and we know that by the time Saint Joseph came there had not been a king on the throne of Israel for several hundred years and the house of David was in shambles. It was a laughingstock and there was nothing left. And so it seems that God did not fulfill His promise, at least on the natural level. But God’s promises are fulfilled in ways that we would never imagine, and Saint Joseph continued to believe. Even though there was no king on the throne, even though the ancestry of David had gone vastly astray, he continued to believe and it was credited to him as righteousness.

His faith was so strong and his love for God was so profound that Saint Joseph is called a just man or a righteous man, one who does not sin, one who does the Will of God in all things. Saint Joseph was just like us; he was a sinner. He was born with Original Sin. He had to struggle with all of the things of the flesh and of the world and of the devil, and he overcame them all so that he would be able to be the guardian of Jesus and Mary. The holiness of Saint Joseph had to have been immense for him to be able to do what he was called to do, to be able, first of all, to accept what the angel told him; to be able to accept Our Lady and a Child Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, something that he certainly would not have understood, but something that he accepted; and for him to say “yes” and be obedient to God in all things.

Even though he saw himself as being completely unworthy to be part of this mystery, he was the second person on the face of the earth to whom the mystery was revealed; Our Lady, of course, being the first. So between the two of them, God had shown them the salvation of humanity. And Saint Joseph, again, recognizing his own sinfulness, recognizing the holiness of Our Blessed Lady and of what was happening within her, saw that he was not worthy. In his humility, in his righteousness, he was willing to get out of God’s way, he was willing to allow God to do whatever it is that He wanted, and he was not going to impose his own will on anything. It is precisely that humility that led to his obedience to do whatever God was going to ask him to do – even though it did not make any sense at all – but he was willing to be obedient and do exactly what the angel told him.

So too for us, when we hear the promises of Christ, sometimes we do not understand them, they do not seem to make sense, and they are not fulfilled the way that we think they ought to be; it matters not. God has made the promises and He is faithful. So we need to put into practice the theological virtues which so characterized Saint Joseph: faith, hope, and charity. He believed in everything that God promised. He had complete hope that God was going to fulfill them in a way that he could not understand. And his love for God, for Our Blessed Lady, and for Our Lord was second only to Our Lady’s love for God and for Our Lord Himself.

He is the righteous and holy man to whom each one of us owes a great debt of gratitude for his love, for his fidelity, for his example to each one of us, because what he has done we also are able to do. We need to pray to him and trust him. Saint Joseph is completely faithful. He will almost always answer your prayer at the very last second – because he wants you to have faith and hope as well, and the only way that grows is to have it tested. But trust. Pray to him. Ask him to help so that our faith will be credited to us as righteousness, that we will overcome sin in our lives, that we will be humble, that we will be holy, that we will be obedient, and that we will love Jesus and Mary as Saint Joseph did.

*This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

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