Joseph and the Call

Gospel: Matthew 1: 16, 18-21, 24

Whenever God calls someone in scripture to a special task, it is always to something difficult and arduous.  God never calls someone to a life of ease, pleasure, or serene.  Consider the trials to which Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets were called to lives of great difficulty and opposition.  Today's feast day once again reminds us of what it means to be called by God.

Joseph is an ordinary man engaged to an ordinary woman.  In marriage we are called to help bear the burdens of our spouse and children, setting aside our own preferences and ideas for the good of others.  Joseph discovers his intended is with child; he has an idea on how to fix the problem, but his remarkable silence leaves him open to hearing God suggest another path, one that will help his spouse and her child, but one that will lead to greater hardship for him.  Joseph accepts the task and enters into a calling of great hardship thereafter: being a refugee in a foreign land because the civil and religious leaders have colluded to do harm to the child; a life on the run, and a life of poverty under harsh Roman occupation in Galilee.

Our lives are not unlike Joseph's.  We are ordinary people called by God to a life lived for others.  Our one great possession - a life with Jesus - will be threatened by the same forces of the political and religious powers of our day - and life will bring us trials and torments.  But if we seek the silence of Joseph, we too can be open to the promptings of God that will guide us through these pitfalls and provide us with peace of soul as we carry out our humble vocations of service to others.