I used to be associate
pastor at Holy Cross parish, and while I was there, I taught the confirmation
class for the grade school kids. The first mini-essay I’d assign each year
would be to ask them to explain which virtue they most wanted to grow in over
the course of their confirmation prep. Each time I assigned that essay prompt,
a full half of them would choose courage. The rest, by the way, would be split
roughly evenly between faith, hope, and love. I was somewhat disappointed that
none of them ever chose prudence, which I think is something many twelve to fourteen-year-olds
could probably do with growing in… But, courage, that was the most popular
choice for virtue they most wanted to grow in. And they were able, in general,
to write about big bold displays of courage, but they concentrated in their
responses on little things, on resisting peer pressure, standing up for someone
being picked up, or defending what they believed was right.
In today’s
gospel, St. Joseph, this parish’s patron, experiences that growth in courage
that my former students longed for. At the start of the reading, his life is
set up. He and Mary’s father had carefully arranged this betrothal, everything
was looking good, and then everything suddenly started crashing down around
him. Mary was pregnant, and the one thing he knew for sure was that the baby
wasn’t his.
In this situation,
Joseph’s first instinct shows that he has a kind of base-line level of good
will. The law says that he should publicly expose Mary, and that she should
face trial for adultery, and the punishment if she were found guilty could even
be stoning. Now, it appears that by this time at least, very few if any adulterers
were actually stoned, but the consequences certainly wouldn’t be good. We know that
in Roman law, for instance, at this time, adulterers would be exiled and banned
from ever remarrying.
So, he
decides not to do that. Even though he’s just, even though he’s law observant,
he won’t do that; he won’t expose her to public shame. He just won’t act. He’ll
disappear from the scene. He won’t expose her to public shame, but he
doesn’t seem to show much concern for the fact that she’ll be left with a baby
and no husband. Things still probably wouldn’t have ended up going all that
well for Mary, but at least he could reassure himself that he hadn’t done anything
to make it worse. She’d made her bed, she could lie in it, and he wouldn’t super-add
any suffering.
“Dare to do
more than that.” The angel comes in a dream, and dares Joseph, do more than
just washing your hands clean and leaving someone to suffer. Human up. Be more courageous
than that. Take on the role of foster father to the Son of the Spirit. Now,
what Joseph is being asked to consent to isn’t as big a risk or as big a sacrifice
as what Mary had already said yes to. But, it’s not nothing. It’s sacrifice, it’s
risk. And God dreams of more for us than just doing no harm. He dreams of us living
out the fullness of our baptismal priesthood and being courageous, offering
sacrifice, riskily loving.
Joseph says
yes. What strengthens him to say yes? The promise: God is with us. In that
title, Emmanuel, the angel promises that God will be with him. And that
assurance can enable a lot of courage in us. It can enable daring to love, even
those who might let us down, even those we might mourn, for God will comfort us.
It means daring to hunger for righteousness, for justice, even though that
hunger hurts, because God will fill us. It means daring to do the right thing,
even if it leads to persecution, because God is with us. The title Emmanuel is
the promise, but the child, who bears it, is not just the promise, but the
fulfillment: God, with us. God with us still, when two or three are gathered, on
the altar, in the poor served. God daring us to be courageous and riskily sacrificial.
I watched
an interview recently with Traudl Junge. She was Hitler’s personal typist, and
was in the bunker when he died. She was briefly imprisoned, first by the
Russians, then by the Americans after the war, but released in 1946, because
she was classified as too young to really be held responsible for any of the
atrocities of Nazism. In the interview I watched, she said that for a long time
she’d clung to that excuse, that she had been young, she hadn’t done anything
evil, she hadn’t even known about the atrocities, but still a guilt clung to
her at having liked people who she later learned were evil. Her moment of
growth in virtue came when she saw a plaque commemorating Sophie Scholl. She
and Scholl had been born in the same year. The year that Junge had started
working for Hitler was the same year the Scholl had been arrested and executed
for disseminating anti-Nazi pamphlets at the University of Munich.
Junge maintains
that she did not know about any atrocities. But she’s come to realize that she
could have known. She could have tried to find out. She could have not been
content at personally doing no evil, but like Sophie Scholl, like Joseph, heard
that call, heard God’s dream to do the riskily sacrificial courageous thing.
Scholl was a devout Christian. She was a Lutheran, but she read Cardinal Newman’s
sermons and was convicted by his calls to follow one’s conscience. She knew God
was with her. So, she dared believe her boyfriend when he returned from the
Eastern Front and told her what was going on; she dared write about that; she
dared resist; she dared spread the word; she dared die. Because God was with
her, and she knew it.
Friends, God
is with us. And He is building up our courage, strengthening us for risky
sacrificial life-giving love.
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