The dream that paves the way
Today’s Gospel presents us with the person and figure of St. Joseph the Just. He is the silent man of the Gospel who speaks not a word but who hears the word of God and fulfills it. His silence and his obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit made him the saint to whom St. Teresa of Avila had regular recourse, declaring that she never went to him for any assistance whatsoever without receiving his help.
The Gospel tells us that he is just, and because he is just, he determined to put Mary away quietly rather than shame her. This phrase summarizes the mystery of his life and his role in the plan of salvation. He is just: he knows what the Law requires, and fully intends to meet its obligation. He is just: he knows Mary and he knows that despite her pregnancy, she has not been unfaithful to him. I can’t even say “he would know if she had been,” because such a thought is utterly impossible, to him and to us. And yet the fact of the pregnancy and the fact of the Law’s requirements must be addressed, and as a just man, he is determined to do what the Law requires. He came up with the best possible human solution.
And then God intervenes, through the dream which tells him to take Mary for his wife and to name the child “Jesus” — God saves. Joseph awoke from his dream and then “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” In naming Jesus, Joseph is the first human being to declare the Incarnate Lord’s identity and mission, which is his right and duty as the Child’s legal father.
God saves, and he does so by upending human expectations and providing solutions that escape human reason. God’s solutions require great faith. Joseph, the Just Man, obedient to the Law, sets aside the Law’s requirements because of a dream. Imagine him explaining this decision to a doctor of the law. “Jesus” — Joshua — was a common-enough name in ancient Israel, hence the Lord’s designation as Jesus of Nazareth, distinguishing him from all the other Jesus’. But this Jesus does not recall Joshua the ancient judge: no, this is the Jesus for whom the Chosen People had been waiting, entering the world in a way that defies human understanding. Joseph knows the truth about Jesus at the outset; we can imagine he also knew the opposition the truth will elicit: he is no fool.
We are all faced with problems the best human solutions to which come up short. The question before us is whether we will proceed like Joseph, acting in accord with the Lord’s commands and yet attentive to the Lord’s intervention to show a better, if humanly improbable, solution. When faced with a choice between competing solutions, how can we discern the right course of action? It is the one that requires greater faith, greater surrender to what we know is true without necessarily knowing how it is so. It’s the answer that inexplicably satisfied every requirement for completeness, and the one that requires the greatest humility. Advent faith, faith that justifies, is the faith that recognizes the Lord’s direction when it is received and which sets us in motion to obey. This is the faith that produces the oil in the lamps of the virgins who are wise.