St. Joseph: Adversity Revealed His True Character

(Fourth Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 18, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 24:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Advent 2022]

It’s been said that “Adversity reveals character.”

Adversity reveals character.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement.  When you’re in the midst of a trial—when you’re put into a very stressful situation where your patience and love are put to the test—your true character will often show through. 

The kind of person you really are will be revealed.

And that’s the way it was with St. Joseph.

Perhaps it’s hard for us to fully appreciate the difficulty this good man faced when he learned that Mary was pregnant.  After all, we know how everything worked out.  We know that this story would eventually have a happy ending.

But Joseph didn’t know that!  In fact, from his perspective, this story could have easily had a disastrous ending, especially for Mary—and for Mary’s Child!

The text says explicitly that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph when she became pregnant.  Now please understand, this did not mean that she and Joseph were engaged to each other in the modern sense of that term.  In ancient Israel, betrothal was actually the first stage of marriage.  It took place roughly a year before the couple consummated their relationship and lived together as husband and wife. 

But, according to Mosaic Law, during this 12-month interim period the couple was still legally married.  Hence, a betrothed woman who had relations with another man was guilty of the sin of adultery.  And the penalty for adultery was clearly stated in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 22.  There we read the following: “If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out to the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife.  Thus you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Obviously when he first learned that Mary was pregnant, Joseph did not know she had gotten that way through a supernatural event!  He couldn’t possibly have known that!  He presumed it had taken place by natural means.  He probably said to himself, “This is shocking.  I’ve always known Mary to be holy and righteous, but I guess even holy and righteous people can be tempted and fall into sin.”

The bottom line is that he initially thought his otherwise saintly wife had been unfaithful to him.

It was then—in the midst of this disappointment and stress and (probably) anger—that Joseph demonstrated the type of person he really was.  This terrible adversity—this apparent tragedy—helped to reveal his true character.

First of all, he showed that he was a man of deep moral conviction AND at the same time a man of deep human compassion.  He couldn’t ignore his wife’s apparent unfaithfulness; to him this was a sin that needed to be confronted, not “swept under the rug.”  In that, he demonstrated his moral conviction.  And yet, he still had a loving compassion for Mary.  Even when he suspected that she had been unfaithful, he wasn’t willing to “throw the book at her” (so to speak), by making the sin public.  If he had done that, our Blessed Mother (as I indicated a few minutes ago) would have been stoned to death. 

His compassion and conviction led him to make the decision to divorce Mary quietly.  Divorce was allowed under Mosaic Law at the time, and it was necessary here because they were already in the first stage of marriage.

We live in a world right now where many people think it’s either conviction OR compassion: either you have to be a cold-hearted legalist when it comes to the commandments of God and have no compassion for others, or you have to be a wishy-washy “nice guy” who has no solid moral convictions about important issues of the day.  (Many of our Catholic politicians have fallen into that latter category in recent years, have they not?)

Joseph shows us that this is a false dichotomy.  It’s a lie!  It’s not either/or, it’s both/and.  As Catholics we are not to be either people of conviction OR people of compassion, we are to be people of both conviction AND compassion—like Joseph was! People who are truly pro-life, for example, are strong in their conviction that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, but they also have great compassion for women in difficult pregnancies—and also for women who have had abortions.

Secondly, in the midst of this apparent crisis, Joseph demonstrated that he was very open-minded.  Now the interesting thing is, in today’s world he would be called the exact opposite.  In modern western culture, Joseph would definitely be labeled “narrow-minded.”

Why?

Because he was open-minded only when it came to the truth!  He was not “open-minded” when it came to error and sin!  When the angel revealed to him the truth about Mary and her pregnancy—that she had conceived this child through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the child was the divine Son of God who would save the world from sin—Joseph immediately accepted it.  He was open-minded to the truth of God’s word as spoken to him through this heavenly messenger. 

In today’s world, of course, “open-minded” is normally used to describe those who accept and promote gross moral evils—especially in the area of sexuality.  Those who embrace Biblical moral principles and accept the truth of God’s word as proclaimed by his Church are considered to be hopelessly narrow-minded.

Well, if that’s your perspective, if that’s where you stand—and I pray it is—then take heart: St. Joseph would be right there with you.

No doubt about it.

These are just two aspects of Joseph’s character that shine through brilliantly in this well-known scene from the Gospel of Matthew.  There are, of course, many others I could have mentioned.  In this story, for example, we also see that Joseph was a man of great courage, who was ready to do the right thing regardless of what other people might say.  We see that he was a man who walked by faith, not by his feelings.  We see that he was someone who believed that God could do great things—even “impossible” things.

And, amazingly, we see all these truths, we know all these things about St. Joseph and his character, without ever hearing him speak a single word.

Did you realize that? 

In the entire New Testament, not one single word of St. Joseph is recorded!

It must have been in reference to him that the old saying was first coined: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Joseph’s actions—especially in times of adversity—clearly revealed his character, and showed him to be a holy, faithful, obedient servant of God.

St. Joseph, pray for us, that we will be the same—especially in our moments of adversity.

A Tale of Two Women

(Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception 2022: This homily was given on December 8, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Genesis 3; Luke 1:26-38.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Immaculate Conception 2022]

Well over a hundred years ago, Charles Dickens wrote a novel entitled, “A Tale of Two Cities.”  Along those lines, the entire history of the world can rightly be described as “A Tale of Two Women.” 

Tell this to the radical feminists who think that women have sometimes been relegated to the fringes of human history.  Not true!  The fact of the matter is: everything which has happened since the creation of the first human beings has somehow been connected to one of two women.  The first of these two women we call Eve, while the second has often been called “the new Eve”—our Blessed Mother Mary.  As we are told in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 511: “The Virgin Mary ‘cooperated through free faith and obedience in human salvation.’  She uttered her yes ‘in the name of all human nature.’  By her obedience she became the new Eve, mother of the living.”

This is one reason why it’s so appropriate that our first reading today was from Genesis 3.  To some people, of course, this text from the Old Testament would seem out of place.  Why a reading from Genesis on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mother?  What’s the connection between Eve and Mary?  Well, the connection comes in the form of a contrast.  The disobedience of Eve and her husband, which brought death to the human race, is contrasted today with the obedience of Mary, who was preserved from original sin by the grace of her Son, and who said yes to the Lord at the Annunciation and in every event of her life.  This is why our Gospel reading is the account of the Annunciation from Luke 1.  Here’s how St. Iranaeus spoke about it way back in the second century: “Just as . . . Eve was seduced by the words of an angel so that she turned away from God by disobeying his word, so . . . Mary received the good news from an angel’s announcement in such a way as to give birth to God by obeying his word; and as the former was seduced so that she disobeyed God, the latter let herself be convinced to obey God, and so the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.  And as the human race was subjected to death by a virgin, it was liberated by a Virgin; a virgin’s disobedience was thus counterbalanced by a Virgin’s obedience . . . “ (Adv. Haer., V, 19, 1).

The contrast between the old Eve and the new Eve runs deep, as St. Irenaeus indicates there.  For example,

• The old Eve was selfish.  When Satan told her she could be “like God,” she jumped at the chance.
  
• The new Eve—Mary—was selfless: “Be it done unto me according to your word [O Lord].”
  
  
• The old Eve was ruled by pride.
• The new Eve was ruled by humility: “I am the handmaid of the Lord.”  “[God] has looked with favor on his lowly servant.”
  
  
• The old Eve led someone else into sin.
• The new Eve leads us to holiness.  (Here we encounter an important truth about devotion to Mary: She always leads us to Jesus.  Thus if our devotion to the Blessed Mother isn’t bringing us closer to her Son, then there’s something wrong with our devotion to Mary.)
  
  
• The old Eve gave in to the serpent.
  
• The new Eve, by her “yes,” helped to crush the serpent’s head.
  
  
• The old Eve was the “mother of the living” in the order of nature.  (That’s why we come into this world with original sin.)
  
• The new Eve is the Mother of the living in the new order of grace.  What Jesus said to St. John at the foot of the cross he says to all of us: “Behold thy Mother.”
  
  
• The old Eve rationalized her sin.  The Bible says, in effect, that she analyzed the forbidden fruit and convinced herself that it was okay to eat it.
• The new Eve never rationalized; she simply obeyed God’s word.  If God said it, she believed it and did it.  Thus she never sinned.
  
  
• The old Eve refused to take responsibility for her actions.  As we heard a few moments ago, Adam blamed her, and she blamed the snake.
  
• The new Eve took more than her share of responsibility.  Remember, she was probably about 14-years-old when Gabriel appeared to her and asked her to be the Mother of the Son of God.  That’s a very heavy responsibility for anyone, let alone a teenager!

So, what does all this have to do with you and me and the world of 2022?  Well, as I said earlier, the entire history of the human race is ultimately “a tale of two women.”  In saying this, I mean that every single event which has occurred since people have lived on this planet is somehow connected either to Eve’s “no” or to Mary’s “yes.”  The Holocaust, the Roman persecutions of Christians, legalized abortion, violence on our city streets, racism: all these have been rooted in Eve’s no.  On the other hand, it’s Mary’s yes that stands behind every single act of faith or charity which has ever taken place.  Because of Mary’s yes (and only because of Mary’s yes), the world has been blessed with Mother Teresa, and John Paul II, and all the other great saints.

Of course, what applies to the world as a whole also applies to us as individuals.  The history of the world is “a tale of two women,” and so is our personal history!  That’s because we’ve been born again in Baptism, but we still have the inclination to sin which theologians call “concupiscence.”  Consequently, we sometimes say no to God like Eve did, and at other times—thankfully—we say yes like our Blessed Mother did.  Whenever we let pride or one of the other 7 deadly sins rule us, whenever we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, whenever we rationalize our sins in any way, we allow the old Eve to win the day.  But when we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, when we love and go the extra mile, when we turn away from temptation and do what’s right, we give the victory to the new Eve—our Blessed Mother.  So I suppose you could say that the decisive question for us and for every single human person is: In my life, which of these two women will ultimately prevail?  Let’s resolve today, with the help of God’s grace, to give the victory to Mary, the New Eve!

 

Repentance—Without Excuses!

 

(Second Sunday of Advent (A): This homily was given on December 4, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-17; Romans 15:1-9; Matthew 3:1-12.)

 [For the audio version of this homily, click here: Second Sunday of Advent 2022]

We live in a world of excuses.

On that note, several years ago someone gave me a copy of the following church bulletin announcement:

To make it possible for everyone to be able to attend church next Sunday, we are planning to have a special "No Excuse Sunday."  Cots will be placed in the vestibule for those who say, "Sunday is my only day to sleep in."  There will be a special section with lounge chairs for those who feel that our pews are too hard.  Eyedrops will be provided for those with tired eyes from watching TV late Saturday night.  We will have steel helmets for those who say, "The roof would cave in if I ever came to church."  Blankets will be provided for those who think that the church is too cold, and fans for those who think that it's too hot.  Scorecards will be provided for those who would like to list the hypocrites present.  We will distribute "Stamp out Stewardship" buttons for those who feel that the Church is always asking for money.  One section of the building will contain trees and grass for those who say they can only find God in nature.  Doctors and nurses will be on hand for those who plan to be sick on Sunday.  The sanctuary will be decorated with both Christmas poinsettias and Easter lilies for those who have never seen the church without them.  We will provide hearing aids for those who can't hear the sermon and cotton for those who can.  (One editorial comment: If this ever happens at St. Pius X, no cotton will be distributed!)

Now I must say that's a very noble attempt to deal with some of the more common excuses that are made for missing Sunday Mass.  But I guarantee you, even if all those excuses were adequately dealt with at a given parish, some people would still manage to find other ones.  The problem, of course, goes back to Adam and Eve.  When Adam was confronted by God after he and his wife had sinned, what was his response?  He conveniently made an excuse, did he not?  "The woman whom you put here with me--she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it."  By the way, it's clear from this response that Adam was not very good at making excuses.  In his lame attempt at exonerating himself, he tried to blame his wife, but he ended up blaming God!  In effect he said, "Lord, it's your fault!  You're the one who put this woman here with me to tempt me in this way.  If you hadn't brought her into my life, this never would have happened!"  Needless to say, it's not a good idea to blame God to his face when you're trying to excuse your sinful behavior.  At least Eve was a little more diplomatic in her excuse.  She said, "[Lord] the serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it."  In other words, "It's his fault!"  The Lord, of course, was not influenced or impressed by either excuse.  Nor is he influenced or impressed by our excuses.  That's because he knows everything.  Excuses can only be effective if you're dealing with someone who is not omniscient.  They hold no water when you're dealing with the all-knowing, all-seeing Creator of the universe!!!

Which brings us to John the Baptist.  As we heard in today's gospel text from Matthew 3, during his ministry John proclaimed a message that was basic and clear: "Reform your lives!  The reign of God is at hand."  And he wanted people to respond to this message—to this call to repentance—without making any excuses for their behavior!  Why?  Because he loved them.  John did not tolerate excuses because he loved people and wanted to see them reconciled with God.  John understood that if people made excuses for their sins, they would not recognize their need for someone to save them from their sins.  Hence, they would not recognize their need for Jesus when he came.  And John wanted everyone to recognize their need for Jesus and to accept him in faith, so that they would receive forgiveness and eternal salvation. 

This helps us to understand his harsh reaction to the Pharisees and Sadducees.  It was a reaction (believe it or not) that was borne out of love.  You see, John anticipated the excuse they would use for not repenting, and he knew that this excuse would threaten their salvation.  And he didn't want them to go to hell. 

What was the excuse?  Their excuse was: "We don't need to repent of our sins like everyone else because we're already right with God.  After all, Abraham is our father.  We're his spiritual children.  We already share in the benefits of the covenant that he made with God."  (This, by the way, is very similar to an attitude that you find in certain Catholics who think that they can live any way they want and still go to heaven simply because they were baptized as children.)  John's response to this excuse?  "You brood of vipers! . . . Do not pride yourselves on the claim, 'Abraham is our father.'  I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these very stones.  Even now the ax is laid to the root of the tree.  Every tree that is not fruitful will be cut down and thrown into the fire."  In other words, "Forget it, guys.  That's a lousy excuse for not repenting and it won't fool God on Judgment Day!"

I believe the Lord is challenging us today to come to terms with any excuses that we might be using in our lives--excuses that might be keeping us in the state of mortal sin, or at least preventing us from growing in holiness: excuses for lying perhaps, excuses for cheating, excuses for cutting corners at work, excuses for swearing or taking the Lord's name in vain, excuses for holding a grudge, excuses for missing Mass on Sundays and holydays, excuses for using artificial contraception, excuses for drinking excessively, excuses for gambling excessively, excuses for not reaching out to those in need.  As Adam and Eve, as the Pharisees and Sadducees would surely attest: the temptation to sin is great, but the temptation to make excuses for sin is every bit as great.  May all of us overcome both temptations during this season of Advent and resolve to make a good, excuse-free confession.  That will certainly make for a joy-filled, Spirit-filled Christmas.