Fourth Sunday of Advent A
I asked a guy at the last Mass if he did anything special
when he proposed marriage to his wife.
He said, “No.” She quickly chimed
in, “He even had me pick out my own ring.” (At least she got the one she wanted.) So I asked another fellow the same
question, and he said, “Yes.” I
asked, “Did you get her roses?” He
said, “No.” But she jumped in,
“Yes, you did!” I quickly ended
that line of questioning… Not
content, I asked another man after Mass.
“We got engaged in the McDonald’s parking lot,” he replied. That’s not quite the kind of “special”
I had in mind! I dared to ask once
more, and this time the wife answered: “The first time he asked, he said,
‘Would you marry me if we were old enough to get married?’” I had forgotten they’d been high school
sweethearts…
Matthew begins his account of the birth of Jesus by saying: When his mother Mary was betrothed to
Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the
Holy Spirit. Given our own
experience of contemporary wedding customs, we assume that “betrothed” means
“engaged.” But that’s not actually
the case.
You see, Jewish wedding customs 2,000 years ago were nearly
opposite of what we see most often today.
Today, many couples cohabit and then commit: they live together for a
while and, if things work out, then they’ll consider getting married. But in the days of Mary and Joseph,
when a man and woman were betrothed, they exchanged vows publically. They didn’t live together yet—that
could take up to a year more—but they were legally husband and wife. What did they do during this year of
betrothal? The bride would begin
packing her things, say good-bye to her family and friends, and learn from
other women what she needed to know about being a good wife and (God willing)
mother. The groom would go to his
father’s house, where he’d begin to remodel a few rooms (or build a few new
ones) in order to prepare a proper home for his new family. Meanwhile, he’d send gifts to his bride
to woo her and show her his affection.
(He’d also receive gifts from his friends to help fund the
renovations.) When all was
prepared, he’d send for his wife and welcome her into her new home. That’s when they’d have the wedding
feast and their married life would begin.
Note how, in the gospel, Matthew refers to Joseph as Mary’s
“husband,” and the angel refers to Mary as Joseph’s “wife.” When Joseph is discerning how best to
respond to the news of Mary’s pregnancy, he doesn’t propose breaking off the
engagement; he considers “divorce.”
It makes so much more sense of the story to know these customs, doesn’t
it? But there’s still more we can
learn here…
You see, the pattern of betrothal and home-taking describes
the whole history of salvation.
It’s the outline of the whole of the Old Testament: the age of
patriarchs, prophets, and kings that we relive, in a certain sense, during
these four weeks of Advent. God
sets his heart on a people of his choosing—his people, Israel—and sets about to
draw his beloved ever to closer to himself. He binds himself to Israel with a covenant: “I will be your
God, and you will be my people.”
It’s no accident, of course, that this sounds a lot like wedding
vows!
And to seal this covenant, uniting God and man, heaven and
earth, in an unbreakable bond, he sends his Son, Jesus. In a familiar passage from the gospel
of John, as Jesus prepares his disciples for his coming Passion, Death, and
Resurrection, he tells them, Do not let
your hearts be troubled.… In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for
you? And if I go and prepare a
place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I
am you also may be (Jn 14:1-3).
We miss the connection, but those who first heard Jesus speak these
words would have understood immediately: all is now ready, and the Groom has
come to take his Bride home.
What is true of God’s relationship with his people is also
true of God’s relationship with each and every one of us. It is only out of God’s passionate love
for you that you came into existence.
No one else can bring life into being. God loved you before you were born, even before you were
conceived. God was in love with
the mere thought of you! And so
God pursued you, and began a relationship with you. At your Baptism, vows were made: the one true God—Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit—became your God, and you became his own. The rest of your life is now the time
of betrothal. The Bridegroom of
your soul has prepared a place for you, and will return to take you to your
eternal home to be with him forever.
In the meantime, he sends you gifts as tokens of his love: he speaks his
love to you in the Scriptures, in the teachings of his Church, and in the lives
of his saints; he touches your life with his love in the Sacraments; he looks
on you with love in the faces of the poor and the wonders of nature.
But what are we to do during this time of betrothal? How do we best prepare ourselves for
the fullness of life and eternal communion God has in store for us? We can take our cue here, too, from good
St. Joseph. The angel commands him
to do two things: to take Mary, his wife, into his home, and to name her child
Jesus. These things Joseph
promptly did. Likewise, we need to
take Mary into our homes. The
Mother of God is our mother, too.
She is the first and model disciple of Jesus. We need to stay close to Mary, to take Mary into our hearts
and homes, because without fail Mary takes us to her Son. As well, we need to speak the name of
Jesus. Jesus’ name is said aloud by
many people many times every day…but not in a reverent fashion. We need to say his holy name often, for
in it there is great power. It’s
not enough to speak about spirituality or religion or God in generic
terms. Not only in prayer, but
also in conversation with others, we need to pronounce the sacred name of him
who came to save us from our sins.
As we await the Lord’s return, let us keep Blessed Mary close and speak
the Holy Name of Jesus.
This Sunday, we find St. Joseph at the very crux of his
betrothal—and not only of his betrothal to the Virgin Mary, but of the saving
betrothal of God and the human race.
It is due to his deep faith, his righteousness, his courage in obeying
God’s will, that we can recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of the ancient
promise: that Mary’s child is truly Emmanuel,
God-with-us. What a debt of
gratitude we owe to that just man, Joseph, because of whom we can believe that God
has made his home with us, that we might find our home in God!
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