ישוע Two Points: Why + the People

Mary will bear a son, and you are to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins. (Matthew 1:21)

Yeshua. God saves. That’s what the Hebrew means. Jesus. God saves.

That’s one of the angel’s main points to St. Joseph. The child has been conceived in ineffable holiness by God. The human child of your beloved Mary—the child is divine. And the divine child comes to save. You can’t name Him Xerxes or Thor or Qin Shi Huang–you can’t name Him anything but Jesus, because the whole point is: God saves. God comes to be with His people, in the flesh—in order to save His people.

Okay. Two points.

1. Salvation. From what? From slavery to ourselves, our limitations, our unshakable self-destructiveness. Salvation from interior darkness, ignorance, malice. Salvation from our incurable smallness. Salvation from pointlessness.

People say that mankind has lost the sense of sin. The popes of the twentieth century said this. But getting our sense of sin back is as easy as submitting to the questioning of any four-year-old.

How Joseph Read the Signs

It was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you. (Genesis 45:5)

Let’s talk about how to read the signs. God gives us signs regarding His will, His intentions, His plans. But how to read them? Joseph with the beautiful tunic can teach us.

Everyone know what happened between Joseph and his brothers?

When Joseph was young, his brothers treated him with shameful contempt. Joseph had charm and creativity, and he delighted his father. So his brothers despised him out of jealousy. They planned to kill him, but in the end sold him into slavery in Egypt.

But Joseph’s fortunes rose while his brothers’ fell. Joseph became chief steward of Pharaoh’s enormous kingdom. Meanwhile, Joseph’s brothers suffered through an extended famine.

How, though, did Joseph understand all these twists and turns of fate? Let’s imagine him sitting in his silken robes as master of the Egyptian dispensary. He sees his emaciated brothers shuffle in, begging for food. We could hardly blame Joseph if he thought to himself at that moment: Well, looky here. Look at the tough guys. They hated me for no good reason. Now they are paying the piper, and I am in the driver’s seat. Revenge really is a dish that is best served cold.

Who could blame Joseph if he had thought along those lines? But he did not think that way at all. To the contrary, he never gave a moment’s thought to revenge; it didn’t even occur to him.

All Joseph could think about was the hunger of his family. He promptly and quietly saw to it that his brothers received plenty of grain. The same brothers who threw him in the cistern and sold him into slavery.

In fact, not only did Joseph completely ignore his opportunity for sweet revenge—he even went further in the way he read the signs. A smaller person could easily have seen the hand of a vengeful God at work in the sufferings of his brothers. In point of fact, the brothers themselves read the signs that way, interpreting their suffering as punishment for their injustice to Joseph. But Joseph saw the opposite.

Joseph did not say to himself, Aha! God has justly punished these evil brothers of mine and put them into my power! Rather, he said: Aha! God has led me through all the trials and tribulations of my difficult, lonely life for one reason: so that I could help my brothers now and save them from starvation. A smaller person would have seen the hand of a vengeful God at work in his brothers’ sufferings. But Joseph saw the hand of a merciful God at work in his own sufferings.

This, I think, is the way to read the signs. Joseph knew God better than his brothers did. God does not move events for the sake of my own personal satisfaction; He moves them so that He may satisfy the needs of others through me. The universe does not revolve around me; my universe revolves around the people who need my help.

May Joseph be a sign for us. Scripture teaches us that all things work for the good of those who love God. All things work for our good—when we understand that our true good is really the good of our neighbors. So let’s put it Joseph’s way: All things work for the good of the people that the people who love God love.

Heroic Wisdom

The concluding chapters of the book of Genesis provide as moving and as edifying a tale as anything a person could ever read.

Joseph possessed divine wisdom. When he was seventeen years old, he had dreamed that he would reign supreme. But he did not bear arms for his accoutrements. Rather, he wore a coat of many colors.

Joseph’s brothers despised him in their jealousy and conspired to sell the ‘dreamer’ into slavery in Egypt. Joseph, unarmed, but wiser than his brothers, offered no resistance.

Joseph became an attentive, prudent, and provident servant in Egypt. After Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams for him, the king of Egypt declared, “Can we find such a man as this, in whom is the Spirit of God?” Joseph came to enjoy Pharaoh’s highest favor and ruled Egypt in Pharaoh’s place.

Joseph anticipated a coming famine of seven years. He lad aside stores during the years of prosperity so that Egypt could feed the world from its granaries when the hard times came.

God had a plan to re-unite the sons of Jacob, the progenitors of the chosen people. Joseph proved to be the hero of this plan. Not because Joseph foresaw it all, or because he accomplished astounding feats of strength or guile or will. Joseph emerged as the hero because he knew how to co-operate with the strongest person in the story, namely Almighty God.

After Joseph revealed himself and was re-united with his father, his brothers begged his forgiveness for the evil they had done him years before. Joseph did not hesitate to forgive. In fact, he had long since forgotten all about it, because he was too busy co-operating with the plan of God. He told his brothers not to blame themselves: “God sent me here ahead of you for the sake of saving lives.”

Moral of the story: The strongest, wisest hero—the one who truly reigns supreme—accepts that God is in charge, and co-operates.

Holy Family Sunday

1) San Fran weather update

2) Environmentalist Pope Benedict says no to “gender ideology”:

The Creator helps Christians to understand our responsibility toward the earth. It is not simply our property to be exploited according to our interests and desires. Rather, it is a gift of the Creator.

However, concern for God’s creation cannot be limited to care for the natural environment– although that is certainly a part of it. Far more important is the Church’s mission to preserve the ecology of the human being, understood in the proper manner. The Church must teach clearly about the nature of the human person, to counteract the influence of secular ideologies that confuse and diminish human dignity. God created man and woman as complementary, and the Church demands that this order of creation be respected by promotion of marriage and family life.

3) Your servant’s Holy Family Sunday homily:

In the beginning, God created mankind. Then, in the fullness of time, He became man. In the beginning, He made man and woman to be a family. In the fullness of time, He became a member of a family.