Did
it ever occur to you to wonder why it was God’s plan that the Blessed Virgin
Mary should be espoused to St. Joseph?
Was it not enough that the Son of God be born of a virgin, as opposed to
an espoused virgin? In his commentary on today’s Gospel of
Christmas Eve, St. Jerome gives us four reasons why St. Joseph was chosen to be
the spouse of the Blessed Mother.
The
first reason is that their espousal gave Mary and her blessed Offspring certain rights, chief of which is
that the genealogy of the Son of God might be reckoned in human terms from that
of Joseph. Our Lord’s foster father, let us remember, was of the royal house
of David, which is why he went to David’s royal city of Bethlehem to be counted
in the census called for by the Roman Emperor Augustus. One of the essential roles of our Lord was
that he should truly be born the King of Israel, a descendant of the great King
David.
Secondly, our Lady’s espousal to St. Joseph
avoided the appearance of impropriety.
Jewish law did not merely stigmatize a woman who had a child out of
wedlock, but prescribed that she be stoned as an adulteress. No such
stigma or punishment was ever attached to the Blessed Mother, who was already
legally wedded to St. Joseph at the time of Christ’s birth.
Thirdly, God the Father desired to provide
the Mother of His Child with a protector, especially for their flight into
Egypt. Thus it was to St. Joseph that an angel appeared, to warn him of
Herod’s nefarious plans to murder the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. And again,
it was to St. Joseph that the angel appeared in Egypt, reassuring him that
those who sought the death of the Child were now themselves dead, and that he
may safely take his family back to Nazareth.
St. Jerome recounts that St. Ignatius, Bishop
of Antioch, added a fourth reason for the espousal to St. Joseph; namely, that
the birth might take place unknown to the devil, who would thus suppose that
Mary had conceived by Joseph. When we
analyze the role of the Devil in the events of our Lord’s life, this seems to
be a probably theory. The Devil’s
angelic intellect is not that of God—he is not omnipotent and cannot read men’s
thoughts. But he can and does deduce by
the actions of men, and far more effectively than we can, the hidden
motivations and reasons that reveal the reality of what is truly
happening. In the case of the newborn
Christ Child, the Devil is familiar with the messianic prophecies, and on that
basis he urges Herod to murder the young children, he tempts Christ in the
wilderness to see if he will sin, he is ever watchful as this “holy man” makes
the blind to see and the lame to walk. He
finally realizes who he is dealing with, and wastes no time in planning his
destruction, thus bringing about the ultimate irony of God’s victory over his
satanic plots. We can see, then, how Our
Lady’s espousal to St. Joseph confused Satan and gave our Lord the time he
needed to perform his life’s work.
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