Mary and Joseph

Mary and Joseph...
Some thoughts on Joseph's role in the Christmas Saga.

A Blessed Christmas
from
Fr Raymond

IT IS NOT GOOD FOR WOMAN TO BE ALONE
Joseph’s role in the Christmas Saga is much more than providing a smokescreen for the virgin birth. His presence on the scene certainly meant that, to all intents and purposes he was the father of the child and so there was no scandal and Mary didn’t have to run the gauntlet of shame as an unmarried mother. To the shepherds, to the Magi, to all the neighbouring countryside she was a married woman and there was nothing scandalous about her childbearing. However, I would like to think that there is a much deeper significance to Joseph’s role in the story than that.
This significance is hinted at in that primordial word of God spoken about the human race when he first created it: “It is not good for Man to be alone” This saying is equally valid in the form “It is not good for Woman to be alone”.
From this dawn of the creation of our race, at every great juncture in the history of salvation, man and woman have appeared side by side.
We read from the very first “So God created Mankind in his own image, male and female he created them”. Then when they fell, it was together they fell, both equally implicated in their fall. Then at the flood it was not just Noah who was saved, but Noah and his wife. And so on down the centuries of the Patriarchs; the stories are not about the Patriarchs themselves but about the Patriarchs and their wives; not about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob but about Abraham and Sara, about Isaac and Rebecca, about Jacob and Rachel. And how very significant the role of each of the Matriarchs is in salvation history! This pattern arches over and undergirds the whole of salvation history right down to the coming of the Angel Gabriel to announce the conception of the Saviour. The Angel Gabriel is sent, not “to a Virgin whose name was Mary” but “to a virgin betrothed to a man”. Moreover we are even told the man’s name, Joseph, before we are told that the Virgin’s name was Mary. As much as to say that it is more important for us to realise her bond with Joseph than to know her personal name. It is as the representative of the whole human race that she stands before Gabriel. It is not to her as the solitary Virgin Mary that he is sent, but to her as the primordial “Woman” of prophecy.
Then when the Christ, the New Adam, does arrive, and when he finally sets about the work of our redemption, Mary, the New Eve, is always at his side. She is there not only during the scenes of the infancy, but right to the last, to the top of Calvary’s hill . She stands at the foot of the Cross. Here again we restore the original form of our opening quotation: “It is not good for man…..” not even this man, or rather, especially for this man, and especially at this climactic point in mankind’s history, “it is not good for this man to be alone.” “….at the foot of the cross stood Mary his Mother”.
And after Our Lord's glorious Ascension into Heaven, he, the New Adam, reached back down to earth and caught his Mother, the New Eve, by the hand and lifted her bodily into the "New Paradise".
It is not good for Man, or Woman, to be alone.
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