Matthew 13
When successful and popular people speak, the public tends to listen to them. Often I am surprised that the public agrees with and follows these popular figures’ non-expert opinions and suggestions without much examination. Their popularity directly becomes their credibility without particular expertise.
On the other hand, our family members and neighbours speak, we tend to half-listen or even to ignore them, even when they speak words of wisdom. The hometown people of Jesus said about Jesus, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” and they added, “Is not his mother called Mary?” Before they took offence at Jesus, they looked down upon his parents first. They ignored St Joseph, the patron saint of the whole Church, and didn’t recognize Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. Although they lived close by, they did not acknowledge the holiness of these two greatest saints of all saints. Although the town’s people were amazed at the wisdom and power of Jesus, they could not accept Jesus even as a prophet, not to mention as the Lord and Saviour.
St Joseph was an ordinary carpenter. He was not commercially too successful because he could not even afford a room when his wife gave birth to her first son. We don’t know how skillful St Joseph was, but it doesn’t seem that he was a renowned engineer or inventor. All we know about him is that he was a carpenter. And it seems that’s how much the town’s people also knew about him. We find St Joseph in the infancy narratives, but he never speaks. There is not even a word from him in the entire gospel. We don’t know if he liked to sleep, but he sleeps and receives messages from angels, wakes up, and does what the angels told him. There is nothing extraordinary about St Joseph in the gospel. And the town’s people found the same – nothing exceptional, nothing extraordinary, nothing to be commemorated.
Nevertheless, in secret, he was chosen as the foster father of the Son of God. And also in secret, he protected the Mother of God and her Son. He didn’t speak too much, but he did more than enough in God’s plan of salvation.
There is an expression, average Joe or ordinary Joe. We don’t expect much from an average Joe. But our average Joe, St Joseph could carry our Saviour and protect him with his poverty. Not a superstar or a superhero, but this average Joseph I wish to become.
