… of the body, and the life everlasting
Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ. The angel of the Lord said to Joseph in a dream, “It is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.”
– From Matthew 1
I know this day is dedicated as the “Solemnity” of St. Joseph, but I feel playful thinking of Jesus on his daddy’s lap. Pulling his beard, smiling the most beautiful smile in the world, until his daddy giggles and cannot stop.
Mary is sleeping, and Joseph is awake with the baby. He coos at Jesus, and he touches Jesus’ soft cheek with his carpenter hands. Not solemn, Joseph is gentle and full of both the personal awe he carries constantly since his dreams and the universal awe of being a baby’s dad.
Joseph grew old as Jesus grew up. No one lived too long in those days. He watched Jesus the apprentice become a master carpenter. He sharpened their tools and taught Jesus how to use them. Over the years Joseph began to feel his body, so strong when young, grow weaker and less reliable.
When she herself was 38, author Vita Sackville-West described the life of an older woman, fifty years her senior:
“Her body had, in fact, become her companion, a constant resource and pre-occupation; all the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfillment of the tyranny they had always threatened. Yet it was, rather than otherwise, an agreeable and interesting tyranny. A hint of lumbago caused her to rise cautiously from her chair and reminded her of the day she had ricked her back at Nervi, since when her back had never been very reliable.
The small intimacies of her teeth were known to her, so that she ate carefully, biting on one side rather than on the other. She instinctively crooked one finger – the third on the left hand – to save it from the pang of neuritis. An in-growing toe-nail obliged her to use the shoehorn with the greatest precaution…all tiny things, contemptibly tiny things, ennobled only by their vast background, the background of Death.” – All Passion Spent, p. 194-195
This “agreeable and interesting tyranny” which leads into the “vast background” of death awaits us all. Today Joseph solemnly leads the procession and we all can join. There may or may not be cheering multitudes beside the road. We’re saving the palm leaves for Sunday.
But now we can look forward and not backward to see how, the closer we get, this vast background looks. My friend Dan writes, “Death and life are such strange traveling companions. To see these two abiding together in casual conversation is deeply troubling. But once the proverbial scythe has done its task, that long handle serves as walking stick for a continuing journey.”
“For indeed,” as Dan says, “there is much traveling ahead!”
My hands are not always strong enough to hold today’s walking stick, Father. But on these more tired days, when I lay it down and rest beside the road, it is you who brings the wine, and you who serves the bread. It’s my BODY that participates in your Body, and I have no right resenting how it’s being used up. Your words gently lift me back to the highway and strengthen my grip, because in my weakness you are strong.
http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2018/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1687
