Fourth Sunday of Advent: St. Joseph

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; Psalm 23:1-6; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-24

On the fourth Sunday of Advent, we read St. Matthew’s Gospel in which the role of St. Joseph is brought into focus. In order to understand the situation in which Joseph found himself, a little background is needed. He was betrothed (in Hebrew, ‘qiddushin’ meaning consecrations) to Mary, Our Lady. In Jewish culture at that time, this had a greater significance than the modern day equivalent of an engagement because it carried with it the legal and moral effects of marriage itself. During this time of betrothal the bride-to-be lived with her parents - in Mary’s case with Saints Joachim and Anne. It was only at the celebration of the wedding that the wife would be led in procession to her husband’s house after which time they “came together” [RSV Mt 1:18].

We are not told in Matthew’s Gospel or any other for that matter, how Joseph discovered Mary was “with child”. Perhaps Mary told him and tried to explain; perhaps it was through an intermediary; perhaps he realised it by himself? Regardless, the situation no doubt appeared bleak initially. There were - seemingly - two possibilities to explain Mary’s pregnancy: either Joseph had lacked the self-control to remain chaste before the wedding, or Mary had been unfaithful. The former would have been a cause of shame and reproach on both Mary and Joseph; the latter was more serious still for the penalty for a “betrothed virgin” lying with another man was death by stoning [Deut 22:23-24].  The stakes were very high indeed.

How does Joseph navigate this crisis? As a “just man”, he decides he will end the relationship discreetly by divorcing Mary. He did not seek the retribution for which the law provided - being “unwilling to put her to shame” - but, in the midst of this dramatic scene, he displayed a kindly disposition. St. Thomas Aquinas and others have interpreted this disposition as a sign that he realised that somehow God was behind all of this - perhaps there was a third possibility after all?

Even so, “Why me?” “Why would it have to be my wife who became pregnant, and leave me in this quandry?” I suspect Joseph uttered such words or words to a similar effect. The answer, of course - as Joseph discovered by the message of angel in a dream - is that it was God’s plan. It was God’s plan that Joseph, the “son of David”, the heir to the Davidic promise, would be the Father of Jesus. It was God’s plan that Mary who had already been conceived without original sin would be His Mother. It was God’s plan that His son would be named “Jesus” (Jeshua) meaning “the Lord saves”. It was God’s plan that He would save His people from their sins. And all this was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s oracle, God’s plan foretold.

As if Joseph wasn’t bewildered enough by Mary’s pregnancy, he now learns that the Father of Mary’s child is God Himself, and that he, Joseph, is to be guardian. The human mind boggles at such an awesome message, a breathtaking responsibility. Certainly, it was not for nothing that the angel said to him, “do not fear”.

Joseph’s example is a remarkable one. He was, in every sense but biological, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and husband of Our Lady. In the remaining days of Advent, in our contemplation of how our Saviour came to be born, all of us might reflect on Joseph’s witness and role in the history of salvation. Pope Benedict XVI encouraged this devotion: "meditation on the human and spiritual journey of Saint Joseph invites us to ponder his vocation in all its richness, and to see him as a constant model for all those who have devoted their lives to Christ in the priesthood, in the consecrated life or in the different forms of lay engagement.”

Sancte Joseph, ora pro nobis.

Joseph's Dream, Gaetano Gandolfi (c.1790)

Second Friday of Advent: Fasting and Feasting

Readings: Isaiah 48:17-19; Psalm 1:1-4,6; Matthew 11:16-19

You just can’t please some people. One can sense Our Lord’s frustration in today’s Gospel as he rebukes the crowds for their unbelief. Their hard-heartedness has left them unable to see an exemplar and prophet in their midst in the person of St. John the Baptist. Rather than be impressed by his austerity and observance of the law, they dismissed him thinking he was possessed.  

Similarly, and more troubling still, the crowds fail to accept Jesus Christ, “the Son of man”. He who, in contrast to John, had worked miracles before them - changing water into wine, and had preached a compelling message of compassion and love. Their response was to brand him “a glutton and a drunkard”, echoing the rebellious good-for-nothing type described in the book of Deuteronomy [21:18-20].  

Neither John’s abstinence nor Jesus’s mildness satisfied them. Like obstinate children, they refused to be moved. “Why?”, one might well ask. John and Our Lord were impressive all right, but perhaps they were a bit too challenging; they made the crowds feel uncomfortable. Perhaps John seemed too zealous, whereas Jesus was thought perhaps too radical - breaking all the laws.  And, after all, one wouldn’t have wanted to rock the boat too much lest the powers-that-be might get wind of it. The problem, then as now, was fear.  Maybe this is why Jesus says time and again in Scripture, “Do not be afraid!”

St. John the Baptist, Giovanni Barbieri

Given that Jesus is the person who we are called to follow, one might well wonder at the significance of John the Baptist in this account. Why did the Lord choose a more lenient life and through John demonstrate a harsher one? St. Thomas suggests three reasons. First, John did not perform miracles so he needed to lead an impressive life so that his testimony, which prepared a way for the Lord, would be accepted. Secondly, John showed one way of living the good life through abstaining from human carnal desires. John was a man of purity. But Jesus was God, and if he had taught severity, he would not have been shown to be also man so he assumed a life which emphasised his humanity. What could be more human than food and drink? Thirdly, John represented the end of the Old Testament, in which heavy burdens were imposed; but Christ was the beginning of the New Testament - with a new law - which proceeds by way of meekness.

Jesus holds up both John’s example of fasting, and his own example of eating and drinking - or feasting. Each have their place and time. In this season of Advent, we are presented with an opportunity to fast and abstain from certain pleasures in order to focus our minds on the coming of the Christ child - preparation never more needed than in contemporary culture. Such preparation will have the additional benefit of making the great feast that celebrates the the birth of Our Saviour all the more fitting.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a topic which can sometimes cause Dominicans a little bit of embarrassment. Why should this be so? Well, historically it was the theologians of the Dominican Order, following the Angelic Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas, who have been the most hesitant to declare Mary, from the moment of her conception, free from Original Sin. So much so that, even when the majority of the Church celebrated the Conception of Mary, the Order of Preachers did not include the feast in its liturgical calendar.

For many centuries the Church debated whether Mary had been preserved from the stain of sin. On the one hand, the idea seemed quite logical; how could the pure and holy Son of Man be borne in a corrupted vessel, that is to say Mary’s womb? Then again, St. Paul had said ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans, 3:23), if Mary had never suffered from the stain of Original Sin then in what sense did she need to be saved and how did St. Paul’s teaching apply to her?

Pope Pius IX

It is this question which vexed St. Thomas, and it is worth remembering that many of those of St. Thomas’s contemporaries who supported the Immaculate Conception did so with the understanding that Mary was exempt from the need for a redeemer, a notion neither accepted nor allowed for by the Church. So, what has the Church told us? Well, Bl. Pius IX defined on the eighth of December 1854 that the Blessed Virgin Mary ‘in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of Original Sin.’

God bestowed on Mary a great and unique gift: not only was she to carry the Son of God, she was held pure from the moment she came into existence. We might wonder: God might choose to preserve Mary from Original Sin, but if he did that then in what way did she need to be saved? Surely if she never contracted the guilt of sin, she had nothing to atone for? We might dare to say that Christ’s redemptive sacrifice made little difference to her…

The Angelic Doctor

This is not an unfair point, and the answer isn't obvious. St. Thomas offered one response in his Summa, he proposed that Mary was conceived with the stain of sin but sanctified in the womb before her birth. In this scheme we can admit that Mary needed to be redeemed but still say she was extraordinarily holy during her life, and therefore a fitting mother of the Redeemer.

St. Thomas, when writing his Summa, wanted to firmly demonstrate that Mary needed to be saved by Jesus, which is true. However, it was for Bl. Duns Scotus to take up where Thomas had left off and offer the full picture of Mary’s conception. Surely, asked the ‘subtle doctor’, it takes a physician of greater skill to prevent a disease rather than merely to cure it? Does not Mary receive the greatest experience of redemption by being preserved by Grace from sin? Mary experienced the supreme redemption by virtue of the merits of the Cross, it was Jesus who saved her; he made her pure and spotless who was to carry him in her womb.

No one can deny the beauty of the care that Jesus showed for his mother. He gave her the greatest gifts of all, and protected her from the moment she came to be. Indeed, this example of God’s abundant love was well known to St. Thomas, for he wrote towards the end of his life, commenting on the Archangel Gabriel’s salutation, 'For she (the Blessed Virgin) was most pure in the matter of fault and incurred neither original nor mental nor venial sin.'

St. Thomas, without the benefit of Duns Scotus’s argument or the Church’s solemn definition of 1854, knew what all Christians now understand when they hear the words ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace’. The Blessed Mother of God the Virgin Mary was preserved in Grace, by the merits of Jesus’s death, from every sin, original, mental and venial, so that she might be the pure and unblemished vessel of the Son’s entry into the world.

First Thursday of Advent: Faith in Action

Mont St. Michel

In today’s Gospel (Mt 7:21,24-27) Our Lord ends the great Sermon on the Mount with a call to arms, a call to action.  We are to do the will of our heavenly Father if we would enter the Kingdom of heaven. Simply hearing the words of God is not enough. Likewise, merely uttering praises to God is inadequate.  

But what sort of action is Jesus proposing? It may seem surprising that of all the possible analogies that Jesus might speak of, He refers to housebuilding: we are to emulate the “wise man who built his house upon the rock”, and not the “foolish man who built his house upon the sand”.  Why might Jesus use this example? Aside from powerfully illustrating His point, it may be that Our Lord was seeking to draw upon the dramatic rebuilding of the Temple, i.e. God’s House, which was being undertaken at that time in Jerusalem. More profoundly, St. Thomas Aquinas suggests that Jesus was referring to a different Temple which was about to be built: the Catholic Church. And if we are to take the Church as the Temple, the foundation is Christ Himself for as St. Paul says, “they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (I Cor. 10:4).  So Jesus is calling us to action which is rooted in Him, who is love. We must not only hear Jesus’s words but we must act upon them for “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26).

What are we ‘building’ today? What actions, founded in our loving God, are we undertaking? In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis urges us to evangelise, “For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?” [para. 8]. Later, he reminds us of our obligations to the poor: “Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.” [para. 187]. In these timely examples, Pope Francis challenges us to act on the message of the Gospel; our place in heaven may depend on it.

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis

Remembering… Kenelm Foster OP

Described as “every inch a Dominican”, Fr Francis Stephen Kenelm Foster OP was a noted scholar, outstanding preacher and beloved as both brother and pastor.  He was born on 26th December, 1910 in colonial India, where his father, a Catholic convert, served as a High Court judge.  It was in Florence, however, that the young Kenelm was brought up by his maternal grandmother.

Fr Bede Jarrett OP

Moving again, he attended prep school in Brighton, before going to Downside.  Downside played host to a seminal event in his life when he heard Fr. Bede Jarrett OP preach a retreat. After Downside, Kenelm went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge, on a scholarship, and it was during these undergraduate years that he was introduced to the study of Dante by Professor Edward Bullough, benefactor of the Cambridge Priory and Father of Fr Sebastian Bullough OP.  At the end of his studies, Kenelm gained a First and was offered a Fellowship, which he declined: he was intent on joining the Order of Preachers.

Dante Alighieri

Kenelm’s early Dominican life took the usual path: he entered the Novitiate at Woodchester in 1934 at the age of 24; he made his profession on 28th September 1935; and, he was ordained priest on 14th July 1940.  After serving as Curate at Holy Cross, Leicester, he was elected to a lectureship in the Department of Italian Studies at Cambridge University, later being appointed to Reader in Italian.  Amongst his many interests, two stand out: the lives and works of St Thomas Aquinas and Alighieri Dante, publishing important works about both including The Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas, God’s Tree, and The Two Dantes. Before he retired in 1979, amongst the many accolades he received, Fr Kenelm was appointed Master in Sacred Theology by the Master of the Order, one of the greatest honours for any Dominican.

He died on 6th February 1986, aged 75, after 50 years profession as a Dominican. His beloved Thomas summed up the Dominican mission as contemplata aliis tradere: to give to others the fruit of contemplation. In his scholarship, preaching and ministry, Fr. Kenelm was faithful to his mentor’s words. Requiescat in pace.