My favorite escape is Montreal. I used to go to a Benedictine house at the top of the mountain there. It has vanished but I have found a perfect European style hotel down by the river. For those of you who don’t know Montreal the name means Mount Royal, and the city really is built around Mount Royal, which is a very nice hour’s climb. Then if you care to keep ascending to the highest point in Quebec, you can climb the 300 steps to the Oratory. Montreal has two great churches down below dedicated to st Mary, but the Oratory on top of the mountain is the Oratory of St. Joseph.
It has quite a selection of wonders. There is the gigantic basilica that sits 2000, with a dome that soars 856 feet, so high it requires lights for airplanes to see. Its chancel is overlooked by 20 foot carvings of the twelve apostles. If you want that the center row of 300 steps outside is made of wood so you can climb it on your knees. There is a great stone Stations of the Cross, outside in the garden that wraps around the south side of the complex. There is a Nativity-Epiphany museum, with creches and wise men There is a great wall 60' high hung with thousands of crutches that have been left behind by pilgrims who came for a cure and apparently got what they came for. from artists all over the world.
And finally there is the Crypt chapel. There you find ten great reliefs carved in marble by Canadian artist who specialized in this work and gave them for nothing. These show St, Joseph in his many roles.
St. Joseph’s Oratory has a very explicit purpose which is obvious as soon as you make it to the front doors. It is also clearly explained in the literature. And that is, simply, to give St. Joseph a little overdue respect. You see the Tradition has been a bit less than just when it comes to Joseph. He has been pictured almost from the start as an Old Man–I remember learning an Irish carol when Joseph was an Old Man when I was very small–and there is absolutely no warrant for that belief. In art he is fra8il, rather pitiful, confused. Go see the Altarpiece at the Cloisters, or the Caravaggio at the Met, or and you’ll see what I mean.
I was studying the traditions about the archangel Gabriel a few weeks ago and discovered that the reason Mary was granted a vision of Gabriel whereas Joseph only got to see him in a dream was because Mary’s part in the plan was so much more important–it was far more important that she trusted the vision. In other words, had Joseph thought he was merely dreaming, it would not have mattered that much. I don’t think that is the reason at all.
So I am very glad we have Christmas Sunday II this year, and that we hear today’s Gospel story where Joseph is the hero. He is, in the words of , “the man who saved the savior.”
He is also one of those enviable people in the Bible who have the nerve, the strength, and the flexibility to follow God’s commands to the letter and at the moment, to put their own designs in the rubbish heap. As the joke has it–want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.
In the Oratory three panels strike me as mightily appropriate for us.
1. Joseph the Patron St of Workers. Here we find a Diego Rivera-style image of Joseph in apron with tools, surrounded by workers of all kinds. The tradition made Joseph a carpenter but the word in the New Testament really means any kind of craftsman, anyone who produces things, who makes things. This too is most appropriate at this very moment. I am very feeble on the subject of economics, but I did intuit something that much better-informed commentators have confirmed, most recently Thomas Friedman on the Editorial page two weeks ago and Paul Krugman two days ago: that our economy shattered because we devalued production and inflated money-management. This at a time when the infrastructure is dissolving and work is outsourced, to use the appropriately hideous neo-term. You see, we have forgotten something deep in our whole tradition–not just Christian but also Jewish and also Classical–that something being a certain suspiciousness of manipulating money for its own sake. To honor the patron of workers seems most fitting under those circumstances. You may think of a Professor as fairly well removed from a worker but my Union is the UAW, and for lots of good reasons. Those of us who simply work–minister, make things, care for people, counsel, teach, heal, clean, name it–Joseph is our Saint.
2. Joseph the Terror of Demons. Here we find a stern and strong Joseph, and hundreds of cowering demons. Not grotesque hideous ones, as in so many images, but the kind that make sense–beautiful demons just gone a little bad. There was a time in the recent memory when demons could seem to thoughtful people to be a kind of superstitious residue. No more. In 2004 Science Times declared that several influential psychologists and psychoanalysts were now acknowledging the reality of evil. Not mental illness not maladjustment not even psychopathology, but plain, intentional, evil. They got it almost entirely wrong but they said it was there.
And the explanation that there are such things as malevolent, intelligent, willful, conscious beings covers the facts better than anything else: if we apply what in philosophy is called Occam’s razor, which asks that the simplest explanation that covers the reality be chosen, we can reclaim what 99% of human beings have always known.
Evil cannot be denied any longer. It needs in fact to be faced, spelled out, brought into the open; as Athanasius says unmasked demons are not dangerous.
The words of the second reading today: redeem and ransom. Joseph is the Terror of Demons because he cooperates in the scheme that will destroy them.
3. Joseph the Support of Families. He is shown surrounded by all sorts of people, which makes sense. You see we share Joseph as a Saint with two other bodies, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. And all I find we need do sometimes is translate a bit. For there is one point I believe has been widely and largely overlooked, yet it is as plain as daylight. Joseph is the head of the Holy Family, and that family is unconventional. After all, he has adopted Jesus. This is the whole point of the story.
Joseph is not the father of Jesus. Unless by “father” you happen to mean, not the one who begets the child, but the one who raises, protects, teaches, disciplines, and loves.
Andrew said yesterday that the Bishop of New York is a wise man. Well, I know a wiser Bishop–one who said yesterday that A. Unconventional unions raise that excellent question, what is really important here?
Christianity is not about the status quo or convention. It is about self-denial for those you love. One way or another it will save the world.
And so Joseph is one of our greatest Saints. That is, not exquisite figures on high to admire from down below, but challenging, pragmatic role models to dare to emulate.
My friends in Quebec have it right about him. He does deserve a higher profile and a healthier reputation. Consider finally the way today’s Gospel story concludes. Joseph’s story today ends with the classic words, so that prophecy should be fulfilled. This at last puts his true importance into perspective. For prophecy fulfilled means much more than simply that this or that prediction came true. It is shorthand for the way the Old Covenant and the New Testament make a perfect fold. It means they are congruent, harmonious. And this means the symmetry of God’s plan. For Joseph this means that he is the counterpoint in the New Covenant to the old Joseph. He too went down into Egypt. He too heard God’s voice in dreams. His adventures too had to do with sexuality and marriage. And most important of all, he, too, was God’s instrument for bringing joy out of sorrow, righteousness out of sin, good out of bad.
But the old Joseph had his very conspicuous, very serious flaws. Most people in Holy Scripture do–David, Peter, Elijah, even the heroes are flawed.
If there is something wrong with the new Joseph, I cannot find it. I want to be like him. So I can pray the prayer for his day:
O God, give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands.
