4th SUNDAY OF ADVENT

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THEME:  JOSEPH, A MAN OF HONOUR
       Christmas is at the corner. In the next three days we shall be celebration the birth day of our lord Jesus Christ. Whenever we celebrate Christmas we reflect on the life of Jesus. How he came into the world and save us. We also reflect on the life of Mary and the role she played in the history of our salvation. One person that we don’t talk more about is joseph. Even though joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, as the foster father of Jesus he also played an important role. This Sunday I will like us to reflect on the life Joseph and how he reacted when he heard mary was pregnant.
St Joseph must be one of the underrated persons in history. Even the New Testament does not seem to do justice to him. We do not find any statement credited to him anywhere in the New Testament or anywhere else in all history for that matter. We have no reason, of course, to assume that he could not talk or he had nothing to say.
All the same, from the little that the bible says about St Joseph we can infer that he was a truly great man. A great person is not always the one who makes the loudest noise. All too often in the course of history, truly great persons have passed almost unnoticed, only for their real worth to emerge after they have gone.
The greatness of St Joseph lay in the role God assigned to him; and he played it perfectly. His role was to be the protector of the incarnate Son of God and his Virgin Mother, Mary. Christian tradition calls him the “foster father of Jesus” and the “chaste spouse of the Virgin Mary”.
The one who was to reveal the Holy Spirit to the world had not yet been born; he was still in the womb of the Virgin Mary. So, God chose Joseph to stand in the stead of a father for Mary’s child. That was the message that the angel of the Lord brought to him in our Gospel reading today. And how well joseph played his God-given role!

The gospel reading of today tell us that Joseph is a man of honour- he was a just man. He showed this by the way he reacted when he heard that was pregnant. Just imagine that you are planning to get married and you discover that the lady you want to marry is pregnant for somebody else.  Whenever I read this story I always remember an experience I had in one of the parishes I worked. (story)
When joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant being a man of honor did not react negatively but we were told that he wanted to divorce her informally in order to spare her publicity. Even though she must have made mistake as he thought, he never thought of disgracing her. Joseph knew the implication of a girl getting pregnant in her father’s house.

In those days in Palestine, the penalty for a woman getting pregnant out of wedlock was death by stoning. If Mary could not explain the source of her pregnancy, she would have been liable to that penalty. It was most unlikely that her townspeople would buy the story of the Holy Spirit being responsible for her pregnancy. It is even doubtful that they knew anything yet about the Holy Spirit.
Among the people of Israel marriage was done into two stages. The first stage was the signing of the marriage contract by the betrothed, their parents and two witness. This signature made boy and girl husband and wife, but they were not expected to go and live together immediately. They were not supposed to meet for a whole year.
This interval gave the two families more time to know each other, and the bride and bridegroom meanwhile would grow in maturity, since it was the custom for boys and girls to marry very young: the girl about 12-13 years and the boy at 15-16 (and these must have been the ages of Mary and Joseph, too).
It was during this interval of waiting that Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant. Since Mary and Joseph did not liv e in the same house and have not known her, definitely the pregnancy was not his.
The reason why God chose joseph from among all other men was, according to our Gospel passage, that he was “a man of honour”. That is to say, he was what we would call today “a perfect gentleman”. Being such a man of honour, he did not wish to humiliate Mary, his betrothed. Rather, he wanted to spare her publicity and divorce her informally.
While joseph was planning to do this, God intervened by sending his Angel. The angel of the lord appeared to Joseph in a dream explained to Joseph how Mary conceived. The Angl Said “Joseph son of David do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name his name Jesus because he is the one who will save his people from their sins…” He even told him that this will take place in fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah. (Isaiah 7:14)
But the moment the angel told him in a dream how Mary came about her pregnancy, Joseph asked no further questions. We are told that when he “woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife home.” All that made him a perfect choice for the role God had for him. And therein lay his greatness.
The story proves that it pays to be nice, to be considerate, to show concern to other people’s feelings, their reputation, their good name and image. Joseph did all that with regard to Mary and her Son, Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world. In that way, he made an immense, unique and indispensable contribution to the saving mission of the Messiah himself. The messiah needed an earthly “father”. Joseph provided one. What a man of honour indeed!
Today we live in world where people do not value one another. Disgracing people and tarnishing names has become the order of the day. People can do anything today to get what they want. In quest for power, popularity or favours. People condemned and tarnish image of others. This is in seen in different ways:  you tarnish the image of a lady before her boyfriend because you want to go out with him
You tarnish the image of a young man before his girlfriend because you want to go out with her
You tarnish the image of other of other students in front of other lecturers because you want favour from your lecturer
You destroy your fellow workers before your boss just to get favour or from him/her or promotion
Husband discussing the weakness of his wife with other people just to show they are the best
Women discussing the weakness of their husband just to show they are good.
Let us learn from St. Joseph who tried his best to save the image of Mary. When treat people with respect, you win their admiration. Let us always be slow to judge and condemn people. Let us not judge and condemn people because we may judge the rashly. We may not know why people behave the way they do or do things the way they do. Just imagine if Joseph would have destroyed the image of Mary and later found out that the pregnancy was from the Holy Spirit. Let us  always remember the words of St. James: “ do not speak evil of one another brothers. Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law.” (James 4:11)
I pray the lord will grant us the grace to be men and women of honour through Christ our lord.