…, but one thing I do know without a doubt is that he loved Mary more than any man has ever loved a woman. He loved God. Yet he was willing to place his God over his Mary, the Creator over the creation.
And that Creator blessed him beyond his wildest imagination. He blessed him with the love and fidelity of none other than the Mother of God herself. He blessed him with the charge to raise Jesus Christ into the Man that would be the Savior of the world. He blessed him with descendants as numerous as the stars, and we must go to him and trust his example and intercession as head of the Holy Family.
Men must lead today as Joseph led then. This is when Eve strays out of the Garden–when Adam doesn’t play the role of the man.
Because Joseph led, because he stayed in the Garden and prayed for guidance, God the Father did something for him he is perpetually asking us to do. He did something that, when we do it with him, he beams so brightly that he cannot help but lavish us with an eternity’s worth of love.
He trusted.
God himself trusted Man.
God the Father trusted Joseph the father. He trusted him because Joseph had proven his mettle, not to God but to himself. He had proven that he was in fact worthy of marrying the greatest woman to ever live. Whatever Joseph’s central shortcoming was, whatever prohibited him from being on the same level as Mary, was challenged when Mary conceived in her womb. Whatever psychological wound he developed at some point in his life was put to the test. He had finally found the one, which was a key milestone for any Jewish man, and right away he was tested. His manhood was taxed. His very worth as a child of God was put to serious question.
At least to a lesser outsider. Probably not to Joseph himself.
Despite all of this, this seeming slap in the face from life, perhaps even one from God himself, Joseph trusted him. And for that, God sent an angel and explained the whole miracle and plan of salvation in a dream.
Joseph won Mary because he trusted God. And he wants to win Heaven for our families, if only we will place him where he belongs as the powerful man he is in our homes.
-from as of yet unpublished pages of “Storm,” written in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, 2020
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