We've Got the Whole World . . .

I went on retreat this past weekend, and this window was on the wall opposite me. Someone was good enough to send me this picture because I didn't take any while I was there. I wish it were more distinct, but it will do.

This isn't my favorite stained glass window in the world, but as I was looking at it, I started to think about Joseph in a way that I never have before. There is a joke that I can barely remember about how when something went wrong in the household of the Holy Family, everybody always knew whose fault it was. Sorry I can't remember how it goes, but I don't think it was particularly funny even when somebody told it correctly. After a couple of hours with this image of St. Joseph staring me in the face, I started thinking about the truth behind the joke.

As anyone who has been a parent knows, it's not very long before you realize you're going to mess up. You are going to mess up all the time. You are going to try to avoid the mistakes that your parents made, and you are going to make mistakes in the opposite direction, or you are going to realize that those things you thought were mistakes, were the best things you could have done for your children. You are going to perpetuate the dysfunction of the home where you grew up because you didn't even recognize it as dysfunction. You are going to be really, really tired and be impatient with your kids.

And as I sat there thinking about how Joseph was the sinful person in his home, I realized that this had to be. Jesus if He were to be like us in everything but sin, if He were to identify with us in our suffering, had to have an imperfect parent. I'm not saying that I think St. Joseph was a bad, or even a mediocre parent. I'm sure he was an excellent and very holy parent. He just wasn't perfect. When I look at this picture of Joseph (and this is a very young Joseph although you can't tell here) looking at the infant Jesus, I wonder if he was wondering what the heck an ordinary, sinful man was supposed to do with a perfect wife and a Son that was God. He must have wondered what God was thinking. So much seemed to depend on him, and he knew that he wasn't, nobody was, up to the job. And yet somehow, he completed his task.

It also seems to me that in this image Joseph is a perfect symbol for all Christians, all of us. Here we stand with the Body of Christ, the Church, in our hands to do with as best we can. Whatever our part in the Body may be, we aren't up to the job. We know it. Everybody else knows it, too. I frequently wonder what God was thinking.

AMDG