The Third Sunday of Advent 2022

In Sunday’s reading from Matthew 1:18-25 we meet Joseph, Mary’s husband, and watch as Joseph is confronted by the news that Mary will have a son.  It’s hard to imagine how frightened, disappointed, and even angry Joseph must have been.  And yet, anxious and upset as he was, Joseph says “yes” to Mary, to Jesus, and to God.  Joseph is able to say yes because of love.  In some way, it seems that Joseph grasped, or perhaps he had been grasped by, this strange new thing God was doing.  The good news of Christmas had taken hold of his life, the reality that it was nothing less than the very love of God taking on flesh in Mary had so captured his heart and mind that Joseph himself is moved to respond in love.  Now this is not love as we have come to know it, not love as an emotion or feeling, but love as a lived-out commitment, a long obedience that seeks the good of the other.  What Joseph discovered is that loving God and others in this way is the foundation and source of all true joy.