watch­ing this com­mer­cial, and read­ing this arti­cle just fur­ther rein­forces the truths that as Jesus teaches me to love, St. Joseph teaches me to man up.

(Catholic.org) - With­out a doubt, sec­u­lar fem­i­nism is on a mis­sion to erase mas­culin­ity from social con­scious­ness, or at least to fem­i­nize men into utter impo­tence. I speak gen­er­ally, but no less truly, when I main­tain that women, in action con­trary to their very nature, have turned on men to devour them in their short­com­ings and faults rather than work­ing to nur­ture the ful­fill­ment of their potential.

Speak­ing in strictly evo­lu­tion­ary terms, sci­ence teaches us that men pos­sess supe­rior strength and the abil­ity to widely spread bio­log­i­cal seed in order to carry forth genetic infor­ma­tion. Men can, how­ever, use this basic, nat­ural co-creative poten­tial in ways that objec­tify and dom­i­nate women for self­ish pursuits.

St. Joseph, how­ever, is God’s answer to that pro­cliv­ity, and His absolute stamp of approval on mas­culin­ity. His pres­ence and role in the sal­va­tion of the human fam­ily rebukes the satanic influ­ences in our soci­ety that moti­vate female con­tempt for men, because he shows us why it takes a man’s man to spread his essence all the way into eter­nity by pur­su­ing his wife with­out objec­ti­fy­ing or dom­i­nat­ing her.

Third Wheel or Third Spoke?

If there was ever a man with the occa­sion to feel like a third wheel or an unnec­es­sary addi­tion to the real action, it would have been Joseph, for the Incar­na­tion was very point­edly achieved apart from his bio­log­i­cal involvement.

Joseph was a man of few words because he was a man of action, a man’s man from a long line of patri­ar­chal fam­ily men (Matt. 1). The head of the fam­ily — mak­ing deci­sions, exe­cut­ing the plan — was his right­ful place, one he learned from his own capa­ble father.

But Mary pre­sented a very ‘unortho­dox” prob­lem. She claimed a “spe­cial” plan from God and had already begun exe­cut­ing it. With­out telling him any­thing about it, she had already said “yes” and was already preg­nant. Joseph had no idea how to prop­erly deal with Mary’s aston­ish­ing moth­er­hood. Of course, he sought an answer to the dis­turb­ing ques­tion, but more than that he sought a way out of what was, for him, a dif­fi­cult situation.

The fact that he would be asked to play the seem­ingly “tag along” role in the whole cos­mic drama, and was only informed after the fact, must have gone against the grain for Joseph. If all of “it” were true, wouldn’t God have used His own estab­lished fam­ily struc­ture to inform Joseph first, ahead of time? Wasn’t he capa­ble of hear­ing God him­self? Why would God dis­place him in such a way?

If he trusted, Joseph would have to “sac­ri­fice” his man­hood by pur­su­ing Mary into this delib­er­ate dis­place­ment in what would amount to a stun­ning rever­sal of Adam and Eve. At the dawn of sal­va­tion, the New Eve could, then, lead Joseph to Life.

If he fol­lowed her, it would mean a redemp­tion of the whole sor­did Eden affair in which a New Adam would emerge, but Joseph had to have felt slighted, hum­bled, silenced at the pres­ence of this Word in his wife. He had to have balked at the sheer pre­pos­ter­ous­ness of the claim.

And the skep­ti­cism would only get worse as her preg­nancy became obvi­ously untimely and began to mock his man­hood. Why would God humil­i­ate Joseph by the very mas­culin­ity through which He would ulti­mately work?

Indeed, the whole episode seemed designed to prove to him how mar­ginal his role was. Cer­tainly the God who flung forth the uni­verse with a Word could build a bet­ter home for Mary and the Baby than he could.

His carpenter’s wage was surely all but unim­por­tant, as the God who trapped the ram in the thicket and cov­ered the wilder­ness floor with manna would need no help pro­vid­ing for them. And his strength, supe­rior in every way to a woman and baby’s, well, of what use was it for the “Lord of Armies” who con­quered the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary by drown­ing, and lev­eled Jeri­cho with pots and torches and a bare hand­ful of bel­low­ing men?

The Mea­sure of a Man

The truth is, God was teach­ing Joseph what every woman must also learn, often through her rela­tion­ship with her hus­band: humil­ity. No, God surely does not need the Josephs of this world in an absolute sense, but they image God in their daily grind, in their cal­luses and sweat, in the heroic exe­cu­tion of their sac­ri­fi­cial duties and fatherhood.

God chooses them specif­i­cally for their mas­culin­ity to do this, because they are the tan­gi­ble proof of His own pro­found humil­ity against a match­less strength. They image His inter­est in the roles of father­hood and fam­ily and the pro­found impor­tance He places on them, so that sim­ply being a man is a par­tic­u­lar gift with a par­tic­u­lar authority.

Joseph’s fatherly author­ity was eter­nally fixed from the moment the angel directed him to name the baby. As “name-givers” ancient fathers declared the legal­ity of their father­hood, and through speak­ing the name Joseph also became a prophet, pro­claim­ing Jesus’ mis­sion as Savior.

It must have hum­bled Mary to be, first an instru­ment, then a receiver of Joseph’s humil­ity les­son, as she and Jesus would be the ones for whom he would sac­ri­fice so utterly and repeat­edly. But together in mutual def­er­ence to one another, his holy man­li­ness and her del­i­cate fem­i­nin­ity, would rest the mys­te­ri­ous union in which God would place His only Son. In this way, God showed the world where he wishes for chil­dren to live and grow up, and the con­di­tions under which they can flourish.

Although it was arguably his great­est humil­i­a­tion, Joseph’s union and pres­ence with Mary despite her pub­licly per­ceived betrayal pro­tected and defended her as much or more than their flight to Egypt. It roared in the Scrip­tural silence attrib­uted to him of his love for her and his con­fi­dence in her purity and integrity, despite appear­ances, more loudly than any recorded word ever could.

This degree of loy­alty takes the kind of grit only real men pos­sess. From the begin­ning, Joseph accepted the inde­scrib­able gift of human father­hood over Jesus, whose own “sub­mis­sion” or obe­di­ence to Joseph in their Nazareth home, should be under­stood as a shar­ing in the work of Joseph (Redemp­toris Cus­tos, Guardian of the Redeemer, John Paul II).

And while there, surely Jesus learned from watch­ing Joseph how to father and shep­herd, how to cut to the heart of a mat­ter as pith­ily as pos­si­ble, to lead and be respon­si­ble for a group, how to be silent before God and hear Him speak. It stands to rea­son that Joseph taught him how to mea­sure twice and cut once, how to marry the joints of seem­ingly dis­parate per­son­al­ity pieces so that they fit and worked seam­lessly, the impor­tance of every jot and tit­tle and cre­ative detail, and that spir­i­tual for­ma­tion is true crafts­man­ship and can­not be hurried.

That such holi­ness could come from his fam­ily is a tes­ta­ment to the man Joseph. Cer­tainly he some­times felt mar­gin­al­ized in his own fam­ily, yet he was the leader of The iconic fam­ily unit, and capa­ble of it specif­i­cally for his manhood.

In the Heart of God’s Will

Though Joseph may have been embar­rassed that his wife and child slept in a barn, he was under a star that led for­eign sages to them who laid riches at their feet. Though he may have felt he was run­ning from the mur­der­ous king rather than actively defend­ing his fam­ily, Joseph was a pro­tec­tor of the womb.

It was to assure fatherly pro­tec­tion for Jesus that God chose Joseph to be Mary’s spouse; it was under his lead­er­ship to Egypt the Scrip­tures could be ful­filled: “‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’” (Matt. 2:15).

Though his offer­ing of tur­tle­doves may have embar­rassed him for their small­ness, they brought them all under the aged eye of Simeon who saw Joseph’s sac­ri­fices and their con­so­la­tion of all Israel.

Joseph’s will­ing­ness and open­ness to the whole extra­or­di­nary Plan made him the keeper of sal­va­tion, the guardian, the watcher, the eye of God, until it could mature. When the time had come, Joseph left Mary in the hands of the Son he raised with her, so that He could rise to the head of the human fam­ily as was His des­tiny from the foun­da­tion of the world.

Joseph lived for his fam­ily, pour­ing him­self out for them com­pletely, and then faded from the story: “He must increase and I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30). And so we find the key to Joseph’s silence: con­tem­pla­tion and inte­rior greatness.

“St. Joseph is the model of those hum­ble ones that Chris­tian­ity raises up to great destinies;…he is the proof that in order to be a good and gen­uine fol­lower of Christ, there is no need of great things-it is enough to have the com­mon, sim­ple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authen­tic,” (Inseg­na­menti, Dis­course, Paul VI).

Into Joseph’s capa­ble, cal­lused hands were entrusted God’s most pre­cious trea­sures. He was called by God to serve us all through the exer­cise of his father­hood. Mary and Jesus needed Joseph. If it had not been true, God would not have given him to them.

He is, there­fore, God’s absolute affir­ma­tion of men who are authen­ti­cally them­selves, engag­ing the world in those won­der­ful ways that are uniquely mas­cu­line, tak­ing their places as heads of fam­i­lies, and pro­vid­ing dig­nity and keep­ing godly order in home and soci­ety through the work of their hands and other noble labor.

Every woman blessed with a Joseph “gets” how pow­er­ful under­state­ment is. She won­ders at him. She respects him. She is moved to pro­found thank­ful­ness for the glory of his true strength, and she deeply appre­ci­ates how he artic­u­lates it so beau­ti­fully with­out the noise of words.

~ Sonja Corbitt

http://www.catholic.org/hf/faith/story.php?id=36312