By Ryan LeBlanc

On March 19 the entire Church celebrates the faithfulness the earthly father God chose for Jesus: Saint Joseph.

Because St. Joseph mirrored the Heavenly Father’s faithfulness so well, Jesus grew up through childhood and received what he needed to be healthy and whole. Today in Mass we will hear how Joseph completes a line of faithfulness that began with Abraham and continued through King David – all through the ages, God makes his promise and keeps it.

I’ve noticed that some people around me aren’t always faithful to what I think they promised. I wonder if other people I’m in relation to think that I am faithful or not.

How important is being faithful to you?

What does it even mean to be faithful, to be trustworthy, to be dependable?

A while back, I was leading parenting workshops for men who were inmates at the correctional centre. These men have committed crimes, and those choices mean they are separated from their children. Many spoke about wanting to do better for their children, better than they received from their fathers. Each of them in their own way felt the pain of separation, and each of them knew it would be difficult to live faithfully when they were released. What did we learn about being faithful in our time together?

The Bible tells us that God is faithfulness itself, but we also see in the Bible and in the saints examples of faithfulness lived out in human lives, and one of these is St. Joseph. Why do we consider him such a faithful guy?

When we meet him in the Gospel of Matthew, we see that Joseph’s first faithfulness is to the Law. He was engaged to a woman named Mary, but before they were living together, she became pregnant. He knew that the child wasn’t his. Maybe we can imagine a young man in love who has his heart broken because he thinks his fiancé has been unfaithful to him. Joseph doesn’t want to live a lie in his marriage, he doesn’t want to marry someone who loves someone else. But faithfulness to the Law, for Joseph, was not enough. The Law said he could have Mary stoned to death because she broke her promise to marry him. Instead, Joseph plans to ‘dismiss her quietly’, which means, free her from the engagement so that she can marry the father of her child without causing gossip.

Here, Joseph’s next faithfulness is to mercy. He lays down his rights under the Law for the one he loves, even though it costs him his hope for a happy marriage. Joseph was fully committed to the best mercy he could think of, when an angel came in a dream. “Do not be afraid. Take Mary for a wife. Her child is from the Holy Spirit, name him Jesus, he will save his people.” If Mary’s pregnancy was a shock to him, how much more must this message have been! God is entering into human history to save the world, Joseph, and you will take care of him as a child and his mother.

And yet, Joseph is faithful once more, this time faithful to hope. He must hope that his dream of the angel was true, must hope that Mary was true to her word, must hope that Jesus will be the one who changes everything for him and his people. And when Joseph awoke, he did as the angel commanded.

For us, reading the story and celebrating the saint today, Joseph has a teaching about true faithfulness. I think especially for us boys and men, and also for all whose fathers were not there in the ways we needed, Joseph shows us a healthy masculinity. To be a true man is to be faithful – to the Law, to mercy and to hope.

In the correctional centre, the fathers I met with struggled with each of these. They had broken the law. Many came from violence and addiction which meant that they had hurt their partners. And the first thing that prison surely kills is hope. How could they ever be or become faithful? How could I?

When these men signed up for and participated in these parenting classes, they taught me about faithfulness. God does not expect us to get it right, or to be perfect. God is perfectly faithful so that we can trust him and become more faithful.

Being faithful comes down to believing that the Creator’s plan is best and choosing to follow that plan even when it is difficult. Joseph did not know exactly what to do but tried to do the right thing based on what he did know. Many of us fathers, and many of us humans, don’t know exactly what to do, but try and fail and try again to do the right thing based on what we know.

We can learn from each other, from St Joseph and from fathers in jail. Being faithful does not depend on what we know, but on what we choose.

Praise God for his faithfulness and the example of his faithful saints.

Let us pray:

+ Grant, we pray, almighty God, that by Saint Joseph’s intercession your Church may constantly watch over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation, whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you In the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

St. Joseph, pray for us.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a Teacher Chaplain at E.D. Feehan Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.