Let us live open to God’s surprises… Today, on the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, the liturgy presents to us the figure of Saint Joseph (cf. Mt 1:18-24). He is a just man about to be married. We can imagine what he dreams of for the future: a beautiful family with a loving wife and many worthy children and a decent job—simple and good dreams, dreams of simple and good people. But suddenly these dreams are met with a disturbing realization: Mary, his fiancée, is expecting a child, and the child is not his! What emotions must Joseph have experienced? Horror, pain, confusion, perhaps even irritation and disappointment… his world has collapsed! What can he do?
The law gives him two options. The first is to denounce Mary and make her pay for the supposed infidelity. The second option is to secretly annul their engagement, without exposing Mary to scandal or serious consequences, but at the cost of bearing the burden of shame. And Joseph chooses this second path, the path of mercy. And behold, in a time of crisis, just as he is reflecting and evaluating all this, God lights a new light in his heart: he announces to him in a dream that Mary’s motherhood is not the result of betrayal but is the work of the Holy Spirit, and that the child who will be born is the Savior (cf. vv. 20-21); Mary will be the mother of the Messiah, and he will be his guardian. Upon awakening, Joseph realizes that the greatest dream of every devout Israelite is unexpectedly being fulfilled: becoming the father of the Messiah.
To make this dream come true, it will not be enough for Joseph to belong to the descendants of David and to observe the law faithfully; he must also trust in God above all else to accept Mary and her son in a way entirely different from his initial expectations. In other words, Joseph will have to give up his comforting certainties, his perfect plans, and his justified expectations and open himself to a future that must be discovered. And in the face of a God who changes plans and asks for trust, Joseph answers yes. Joseph’s courage is heroic and is realized in silence: his courage lies in trust; he trusts, he accepts, he is available, and he does not ask for further guarantees.
Brothers and sisters, what does Joseph say to us today? We, too, have our dreams, and perhaps at Christmas, we think about them more and we talk about them. Maybe we feel remorse for some dreams that have come to naught, and we observe that even the most optimistic expectations frequently face unexpected, unsettling circumstances. And when this happens, Joseph shows us the way: we must not give in to negative feelings such as anger and closure; that is the wrong way! On the contrary, we must accept surprises, the pitfalls of life, and even crises, with the warning that when one finds oneself in a situation, one must not make hasty decisions based on instinct but let oneself be sifted like Joseph, “weigh everything” (cf. v. 20) and start from the fundamental criterion: God’s mercy. When we face a crisis without succumbing to our emotions, such as anger and fear, and instead allow God to step in, He can intervene. He is an expert in transforming crises into dreams: yes, God opens crises to new perspectives that we could not have imagined before, perhaps not in the way we expected, but in the way he knows how. Brothers and sisters, these are God’s horizons: surprising, yet infinitely wider and more beautiful than ours! May the Virgin Mary help us to live open to God’s surprises.
Hello. And Bye.