Recently we read a book in the refectory called How the West really lost God. The author was Mary Eberstadt, an American academic, essayist, novelist, and Social Scientist. She has gained some notoriety in recent times as an orthodox Catholic Christian who voices criticism of aspects of contemporary secular culture normally considered outside the bounds of discussion. The thesis of the book was that secularisation and family disintegration tend to go together. The author presented evidence from large numbers of studies which show that, by and large, the experience of the natural family tends to promote religious practice, and especially Christian practice. And on the other hand, the practice of religion, and especially of Christianity, tends, by and large, to promote and protect the natural family. So when the one collapses, the other tends to follow suit.
Eberstadt discussed in this book the great difficulty of communicating the Christian Gospel in a society where the natural family is becoming increasingly rare. She spoke of the contemporary crisis of fatherhood, and the crisis even of masculinity. Fatherhood tends nowadays to be viewed negatively; and so to an extent even does the fact of being male. Many children in the secular West are brought up apart from their natural father. Sometimes they scarcely know him, or even know who he is. For their part, many men nowadays don’t know how to be fathers to their children, or, come to that, husbands to their wives. Even within the Catholic Church, Priests who necessarily inhabit this cultural climate often find themselves a bit uncomfortable with the traditional title Father, and they feel unsure how to exercise paternity towards those entrusted to their care.
Yet the Christian narrative can barely be understood at all apart from the ideas of fatherhood and sonship. Already in the Judaism of the Old Testament God was sometimes referred to as Father of Israel. But with Jesus the Fatherhood of God takes on a quite new meaning and application. Jesus habitually refers to himself as Son. Sonship is constitutive of his identity. He is Son of Man, Son of Joseph, Son of David, Son of Mary, Son of God. Especially in St. John’s Gospel Jesus habitually refers to God as his Father, or simply “the Father”, and he habitually identifies himself as Son of the Father. The redeeming mission of Jesus was not then just to free us from sin and from eternal death, but above all to draw us into a share of his own sonship; of his own relationship with God his Father.
When the fulness of time had come, wrote St. Paul to the Galatians, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the law, to redeem the subjects of the law, so that we could receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying Abba! Father. And so you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir, by God’s own act (4:4-7). Lord, teach us to pray! cried the disciples. And Jesus said, When you pray, say this: Father! (cf. Lk 11:2; Mt 6:9). St. Paul wrote to the Romans: Those, whoever they are, who are driven by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God (8:14). And in St. John’s Gospel we read: If the Son sets you free, then you will truly be free (8:76).
Jesus Christ, we believe, was God the Son Incarnate: at once fully human and fully divine. He was a divine Person, constituted with a human soul and mind and will, through which at all times he remained perfectly one with his eternal Father. What could it have been like for Jesus, especially as a young child, to think of his heavenly Father with his human mind, in a human way? The answer is obvious. For Jesus, St. Joseph more than any other, and in a supreme way, mediated the concept of fatherhood. Therefore, in a real sense, St. Joseph mediated for Jesus God’s Fatherhood. And if St. Joseph in a completely human way mediated for Jesus God’s divine Fatherhood, then he can and does do the same for all of us.
As Christians, sons in the Son, we necessarily have Mary for our Mother, and St. Joseph for our foster father. So, speaking strictly theologically, St. Joseph is important for us. But he is important for us also naturally. That importance is only heightened, not diminished, in a rootless, fatherless, secularised, de-masculinised, atomised, dysfunctional, disorientated, disintegrating, un-natural society and culture, such the one we all inhabit today.
Whether our experience of our own natural father was essentially positive or negative, St. Joseph must always stand for us as a reference point for fatherhood, and for masculinity. In St. Joseph we understand that the essence of fatherhood is not mere biological generation, but something far greater than that. Every father, natural or adoptive or spiritual, has somehow to mediate the relationship of paternity towards one who is begotten. Therefore he has to mediate for that person the relationship of God the Father to Jesus. If that seems too heavy a burden to bear, such a one should recall and lean on the presence of the Holy Spirit, by whom all of us are able to cry out, with Jesus, Abba! Father!
So today especially we turn to St. Joseph, and, dare I say for now? we men especially turn to St. Joseph. We ask him to teach us not only how to love Jesus and Mary, but how to be male, and how to exercise paternity. We ask St. Joseph to teach all of us also, men and women together, how to be sons and daughters in the Son, and how to relate to God as our Father.
If fatherhood and masculinity were perfectly realised and fulfilled in St. Joseph, then the primordial instincts which drive men were in him, through grace and virtue, perfectly ordered and controlled. He was a strong defender of his family, and a most loving husband of his Blessed spouse, yet Joseph was no slave to either anger or lust. If ever we find ourselves beset by those particular temptations, we are well advised to consult St. Joseph, or look to him, or merely cry out his name. Doing that we will find ourselves tending instead towards St. Joseph’s own inner peace, and his perfect chastity of mind and body.
Pray for us, then, dear St. Joseph. Watch over the holy Catholic Church, and our society, and all of us. Watch over our children, especially those being brought up apart from the natural family, and especially those at risk of abuse, or being damaged psychologically. And in this time of national and global emergency, protect us all from harm. Draw us also to ever deeper trust in God our heavenly Father, and to ever stronger hope in the salvation wrought for us by Jesus Christ, his Son, our Lord. Amen.