A LENTEN REFLECTION ~ 22

Today is the feast of St. Joseph. All my life I have mispronounced, misspelled, or mistyped the name Joseph. Joseph is my middle name. When I was little my Uncle Ned used to tease me by asking what my full name was just so he could hear me eagerly respond—Daniel Yophess Miller. Now when I type my middle name it more often than not comes out Jospeh. Whether saying it when I was young or typing it today for some reason the letters insist on changing places. I imagine there was a day or two when Joseph of Nazareth felt like changing places as well.

Has anyone ever been cast in a more difficult, more humbling, more secondary role than Joseph? He received early preparation for what was to be his humble fate in life and in history, playing second fiddle in the East Village Youth Symphony. Mind you, there were only two chairs and his was more like a stool—no back. Later, after meeting, courting, and then protecting the dignity of Miryam he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama enough times to make Meryl Streep blush. She’s got nothing on him, except a few trophies on her mantle. Joseph never had any trophies to speak of, though he did make the mantle which was planed smooth as any furniture Sam Malloof made and featured a small child’s hand print pressed in now hardened chalky white ceramic. But when he was alive, there was no recognition, no fame, no star on Nazareth Boulevard with the imprint of his large, calloused hands pressed in the finest clay from the south ridges of Lebanon.

Like Van Gogh who sold only one painting when he was alive, Joseph’s fame was centuries and centuries in the making and would have been unimaginable to him. In order to preserve and promote the divine paternity of Jesus, Joseph’s legacy went the way of limbo and St. Christopher and meatless Fridays, getting no more than an honorable mention from time to time and no official ecclesial encouragement of his cult until the 16th century and then mainly as a romanticized provider and protector of the romanticized Holy Family. In 1870 Pope Pius IX declared him Patron of the Universal Church and Pope Pius XII tried to make up for lost time by giving him, in addition to March 19, an additional feast day of May 1 when he is recognized as St. Joseph the Worker.

I imagine him laughing at the news that he has a “feast day,” let alone two, never during his life having so much as a day off except for Sabbath and three road trips— one instigated by decree and two by dreams— each of which by comparison made a day of carrying, cutting, and working wood seem like a vacation. Something tells me he would be the one blushing today if he saw his likeness in tacky art on holy cards and medals and cheap gypsum plaster figurines and side altar statues before which people today still kneel and seek his celestial help.

And yet from his place in the communion of saints I also imagine coming forth great pathos, deep sympathy, and tender father-love for those very kneelers who seek his assistance and support—day laborers and fathers and step-fathers and father’s-to-be and sons and daughters of fathers and cabinet-makers and underemployed and second fiddles and supporting actors of any kind who strive to live lives like Joseph, righteous in their modesty and modest in their righteousness, unpretentiously getting up each day simply to play their part in the orchestra of work and love. I suspect, like the Father of Mercies, he has a soft-spot in his heart for all the understudies in the world, all the hard working, dignified, humble-hearted cymbalists and triangle players and benchwarmers and bellhops and back ups and unseen stand ins and unheralded stunt women and handymen and waitresses and pinch hitters and street-cleaners and strawberry pickers and second bananas in a bunch of two and cleaning women and janitors and dishwashers and worker bees who work and live in the shadows, out of the limelight.

On this day, let us remember all those men and women who, like Joseph, are forces for good gracing the world with their overlooked and undervalued presence and their under appreciated effort behind the scenes whose sacrifice, humility, perseverance, integrity, long suffering, decency, gratitude, and joy are not only testaments of real sanctity, but representative of the best of humankind as well.♦

pax vobiscum
djm

Artwork: Michael O’Brien