The great, simple man

I'M referring to St. Joseph, the husband of Mary and the

foster father of Christ. His greatness lies in his simplicity and in

the simple role he carried out with so much diligence in the life of

the Holy Family and of the whole world.

            He is worth emulating, worth giving more and better

attention than a cursory, casual one. His condition is very much

identifiable with that of the majority of the people all over the

world. Like him, many of us do very ordinary simple duties, with

hardly any public or social consequence. But the possibility of being

great, like St. Joseph, is always there.

            The secret is simply being faithful in obeying God’s will,

however it turns in the drama of our life. St. Joseph, for example,

just made himself completely available to God’s plan. He readily

accepted to be Mary’s husband even if at first he already planned of

separating from her. He readily fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s

madness when he was warned about it in a dream.

            To be sure, his total availability to God’s plans was not

something mechanical or passive. Knowing that he had to be father and

husband to the two most important persons in human history, he must

have continually renewed his eagerness to be faithful, obedient and

docile to God’s ways.

            It must not have been easy for him, given the human

condition to which he was also subjected. He must have to contend also

with all kinds of human frailties, like the tendency to take things

for granted, to lapse into routine and boredom, if not to betray and

to be unfaithful to his vocation.

            Let’s remember that even in those apostles who were

already very close to Christ, one betrayed him and another denied him

three times. It’s a common phenomenon in the spiritual life that the

bigger the role one plays in God’s providence and the more willing to

be faithful one is to his vocation, the graver also would be the

temptations and the trials that will hound him.

            In all these possibilities, St. Joseph passed with flying

colors. We can guess that his secret was precisely his simplicity and

humility that enabled him to be faithful, to sustain his love for God

and his spiritual life, even in the humdrum of the ordinary life that

he led. He conquered monotony with those qualities.

            It must have been these qualities that enabled him to see

the sacredness of what may appear to be ordinary duties according to

human standards. By being faithful to them and putting love into them,

he managed to touch heaven while here on earth. The many ordinary

little things he did somehow acquired eternal and redemptive value.

            Of course, it must have helped him a lot to be keenly

aware of whom he was taking care of. Proximity helps. But that should

not be an excuse for us to feel not as lucky as St. Joseph. Christ is

always close to us. He is always watching over us and guiding us all

the time. We just have to learn how to correspond better to that

reality.

            That’s why it’s important that from time to time we pause

and pray so that we can have or regain our spiritual and supernatural

bearing, and feel’s Christ’s continuous presence in our life and in

our affairs, and be moved to react accordingly.

            St. Joseph is showing us that the ordinary things in life,

the performance of the duties inherent to our state in life, are the

very occasions we can be with Christ and deal with him as we ought.

            That’s when, like St. Joseph, we can also aspire to

greatness in the very simple things of our life!