“Your Father and I”: Mary, Joseph, and Parenthood in the Holy FamilyWhen Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple, and the Mother asks him, “Son, why have you done this to us?” (Lk 2:48), immediately motivating him with the pain their absence caused them, she refers to Joseph as “father”: “Behold, your father and I were looking for you with anxiety” (Lk 2:48). It was St. Luke who reported that Simeon “went to the temple. And while the parents brought the child Jesus there” (Lk 2:27). “The parents of Jesus were amazed” (Lk 2:33). “They went to Jerusalem every year” (Lk 2:41). There is no clarification about Joseph’s role, nor any adjective (legal, adoptive) that specifies it. Indeed, since the virgin conception of Mary by the Holy Spirit was clearly affirmed, it was not necessary to insist on it every time Joseph is mentioned in relation to Jesus.However, there is another reason. Joseph was the father of Jesus in all respects. If there had been a civil record at that time, Joseph would have appeared there as the father, and according to the concrete social organization and customs of the Jewish people (and certainly not just at the sole will of men), the legal father was the one who transmitted the rights of children. There is, therefore, something more than biological paternity. The Virgin Mary, addressed to Jesus, recognized this: “Your father and I.”St. Augustine, when writing about Joseph’s paternity (Sermon 51), posed the question thus: Jesus “was born of a virgin without the seed of a husband. And yet he maintained both as his parents. How do we prove this? Mary said: Your father and I, we were looking for you with anxiety.” “She did not stick to the dignity of her breast, but to the conjugal hierarchy.” For the husband is the head of his wife (Eph 5:23). Yet, it was the Virgin, not Joseph, who turned to Jesus, is explained by the particular and unique bond that united the Mother to the Son. It was not strictly Joseph’s role to ask for reasons, but to protect them. He, even silent when he would have every right to ask questions, perhaps failed in his usual practice, while the responsibility for the right words fell to Mary, who, being more united to Jesus, could thus set the proper tone. This does not detract from the fact that it was Joseph, the head of the family, to whom God was conveying the choices to be made at all times to protect the Boy and the Mother.Jesus did not contradict the name of “Father” that Mary gave to Joseph. In fact, there is not only biological paternity, and indeed, this type of paternity is often of a lower level in comparison to others.The grace infused in man through baptism raises him to the supernatural order and makes him an adopted son of God and heir to His glory. It has nothing to do with biology, but the fatherhood of God towards the baptized is not only superior to physical fatherhood, but even more real and certainly more enduring. Therefore, regarding Saint Joseph, it is true that our faith teaches that he was not a father according to the flesh, but this is not the only kind of fatherhood.Sometimes, in trying to grasp the fatherhood of God in relation to the baptized, we might think about the essence of human fatherhood and then attempt to apply that image to God. But this is a mistake. The reality is exactly the opposite. We cannot truly understand what human fatherhood is until we understand (as much as our imperfect faculties allow) what God is to us as a Father. He is the model, the original reference: as Saint Paul revealed (Eph 3:14-15), all fatherhood proceeds from God, who is the true and proper Father. The other, that of men, is a will of God, a path He chose to bring new life into the world. He could have chosen a thousand other procedures with the same effectiveness. God associates a man and a woman with His creative power as collaborators regarding the body, and entrusts them with the care of educating the new being in accordance with his condition as a Son of God, preparing him to inherit glory. That is why Saint Augustine could write about Joseph:“Whoever says, therefore, ‘He should not be called a father because he did not have him as other fathers do,’ places the essence of fatherhood in lust, rather than in the affection of charity. But he lived the fatherhood of the heart better than anyone else in the flesh. Joseph was the husband of Mary, without any carnal bond, only through the bond of marriage. Precisely for this reason it was possible to say that he was the father of Christ, who was born of his own wife, with much more reason than if he had simply adopted him.”It is therefore very clear that the expression “adoptive father,” applied to Joseph in relation to Jesus, is quite weak, although much clearer than the term “legal father.” Joseph did not consider the Son of his wife Mary as a stranger to be adopted, but as the fruit of a virginity that unites with his, and which is the peculiar good of his marriage with Mary. For Saint Augustine, Joseph was a true husband and father, and not in spite of his virginity, but precisely through it and his wife Mary.The strength of the argument is not difficult to prove. To what extent can a man who gives his seed to fertilize a woman he does not know be called the father of the child she conceives and brings into the world? On the other hand, it is clear that if someone, without having generated him, adopts an abandoned child in an orphanage, surrounds him with care, educates him, and works for him, and contributes to the formation of a man, he is more of a father to that son than the one who, despite having generated him (perhaps unwillingly), did not want to have anything to do with him. No one becomes a father simply because a woman becomes pregnant. Reducing fatherhood to a biological fact is a simplistic conception. Being a father is much more.The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem gave rise to this unique and exceptional family in the history of humanity. In this family, the Son of God, conceived and born of the Virgin Mother, came into the world, grew and was educated, and at the same time, from the beginning, was entrusted to the authentic paternal care of Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth, who, before Jewish law, was Mary’s husband, and before the Holy Spirit, was her worthy husband and true paternal guardian of the maternal mystery of his wife.Authentic paternal care, care that expresses the love of a father for his son. Like a son, Joseph loved Jesus, received by his wife, though He did not come “of the blood, or the will of the flesh, or the will of man” (John 1:13), but of God’s will. Turning to Jesus, we see Saint Joseph as “the holy man who adopted him, or rather, to whom God gave Himself as a son.” It was the very Son of God who chose Joseph as His father.Joseph fulfilled his parental role by protecting Jesus from Herod and then preserving Him from the potential danger posed by Archelaus. This is why he left his homeland, went to a foreign land, and changed his plans as necessary. He subordinated his life to the well-being of Jesus.We, men of the third millennium of the Christian era, can also learn the lesson that Joseph suggests to us, two thousand years later. With regard to children, first and foremost, self-denial. To protect Jesus, to save Him from a certain and mortal risk, Joseph abandoned the city where he had settled and took his family to a foreign land to start over.The first duty of a father, a head of household, is, obviously, to protect his loved ones and preserve them from imminent dangers. People are more important than things; a spouse and children are more important than social and economic status and not the job itself. A parent’s concern for their children will lead them to avert dangers, without forgetting that moral dangers are more grave and have worse consequences than risks to their health.Joseph took care to bring his son to the temple to fulfill the law’s precept. He worked to have him circumcised on time, presented him at the temple, and redeemed him. Whoever does not baptize his son without unnecessary delay does not respect the paternal role, because he arbitrarily deprives him of an immense good.There are those who cite, to justify their refusal, a lengthy motivation whose seriousness is difficult to accept, namely, the respect for the child’s freedom: will this child spontaneously ask for baptism when he grows up? Almost a century ago, Chesterton encountered the arrogance of a young mother: “I do not want to teach any religion to my child. I do not want to influence him. I want him to choose for himself when he grows up.” The writer’s response is ironic: why apply this principle only to religion and not to all other areas? A truly striking inconsistency, a symptom not so much of respect for freedom, but of poor sense and considerable will, excusable only as an obvious manifestation of ignorance.To deepen the mystery of the Holy Family and the role of Mary and Joseph in the history of salvation, consult the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by Saint John Paul II.
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