 On this great salinity of Saint Joseph, we are reminded of the second most important figure in the entire church. Obviously, Jesus is the church. He is the body of Christ, so he doesn't count. Mary and Joseph are the two greatest members of the church. Mary, of course, the greatest, but all the saints put together. You could put Joseph and all the other saints together. Mary is still superior. But second to her would be Joseph himself. Joseph is the patron saint of the church, the whole church. And it makes perfect sense why he would hold this patronage, why he would be entrusted with care of the church at large. Because he was chosen by God the Father to be entrusted with the Father's most precious gifts. His only begotten son and his immaculate mother. No other human being has been trusted as much. So imagine the type of man Joseph must have been on earth and clearly is eternally now in heaven. Flawless, perfect, absolutely virtuous in every way. Yes, he was tainted by original sin like all of us, but it's very likely he had no personal sin. Such a perfect man. And so he was ideal to stand in the person of God the Father for his only son, Jesus Christ, to be the adopted father of Jesus. And just like Jesus chose Mary to be his mother, he would have also had a say in who got to be his adopted father. And he chose Joseph. No one loved the mother more than the son. And he would have only chosen the best spouse for her. Imagine kids if you could pick out spouse for your parents. I mean, hopefully you'd pick out the one that they're with. So, but imagine that wasn't the case. You'd only pick out the best. Joseph had to have been, even while on earth, the best of men. In our gospel today we hear about this conundrum that he has. He's already engaged to Mary and you have to understand something about Jewish engagements. So once you get engaged at this time in the Hebrew world, you're considered married. That's it. That person is your wife. That is your husband. You're married. You're just not living together yet because there's a period of courtship that's required until you formally tie the knot, as we would call it. But you're considered married once you get engaged. So we know they're engaged and notice the gospel tells us that it's his wife. So it uses the word wife. It's following this Jewish tradition. Now I'm not saying when you get engaged you're married. So I'm not saying that now. The rules have changed. But this is Jewish culture and tradition at the time. So Mary was considered his wife and Joseph learns that she's with child. Now you have to know something about St. Joseph. A lot of times we picture Joseph as an old man, you know, white hair, white beard, and we assume this because he must have maintained a virginal relationship with the Blessed Mother. We assume he had to be old, right? Because a young man can't be virginal. And I think that's an offense to St. Joseph. He was certainly older than Mary, but it could have only been by 10 years. He could have been in his mid 20s. So I'm not a big fan of the old Joseph theory, but we don't really know. There's no evidence. There's no proof one way or the other. Regardless, Joseph hears that his wife, his fiance, is pregnant. Now Joseph is a good Jewish man. The Bible says he is righteous. You need to understand what righteous means in the Hebrew mind. It means not only does he follow all the laws, because a righteous man would always follow all of the laws of God, but it also means he's personally holy. So he doesn't just follow the laws in regards to some legalism. He follows them in his heart. He's the perfect Jew. Again, the perfect foster father for the Lord. So being a righteous man, he would have probably not spent any time with Mary up to finding out that she's pregnant, you know, an hour or two here or there. So he finds out she's pregnant and he's concerned. He's a righteous man. He doesn't know Mary is the holy mother of God. He doesn't know any of this. He just knows that he's betrothed to her. Literally that's it. This is old school arranged marriages. So he can't judge. He's not judging her character. He doesn't know her, but it's not his baby. That's all he knows. And so being a righteous man, he can't marry her. He can't. She's unfaithful according to the law. It's not his child. And so he intends to divorce her. Now there are two different types of divorce at this time in the Israelite world. There's public divorce, which depending on the circumstances, like with her could have ended in stoning. She's an adulteress publicly. At least that's what it would look like. But notice what Joseph decides to do to divorce her quietly. Meaning no public show, no formal declaration, a private divorce. Now in order to divorce her privately, Joseph is de facto accepting some of the blame for the divorce, even though he's innocent. So I want you to consider what he's doing. Joseph, again, the perfect foster father for the Lord. For all he knows, Mary has sinned. But he still wants to protect her and her unborn child. You see that paternal instinct, even though it's not his child. So he's willing to take some of the blame of the divorce just to protect them. What a man. What a perfect man. Don't you see why he was chosen? Even when he had no reason to, he was still willing to defend their honor, their lives. So the angel is sent to him and it corrects his ignorance. He couldn't have known the nature of this conception. Right? The child in her is the son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. And then the angel says, take your wife into your home. And he does this immediately. That's something we know about Joseph is once he knows the will of God, he does not hesitate. He accomplishes it immediately. And from that moment forward, he cared for his wife and his foster son with this knowledge that they are the holy and chosen instruments of God. We know that he maintained his chaste relationship with her until he died, which was sometime before Jesus started his public ministry. We don't know when. But what we do know is that this man above all men was entrusted by the Father with the most precious of gifts. And so it's not surprising that he holds this exalted role in the church. And hopefully in our own devotional lives that we ourselves have a strong devotion to Saint Joseph. He can do so much for us. The Holy Family, right? Jesus, Mary and Joseph should be the center of our hearts and our homes. The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.