St. Joseph: Exemplar for all

During Christmas week, the Knights of Columbus Pilgrim Icon of St. Joseph made its way to our parish. What better time of the year for us to reflect on virtue and strength of the man Jesus called “Dad.” 

It is only during the Christmas season that we hear the great stories about St. Joseph during our Mass readings. One of my favorite stories of St. Joseph is the flight into Egypt, depicted in Matthew 2:13-15. 

In this story we meet two very different men. First, we encounter King Herod the Great, the ruler of Judea who was so paranoid about the potential birth of a new king that he sends troops to Bethlehem to slay all infant boys two years and under. Then we have St. Joseph, who wakes from a dream in which the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.” 

“Stay there until I tell you.” Those were not the words we liked to hear in the Air Force, especially when it pertained to a deployment. Back in the summer of ’96, Jennine and I were preparing for a summer vacation with our five kids. We were going to drive the next day for 10 days of fun in the sun. The kids were all excited as they would see their cousins. 

Late that afternoon the phone rang; it was the command post calling to inform me that I had just been tasked to deploy and was to be on a plane the next morning for Florida to meet up with the engineering squadron that I was to deploy with. We were going for a different kind of “fun in the sun” in Saudi Arabia. 

All my well-laid plans for that vacation were out the window in an instant, for me at least. Jennine and the kids still went on the vacation and had a great time without me. I returned from the deployment a couple of months later and at the time did not appreciate the impact that deployment would have on my life. I was just happy to be home. Little did I know that this deployment was part of a bigger plan that God was unfolding in my life. 

Due to that deployment, I was offered a new position. The next summer we found ourselves moving to South Carolina. It was there that my faith life changed forever. I met some Catholic men who were on fire with their faith. My encounter with them changed me, it changed our marriage, and it changed our family. 

In hindsight, I am so grateful for that deployment to Saudi Arabia that summer. Had my plans for that summer before not been nixed we would never have moved to South Carolina, and I would never have met those guys. 

St. Joseph also had a short notice deployment. His reaction to the angel of the Lord’s command to flee was immediate and without hesitation. I sometimes wonder what his “plans” had been for the next day or the next week. Sacred scripture does not tell us. All it says is, “Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.” 

Was he in the middle of a construction project? Had he left his tools at a job site the day before?  

None of that mattered. St. Joseph had learned to trust God above all things. He had surrendered his will to be in line with the will of God, the Father. Joseph knew that as long as he was doing the Father’s will, everything would work out somehow, even in this no-notice, open-ended deployment to Egypt. 

What is our reaction when our well-laid plans get thrown out the window? Are we like St. Joseph, who trustingly takes all things in stride knowing full well that God is in charge and that we simply must surrender to him? Or are there times we respond a bit more like Herod the Great, demanding that our will be done? 

God does have a plan for each of us and sometimes those plans do not coincide with what we have in mind. Are there times in your life when God took you where you did not want to go? Are you able to look back and see that hand of divine providence guiding you to something greater than you believed possible? 

Like St. Joseph, let’s follow the will of God and give thanks for all the blessings we receive—even those we do not want at the time!