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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Saint Joseph is a great bridge figure between the Old and New Testaments, in the image of the Hebrew patriarchs and the adoptive father of the promised Messiah. When we think in the broadest sense about what the Jewish covenant with the Lord consists of, the two words that come to mind are “the Law and the Prophets.” The Law, or the Torah, guided the Jewish people to live their lives well; it was more than a set of just dry rules, for a more accurate translation of Torah would be “the teachings,” the teachings of Who God is and how we can follow His plan for our lives. And we might best think of the Prophets not so much as predictors of the future, but as the pinnacle figures of Jewish prayer, similar to the great prayer mystics in our Catholic tradition.
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In the era before the Industrial Revolution, it was quite common for a son to learn a trade or a profession directly from his father. In fact, some of the medieval guilds, automatically accepted the son of a member into their ranks. Of course, this kind of dynamic played out explicitly in the life of Jesus. Joseph was a carpenter, and Jesus was known as both “the son of the carpenter” and as a carpenter himself. It’s beautiful to imagine a teenage or young adult Jesus and Joseph going out on jobs together or working with each other on projects at their home in Nazareth.
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The great preparatory seasons of the Church, Advent and Lent, both have multiple facets and their own rhythms and trajectories. Advent begins with an emphasis on the future coming of Christ and then it focuses on our celebration of the Incarnation, all the while fostering our spiritual preparation to receive Him in His comings. Lent, as we’ve experienced these first two weeks, begins by encouraging us to take up the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as a means toward deeper conversion and more sincere relationships with God and our neighbor. But today, we see, especially in the Gospel, the beginnings of another emphasis of Lent, its path toward the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection. These themes are related, of course, because prayer, fasting, and works of charity are disciplines that can strengthen us to embrace the Cross in our lives.
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Today’s two Scripture passages are almost mirror images of each other. In the first reading from Kings, Solomon, son of David, the figure at the very heart of the nation, favored by God by two divine appearances and the gift of holy wisdom, turns away from the Lord and the covenant to follow the idolatry of the nations represented by his many foreign wives. In the Gospel reading from Mark, the woman, a foreigner from the very same nation as Solomon’s idolatrous wives, at first rebuffed by Jesus, persists in turning to the Lord and finally receives His compassionate favor.
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We look out on the world, and we see it is very broken by sin. How can we respond? There are diverse ways, which actually have been lived out by various groups throughout the ages. You could withdraw from the world, with a small community of like-minded believers and try to form a new mini-society, uncorrupted by contact with the outside, your own little utopia. You could remain in the world as self-righteous folks, harsh judges and critics. You could just accept the world as it is, as a hardened cynic, an apathetic laxist, or even an enthusiastic joiner.
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This chapter from Saint Luke’s Gospel is perhaps one of the most well-known and beloved in all of Scripture. Here, in response to the Pharisees’ judgment of Jesus for welcoming sinners, our Lord tells three parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (better known as the prodigal son). We hear only the first two of these parables, because the Church’s cycle of readings saves the greatest and the longest, the prodigal son, for the season of Lent.
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