Homily for Christmas Vigil

Homily for the Christmas Vigil

Dec. 24, 2021
Matt 1: 18-25
St. Thomas More, Hauppauge, N.Y.

“When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home” (Matt 1: 24).

Earlier this month the Church completed a year designated to honor and to learn from St. Joseph.  It’s not too late to pay attention to that, especially since the gospel reading assigned for this evening tells us of the conception and birth of Jesus from St. Joseph’s perspective as recorded by St. Matthew.

Matthew tells us that Joseph awoke from his dream and then acted upon what he’d been told.  Joseph is “woke,” as they say today, but not in the same sense in which that word is used today.  The internet tells me that woke means “alert to injustice in society, especially racism.”  Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus will become victims of injustice in society, Matthew will tell us in his 2d chapter, when wicked King Herod tries to murder Jesus, and Joseph, again heeding a divine dream, takes his family and flees; they become refugees from injustice.

But Joseph is “woke” in a different sense.  Matthew describes him as “a righteous man,” also translated as “a just man.”  In biblical terms, that means he’s alert to the word of God, to doing what God wants, to obeying the laws of God, to carrying out God’s will in everything he does.

Matthew identifies Joseph as “son of David,” a descendant of Israel’s greatest king.  It was expected that the Messiah would come from David’s line.  We heard in the responsorial psalm, “I have sworn to David my servant:  forever will I confirm your posterity and establish your throne for all generations” (89:4-5).  In the time of Joseph and Mary, pious Jews expected the Messiah to come and restore Israel as a free people under the rule of a son of David.

In that context, Joseph was commanded to accept Mary’s unborn child as his own son, not in a biological sense but in a legal sense.  By accepting the Virgin Mary as his wife—which she already was in Jewish law even tho they weren’t yet living together—and by acknowledging and naming her son, Joseph was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies:  what was promised to David a thousand years earlier, what Isaiah had prophesied 700 years earlier.  Joseph, the righteous man, was cooperating with the plan of God to “save his people from their sins” (1:21).

In that phrase based on the child’s name, Jesus, Yeshua in Hebrew, “Yahweh saves,” Matthew is telling us the nature of his messiahship.  He’s not going to free Israel from Rome, not going to become a ferocious warrior-king like David.  Instead, he’s going to make war on the Devil; he’s going to restore humanity’s health before God.  That’s why God “gladdens us year by year as we wait in hope for our redemption,” as the Collect of the Mass said.  When he bestows healing divine grace upon us, saving us from our sins, “we may merit to face him confidently when he comes again as our Judge,” again quoting the Collect. The Collect reminds us that the Advent we’re winding up is one of waiting for 2 comings of Jesus Christ, the one at Bethlehem 2,000-some years ago and the one in the future when the entire history of humanity will culminate in a final judgment and the redemption of those who are, like St. Joseph, righteous before God.

Going back to the responsorial psalm:  “Blessed the people who know the joyful shout; in the light of your countenance, O Lord, they walk.  At your name they rejoice all the day, and thru your justice (or righteousness) they are exalted.” (Ps 89:16-17)  We pray that by the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, born as our Savior, we’ll be exalted and will rejoice with him when he comes again.