CC#37--St. Joseph and Our Lord is Near

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Today is Christmas Eve.

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We are waiting for our Lord.

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Let us wait with a great theologian's word and his book.

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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

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Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

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Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Catholic Corner and happy Christmas Eve to each and every one of you.

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Tomorrow is the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and that is a special, special time of the year, for it's the second holiest day on the calendar for Christians and Catholics alike, and Catholics alike.

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And for today's Catholic Corner, I thought we would go back to Pope Benedict XVI and his words and thoughts as he put them onto paper in his multi-volume, three-part volume Work, Jesus of Nazareth.

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Now again, if you're not Catholic, you might have forgotten that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI passed away on December 31st 2022, at the age of 96.

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We did a special Catholic Corner, number 18, for him.

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It's a sad day, but we'll put that link in the show notes.

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And in our last Catholic Corner we covered some of Pope Benedict's writings, but his three-volume study of Jesus of Nazareth is just being praised widely by Catholic and Protestant scholars and equally by the Western Church as well as the Eastern Church.

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So with that, let's go back to our book of the day by the late Pope Benedict XVI Jesus of Nazareth and the Infancy Narratives, and we're going to check out another part of that great book.

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Go on to the book for our first pull quote.

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After considering Luke's Annunciation narrative, we must now turn our attention to the tradition handed down in Matthew's gospel regarding the same event.

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In contrast to Luke, Matthew relates it exclusively from the perspective of St Joseph who, as a descendant of David, represents the link between the figure of Jesus and the Davidic promise.

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Later on we pick it up, the Davidic promise.

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Later on we pick it up With regard to the child's origin.

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Matthew is anticipating something here that Joseph does not yet know.

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Joseph has to assume that Mary has broken their engagement and, according to the law, he must dismiss her.

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He has a choice between a public juridical act in a private form, or rather he can bring Mary before the court, or he can issue her with a private writ of divorce.

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Joseph decides on the latter option in order not quote to put her to shame.

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Verse 119 of Matthew's gospel.

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Matthew sees in this choice an indication that Joseph was quote a just man, the designation of Joseph as a just man.

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And here is where Pope Benedict XVI was so good.

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He gives you the original form in Greek zatic.

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So good, he gives you the original form in Greek zatic and you can extrapolate and go down a rabbit trail with studying each of these words.

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But that's why I love these infancy narratives, because you get little nuggets along the way if you want to go and study the actual etymology of the word.

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But the designation of Joseph as a just man extends far beyond the decision he takes at this moment.

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It gives an overall picture of St Joseph and at the time it aligns him with the great figures of the old covenant, beginning with Abraham the just.

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If we may say that the form of piety found in the New Testament can be summed up in the expression a believer, then the Old Testament idea of a whole life lived according to sacred scripture is summed up in the idea of a quote just man.

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Psalm 1 presents the classic image of the just man.

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We might well think of it as a portrait of the spiritual figure of St Joseph.

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A just man, it tells us, is one who maintains living contact with the word of God, who delights in the law of the Lord, Verse 2.

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Being God's will is not a law imposed on him from without.

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It is joy.

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For him, the law is simply gospel good news because he reads it with a personal, loving openness to God and in this way learns to understand and live it from deep within.

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If Psalm 1 sees it as the mark of the just man, the happy man, that he lives by the Torah, the word of God, the parallel passage in Jeremiah 17, 7, calls quote blessed the one who puts his trust in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord.

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This text brings out, more strongly than the psalm, the personal character of righteousness, the trust in God that gives man hope.

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Although neither passage speaks explicitly of the just, but rather of the happy or the blessed, we may still regard them, with Hans Joachim Krauss, as providing the authentic Old Testament image of the just man.

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And so we learn from them what Matthew means when he describes St Joseph as just.

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So there you get a taste of the former Pope's deep commentary on the life of our Lord.

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Again, this passage and these passages are coming from Pope Benedict's third book, the Jesus of Nazareth, the Infancy Narratives, the third in the sequence.

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But let's go back to the book to pick up another spiritual nugget of wisdom, because this one is really fantastic.

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Whereas the angel came to Mary that we read in Luke 1.28, he merely appears to Joseph in a dream, admittedly a dream that is real and reveals what is real.

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Once again, this shows us an essential quality of the figure of St Joseph His capacity to perceive the divine and his ability to discern.

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Only a man who is inwardly watchful for the divine, Only someone with a real sensitivity for God and his ways Can receive God's message in this way, for God and his ways can receive God's message in this way, and an ability to discern was necessary in order to know whether it was simply a dream or whether God's messenger had truly appeared to him and addressed him.

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The message conveyed to Joseph is overwhelming.

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It demands extraordinarily courageous faith.

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Can it be that God has really spoken, that what Joseph was told in the dream was the truth, a truth so far surpassing anything he could have foreseen?

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Can it be that God has acted in this way toward a human creature?

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God has acted in this way toward a human creature?

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Can it be that God has now launched a new history with men?

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Matthew, the writer, has already said that Joseph quote inwardly considered and here we get another Greek word that Pope Benedict XVI gives to us so to further our study along.

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But Joseph, inwardly, was considering the right way to respond to Mary's pregnancy.

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So we can well imagine his inner struggle now to make sense of this breathtaking dream message.

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Quote Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

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Matthew 1.20.

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Joseph is explicitly addressed as son of David, which also serves to indicate the task assigned to him.

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In this event, as heir to the Davidic promise, he is to bear witness to God's faithfulness.

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Do not be afraid to take on this task, one that might well arouse fear.

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Do not be afraid.

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The very words the angel of the Annunciation had spoken to Mary.

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By means of this same exhortation from the angel, Joseph is now drawn into the mystery of God's incarnation.

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Holy smokes, is that not good?

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Just a whole otherher series of nuggets of spiritual, nuggets of wisdom for us to ponder.

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I mean, have you read or meditated on those questions when reading the gospel account of Matthew, of our Lord's birth?

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Those questions, where does it say let's go back here?

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Here we go, the questions.

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Can it be that God has really spoken, that what Joseph was told was the truth in the dream, A truth so far surpassing anything he could have foreseen?

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Can it be that God had acted in this way towards a human creature?

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You know Joseph is thinking me.

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He spoke directly to me.

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Can it be that God has now launched a new history with men?

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Matthew has already said that Joseph, inwardly, was considered the right way to respond to Mary's pregnancy, God obviously knowing his thoughts and he was a just man prompting him with the angel do not be afraid.

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Angel, do not be afraid.

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And then Pope Benedict XVI's commentary.

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We can well imagine his inner struggle now to make sense of this breathtaking dream message, Really helping us to draw out that wisdom.

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And then we reflect only a man who is inwardly watchful would have the sensitivity to God and would have the ability to respond.

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In this way Can we respond to our Lord the way St Joseph did.

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Let's have encouragement.

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Let us through our prayer and it always begins with prayer let us begin that process to learn and become inwardly watchful.

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We don't know St Joseph's praying habits, obviously, but we have to believe that he was a praying man, a deeply prayerful man, because we knew he was a just man.

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Going back to the book, later on, we read a completely different nugget of wisdom, and this is fascinating.

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Going to the book, so this passage already anticipates the whole debate over Jesus' Messiahship.

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Has he now redeemed Israel, or is everything still as it was before?

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Is the mission as lived by Jesus the answer to the promise, or is it not?

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Certainly, it does not match the immediate expectations of Masonic salvation nurtured by men who felt oppressed not so much by their sins as by their sufferings, their lack of freedom, their wretched conditions of their existence, man's deep need for redemption.

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On the occasion when the four men who could not carry the paralytic through the door because of the crowd, let him down from the roof and laid him at Jesus's feet, the sick man's very existence was a plea, an urgent appeal for salvation, to which Jesus responded in a way that was quite contrary to the expectation of the bearers and of the sick man himself, saying my son, your sins are forgiven.

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Mark 2.5.

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This was the last thing anyone was expecting, this was the last thing they were concerned about.

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The paralytic needed to be able to walk, not to be delivered from his sins.

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The scribes criticized the theological presumption of Jesus' words.

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The sick man and those around him were disappointed because Jesus had apparently overlooked the man's real need.

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And what really strikes you from this passage?

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Well, what really struck me with the passage was this that was the last thing anyone was expecting.

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Last thing anyone was concerned about the paralytic needed to be able to walk, not to be delivered from his sins.

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The scribes criticized the theological presumption of Jesus' words.

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The sick man and those around him were deeply disappointed.

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Jesus had apparently overlooked the man's real need.

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Jesus is God-made man.

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How can he make a mistake?

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Why did he apparently overlook the man's real need?

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Did he make a mistake?

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And this is where we need to study and read the Bible to understand and become closer to Jesus' real concern that Pope Benedict brings to us To remove the sins of the world and for the salvation of man for eternity is Jesus' real mission.

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And here Pope Benedict helps us to bring this teaching to a conclusion.

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Going back to the book, I consider this whole scene to be of key significance for the question of Jesus' mission In the terms with which it was first described in the angel's message to Joseph.

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In the passage concerned, both the criticism of the scribes and the silent expectation of the onlookers is acknowledged.

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Jesus then demonstrates his ability to forgive sins by ordering the sick man to take up his pallet and walk away, healed At the same time.

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The priority of forgiveness for sins is the foundation of all true healing is clearly maintained.

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Man is a relational being and if his first fundamental relationship is disturbed, his relationship with God, then nothing else can truly be in order.

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This is where the priority lies in Jesus' message and ministry.

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Else he wants to point man toward the essence of his malady and to show him if you're not healed there, then, however many good things you may find, you are not truly healed.

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In this sense, the explanation of Jesus's name that was offered to Joseph in his dream already contains a fundamental clarification of how man's salvation has to be understood and hence what the Savior's essential task must be.

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And it all comes back to God becoming man, being born into this world in time and in a place, physical place.

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And so it is.

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We can and we should appreciate Pope Benedict XVI's three-volume work, especially this third volume, Jesus of Nazareth, the Infancy Narratives.

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So many nuggets of wisdom, so many spiritual nuggets of wisdom which he brings about in the book, especially the significance of the virgin birth and St Joseph's role in that human and divine drama.

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In several ways we just touched upon In this Catholic corner, let us turn to our Lord in a spirit of recollection, in a spirit of waiting.

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We wait with the shepherds in the fields, we wait with the whole human race.

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We wait for the coming of the Messiah.

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God made man.

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Then we can truly appreciate the evangelist words.

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Then we can truly appreciate the evangelist words Through the tender mercy of our God, when the day shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.

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Luke, chapter 1, 78 and 79.

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Keep fighting the good fight and keep watch, for our Lord is near.

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Thank you for joining us.

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We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast.

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Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources.

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Until next time, keep getting your mojo on, thank you.

CC#37--St. Joseph and Our Lord is Near

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