BY

Fr J.C. Pieris

Trying to find a good love story in the New Testament (NT) many have failed to convincingly show that Jesus was married to or was at least in love with Mary Magdalene. The recent finding of a small, old fragment of papyrus with carbon ink writings on it in Coptic script with the words “Jesus said to them, my wife …” has again brought up the subject but does not hold much promise of any positive results as the Coptic papyrus as well as its ink shows that the manuscript is of a very late date.

St. Cecilia Church-Monmouth Junction, NJ

In fact, I think, there is a beautiful, charming and a truly great love story in the NT if only one takes the trouble to read between the lines and, freed from the sanctimonious, distorted interpretations accumulated over the centuries, take a fresh look at the story of Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus.

To get at the story, real and down to earth, one must clarify for oneself the reason for the writing of the NT. One must also have some knowledge of the contemporary Jewish society. Then a lot of theological and devotional debris, polemical, doctrinal and historical, covering the story, must be removed. Finally using common sense and reading between the lines with great sympathy for the young couple we must reconstruct one of the most elevating and sublime love stories ever told.

I refer to the passage in the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 to 24. It is very short. “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”……………..When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife”. This is only the tip of the iceberg; to see the whole drama, the great and wonderful love story, one must be prepared with some essential background knowledge.

First of all the NT is neither biography nor history. It is proclamation. It is the proclamation of the good news, the Kerygma in Greek. The good news is that Jesus is Lord. Jesus the Nazarene, whom the disciples claim to have seen, heard and touched and who was crucified by Pontius Pilate and died. This man, though dead, is raised and is alive. He is Christ. The NT is the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Everything written in all the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of the disciples and finally in the book of Revelation are written to show, clarify and prove that Jesus is Christ, the son of God. Now take the ‘Infancy Narratives’; it is very clear that they were written down not as historical truths but as miraculous happenings that precede or follow the birth of any great personality in those days. (Here in the East, Lord Buddha’s first steps as baby Siddhartha made lotuses bloom where his sacred feet touched the ground and stories of the Buddha’s virgin birth are mentioned in some Buddhist literature.) Therefore the ‘Infancy Narratives’ are to be understood as religious and devotional proof for the divinity of Jesus.

Secondly tradition (not the NT) has made Joseph an old man. All the paintings of the holy family will depict Joseph as an old man. That too is not history but it simply makes things easier to accept and understand the virginity of Mary. Virginity of Mary was essential for the great doctrinal debates, controversies and polemics regarding the humanity and divinity of Christ among different schools of theology with some wanting to call Mary ‘Theotokos’ (Mother of God) and others ‘Christotokos’ (Mother of Christ) till finally the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) formulated the creed and brought an end to the controversies.

Thirdly, the Jewish awareness of the secondary causes was nil for they only accepted the primary cause for everything that happened to them. For example, if an earth quake destroyed a village it is not fault lines in the lithosphere or nature that destroyed the village; it was God. When a man takes an important decision in life; it is not the fruit of his personal struggle and discernment but God telling him to take that decision either in a dream or informed by an angel.

Finally, in the Jewish contemporary society men got married before they were thirty, or rather in their early twenties. Old men married but that would have been their second, third or n’th wife, not the first one.

With the background explanations in place it is time to tell the story. We tell the story as Matthew narrates it putting aside all those implicated controversies and polemics. We tell the simple love story of a young Jewish couple about two millennia ago. His (Jesus’) mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Residing in the same village, the young duo surely had met each other for a long period before falling in love and getting engaged officially and then they must have met regularly planning their future and deepening their love for each other. Whatever supernatural event that might have taken place, a time came when Mary had to decide to tell the four terrible words –

“Joseph, I am pregnant”.

Mary, deeply in love with Joseph, must have suffered more from the pain and confusion her revelation is going to inflict on Joseph rather than from her own predicament. For her it must have been mental torture. How much will it hurt him? Will he get over it? What will be his reaction? What will he do finally? These unanswerable questions kept going round in her head interminably. Joseph, so sensitive to every mood change of Mary, must have noticed that she is intensely suffering. The silent pain of Mary must have made him question her.

“Tell me, Mary what is troubling you?”

For Joseph the world came crashing down when the revelation took place. It is not possible to put in mere words what happened between them at that most intimate and difficult-to-imagine moment. The man tormented by the revelation, contemplating the innocent eyes of the woman before him pleading for understanding and full of pain, shame and resignation to any possible outcome of the situation could not bring himself to hate or take revenge from her instead was only aware of how much they loved each other and consequently how much they were suffering.

Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. The Gospel simply states that Joseph was a righteous man. If he was not, the pain and the humiliation of betrayal would have made him take revenge from Mary by exposing her in public and even getting her stoned to death as the Law of Moses required. But he was a righteous man. What that means is that his love for Mary was so strong and the fantastic revelation so incredible he could not accept that Mary was guilty of a pregnancy, though not married yet, almost adulterous. Joseph was a righteous man but also a proud Jew. He could not bring himself to go through life with Mary any longer. He could not harm her or shame her in public either. He had no choice but to leave her quietly and separate. Sleepless nights in tears were spent in going through the heart rending revelation again and again but also in mature deliberation and discernment.

After he had considered this an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Love, stronger than death, never left Joseph’s side. Joseph knew Mary through and through. He had no doubt about her love for him. He could see how much she is suffering for his sake more than for her own sake. He was torn asunder caught in the horns of a dilemma. His love for and loyalty to Mary on the one hand and his manly pride and common sense on the other hand made his nights dark and despairing. Their love for each other was so strong Joseph had to admit something special had happened. He did not understand it and he could not send Mary away to a life of misery, shame and loneliness. Finally, love was victorious. When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife”.

What proved Joseph’s love for Mary and subsequently for Jesus was the dedication he showed them in very difficult circumstances of their lives. Traveling with a heavily pregnant woman from Nazareth to Bethlehem; the desperate search for a place for them to spend the night; the birth and the consequent attention needed by the mother and the child; it was not easy for a man to single handedly accomplish all that which he did. And he did it with so much love and care never complaining never relinquishing his responsibilities as the father of the family. Traveling to Egypt looking for refuge was another daunting challenge. Brigands and bandits were galore those days. Probably they joined a caravan going to Egypt either by paying them or doing carpentry for them on the way. He surely carried his box of tools where ever he went. When the danger to the Child had passed, Herod had died, they returned to Nazareth, as the scripture says, instructed by an angel in a dream. But it was Joseph who with foresight wisely chose to go to Nazareth in Galilee, rather than to Judea, out of reach of Herod’s men. The next we hear of Joseph is when the infant Jesus was taken to the Temple as Luke tells us ‘Joseph and Mary took him (infant Jesus) to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord’. (2/22) Again when the boy Jesus was twelve years old and while they were on a pilgrimage he got lost in Jerusalem. The parents found the boy after three days and Mary says:

“Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” (2/48)

It is touching the way Mary includes Joseph in her anxiety for the child Jesus. And in Nazareth the whole village admits that Joseph is the father of this eloquent and courageous man, Jesus; “And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth; and they said,

“Is not this Joseph’s son?” (4/22)

This is the last we hear of Joseph in the scriptures. It is not surprising that Jesus, born and bred within this stupendous mutual love of Joseph and Mary, became the very embodiment of the deepest, sincerest and noblest love the world has seen. Undoubtedly Joseph had been unjustly sidelined and deliberately diminished in the religious and scriptural history of Christianity. But Joseph’s love for Mary and Jesus was such that he wouldn’t mind it as any loving husband and doting father wouldn’t who sacrifices and forgets himself for his beloved family.

Courtesy: The Island