Awakenings

by Father Thomas Keating

Celebrations of Jesus' Presence

Chapter 25

The Feast of St. Joseph

Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.
(Matt. 1:18-19)

    Just as Abraham became the father of all who have faith by renouncing the possibility of an heir, so Joseph became the husband of Mary only after he had given up his plan to marry her. This is all about the loss and finding of Mary. It parallels the loss and finding of Jesus in the Temple. Joseph had set his heart on living with Mary as his wife. When her mysterious pregnancy broke up his plan, he decided that he had to give up the vision he had formed for his life--his plan of serving God with Mary as his wife. Can you think of anybody harder to give up than our Blessed Mother? The cause of his broken heart was Jesus himself. That is a significant pattern in the Christian life. Later Joseph had to go through the loss and finding of Jesus in the Temple, an even deeper participation in the mystery of Christ's passion, death and resurrection.

    Every true seeker of God, from the beginning of time to the end of the world, has to pass through this mysterious inward death and rebirth, perhaps many times over. Joseph's love of Mary and his vision of life with her--and later his love of Jesus and his vision of life with him--were his two great visions, both given to him by God and both seemingly taken away from him by circumstances God arranged. These were the two eyes that he had to give up in order to see with God's eyes. He had to surrender his personal vision in order to become Vision itself. That, after all, is the goal and term of Christian life.

    God grant us people with great vision! By that I mean men and women who dedicate themselves to some great ideal or purpose. Vision is what gives ordinary life its direction and invests it with purpose. As one journeys across the desert, prairie, or sea-- all images of ordinary life in spiritual literature--one may come upon various places of rest: an oasis, a garden of spiritual delights, or a harbor. This can be an occasion of terrible temptation for a person with great vision. One seems to have arrived at the end of one's laborious journey and all one's immense efforts seem to be coming to fruition. Actually, the place of rest will become a place of poison unless one hastens to push on. Spiritual consolation is enervating when sought for its own sake.

    But how does one push on? Is it by giving up the vision? Not exactly. Rather, it is by being willing to do so. For that ultimate renunciation is the only way to move beyond what one thinks is the vision and to embrace what it really is. In other words, it is necessary to give up all one's own ideas of how to reach the place of vision in order to get there. Thus, Abraham was told by God, at the most critical moment of his life, "Take your son . . . Isaac whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you" (Gen. 22:2). To paraphrase the text: "Take your great vision, your ideal of the spiritual journey and how to attain it, and go to the place I will show you. There sacrifice it to me."

    The struggle to attain to the "land of vision," if one does not settle for something less along the way, leads to disappointment or even to what is close to despair. It is like dying. Your world must be broken! And you with it! Your idea of vocation, of the spiritual journey, of the church, of Jesus Christ, even of God himself, must be shattered. The crux of the human predicament that Jesus took upon himself does not consist simply of our personal sins. It is our sinful condition--all that causes us merely to reflect about the vision rather than experience it.

This chapter is taken from the book Awakenings by Fr. Thomas Keating. You can obtain a copy from the Bookstore.  See Awakenings