If you’d like to learn more about St. Joseph’s life and his obedience to God’s calling for his life then you’re in the right place. Just sit back and relax as you read about St. Joseph Daher Joseph’s readiness to obey God’s will and what we can learn from this for our lives today.
Specifically in this article, I’ll be covering St. Joseph’s calling to be the foster father of Jesus and how he obeyed the voice of God through the message of the Angel who appeared to him in his dream:
‘Joseph, Son of David, do not fear to take Mary for your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins’ (Mt 1:20-21)
These words were the pivotal point of St. Joseph’s calling to be the foster father of Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity, God’s own eternal word made flesh on earth.
That night, Joseph accepted wholeheartedly his calling to be Jesus’ foster father and the husband of Mary, who had miraculously conceived Jesus in her womb, by the power of the Holy Spirit: ‘for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 1:20).
St. Joseph is an excellent example of hearing and obeying the Word of God with reverence and joy. Like him, we are called to live in readiness to follow and obey God’s will each moment of our lives (after discernment that the calling is from God, not from the flesh, the world or the devil).
In a nutshell, our obedience to God’s call, often without seeing the full path ahead has to be made in faith and has a great reward which is true peace and joy of heart. This is the fruit of doing God’s will, peace, holiness and unity with God.
These precious fruits all come from the obedience of faith which we owe to God as our creator and lord.
St. Joseph, great man of wisdom, knew this. The path of God’s will is truly what is best for us in life and, more importantly, for eternity. God will use everything that happens to us for our good in order to bring us to eternal happiness. This takes priority over our happiness even here on earth.
St. Joseph is the perfect model of obedience laying down his life, his will, his own desires for his life, to follow the calling God had entrusted to him.
Also by obeying God’s call, St Joseph was most privileged to welcomed Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Jesus in her womb, into his home and life. By doing this, he welcomed the Holy Trinity into his life in a very special way.
As Christians, this is what we are called to do too, to invite the Holy Trinity and the treasure trove of their presence into our hearts and lives in an ever deeper way, to fill us with their love, light and grace (supernatural power for doing good).
We invite the Holy Trinity into our hearts by loving and obeying God’s word and his correctly discerned will in our lives through the Bible, the rules of the Church and in God’s callings and inspirations felt in the depths of our beings.
In a nutshell, if we love God with all our hearts and souls and keep the commandments we too shall be privileged to have the Holy Trinity dwell within us which stems from the Sacrament of Baptism that all Christians receive to become part of God’s ‘adopted sons’ through Christ on earth.
Indeed, the whole essence of the Christian religion is to have the Holy Trinity always dwelling in our hearts: following Christ’s words that if we love Jesus; ‘my father and I will make our abode with him’ (Jn14:23).
We are called to be other Christ’s in this world and how can we achieve this if God is not living in us, for we know that without God we ‘can do nothing’.
Following St Joseph’s example then, let us be full of courage, following in the footsteps of one of the greatest saints in Heaven. Indeed the great St Teresa of Avila stated she had never requested help from St Joseph which she hadn’t received!
It is because St Joseph always did God’s will that he is such a great saint in Heaven. St Teresa of Avila also stated that the path to perfection and holiness is indeed to do God’s Holy will at every moment and to seek nothing else outside of this.
To do God’s will in our lives often can go against our own desires which often stem from society’s desires. Therefore to do God’s will we need great supernatural grace-help from God and courage.
It is only when we are truly willing to listen to God and accept his will that our father in heaven will dispel and calm our doubts and uncertainties about his will for our lives as he did with St Joseph in his dream.