Fourth Sunday of Advent

St Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that the Son of God took to Himself a human nature. This embeds Our Lord in our world, even though His origins are not of this world. God enters into physical contact with fallen humanity, though Himself taking a humanity untainted by sin. He comes to dwell among men, to teach, to die, and to rise and reign. He dwells not just in the sense of along and beside, but as one of us, sharing the same nature.

And yet He was no mere human person. He adopted human nature freely; He did not need to, but out of Love did so. The divine and human intimately united but never confused in the person of Jesus. Truly God from God, consubstantial with the Father, come down from Heaven for our salvation. This is no man who becomes God at a certain point in his life; it is God Who becomes man. He comes to us as a Saviour, to free us from the shackles of death brought about by sin. He does not come as political leader or a social revolutionary: His mission to save and to set man on the path to God indeed has consequences for the way in which society ought to be governed and how we each relate to one another, but this is a consequence rather than the end goal of His mission.

Sitting with all that for a moment, let us turn our gaze to St Joseph in the Gospel. He was a good man, a ‘man of honour’ we are told. Despite the custom of his time, given Our Lady’s situation, he places her well-being first, and seeks to respect her integrity by not exposing her to public shame. Here we have a man who is discerning, faithful, and a person of action. We are told he ‘had made up his mind’: he had reached a decision; he was resolute. By divine intervention he is convinced that he need not be afraid in taking her as his wife. That which he could not know by reason was given to him through revelation. St Joseph awakes from his slumber and acting resolutely once more, takes Our lady to his home.