Seeing Is Believing?
There’s been a lot of doubting and worrying going on this past week. On Thursday, we had the feastday of Doubting Thomas, the Apostle who couldn’t believe in the Resurrection until he actually saw our Lord, complete with all the wounds of his crucifixion. Now today it’s the turn of St. Joseph. We can imagine his shock when he found out our Blessed Lady was expecting a child. He knew her to be a holy and virtuous young woman and so could hardly believe her condition. And yet, seeing is believing, at least according to St. Thomas, so how can St. Joseph ignore this incredibly awkward situation he finds himself in. According to the law, his beloved Mary could possibly be stoned to death, and there was no way he was going to let that happen. But how could he continue their relationship if she were going to have a child out of wedlock? So good St. Joseph decided to give it some thought, and like so many others when they think too hard about something, he fell asleep.
At this point, God put an end to Joseph’s concerns by sending an angel. “And behold,” we read in today’s Christmas Eve Gospel, “the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.” The rest of the story we know: Joseph accepted Mary as his espoused wife, and a few months later, he would take her with him to his hometown of Bethlehem so he could pay his taxes. There, she would give birth to the Saviour of the World, and Joseph would raise the boy as his own son.
Like St. Joseph, we often wonder what’s going on. How do the wicked things happening around us fit in with God’s plan for the greater good? But the ways of God are unknown to us, and infinitely more wise than we are. We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and base what we think is true on the knowledge we get from our five senses. This is useful enough when it comes to the usual routine things of our life—without this sensual perception of the world around us, we would be devoid of reality and unable to function. What we see is what we get—at least most of the time. What we fail to see, though, is sometimes even more important than what we do actually observe, and sometimes the thing we fail most to see is the Divine Providence of Almighty God.
It’s not really our fault we don’t see God’s plan. There are mysteries that surround the ways of God. So for example when we see Christ being crucified, it’s normal for us to be horrified, to want to stop this terrible thing from happening. And yet, by failing to see God’s will being fulfilled in that crucifixion, we may, through our own well-founded zeal actually get in the way of that divine plan. St. Peter came close to doing that when he cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant in the Garden of Gethsemane. Fortunately, he had our blessed Lord standing there to set him straight. We are not so fortunate, so we need to be extra careful when we react to the bad things around us.
We’re all in agreement when we say “Thy will be done.” But there are so many divergent opinions about what that will is, and how we are supposed to play our part. Today, for instance, should we fly to Rome and murder the pope, or think we’re supposed to try and stop in some way his crucifixion of Christ’s Mystical Body? The answer is a resounding no, as we learned from St. Peter and his violent reaction in Gethsemane. So should we maybe just run from the problem and hide our heads in the sand, getting on with our lives as best we can? The Apostles did this and it is not to their credit. The real answer lies, as it so often does, with our Lord’s Blessed Mother. She went to Calvary and stood at the foot of the Cross, showing her total commitment and support to her beloved Son in his suffering. We must do the same. How? By committing ourselves, body and soul, to the service of Christ our Lord. By serving him willingly in whatever role he presents to us through life’s circumstances and vicissitudes. By loving and serving God through our faith and obedience to his commandments. And on this Christmas Eve in particular, by uniting ourselves with Mary and Joseph as they make their way towards Bethlehem and we towards our own eternal destiny.
Our role, in short, is clear. It is to be as ready as St. Joseph was to place our trust in the Blessed Virgin, refusing to yield to our doubts that God can bring victory out of the terrible things we see with our own eyes around us. We do not need to see God’s plan, we just need to believe that he has one and that it is being fulfilled despite everything the Devil can do to thwart it. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”