This is part of a series of articles that will run for 30 consecutive days! Each day, The Lord will unveil the silent beauty of St. Joseph through one line of his Litany. The Litany of St. Joseph is a stunning, illuminating prayer. In fact, the Church grants us a partial indulgence (under the normal requirements) just for reciting it.
Day Four
Light of Patriarchs
I love Spider-Man: No Way Home. It is not the best movie ever made, but it did move the little boy in me unlike any other movie before or since.
That’s because I grew up on Spider-Man. I remember seeing the first Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi installment when I was three years old, and it is not hyperbole to say that my maturity was marked by each subsequent release of both Tobey and Andrew’s films. By the time Tom Holland came around, I was at the brink of moving beyond the character as a role model, but he still had tremendous impact.
What I’m getting at is this: No Way Home landed so squarely in my heart and in the hearts of millions of fans because we had already come to admire and adore the two previous versions of Spider-Man, and this movie squarely made Tom Holland’s version out to be the epitome of everything that makes Spider-Man. It does so in two major ways:
- (1) By keeping Tom from repeating the mistakes of his predecessors.
- Andrew’s Peter Parker spares Tom from a life of anger and regret by saving MJ. Without him, Peter would have likely become even more bitter and hateful than he already was.
- Tobey’s Peter, on the other hand, prevents Tom from going down the dark road of vengeance and murder. Without Tobey there to keep Tom from taking the Green Goblin’s life, he would have forever been marked by the vengeance and murder he succumbed to.
- (2) By having Tom reinforce what makes Spider-Man… Spider-Man
- Sacrifice: Tom Holland’s Peter Parker makes the greatest sacrifice any Spider-Man has ever made by annihilating his existence from public consciousness to save the world.
- Responsibility: In doing so, Tom’s Peter takes responsibility for his mistakes. He also takes responsibility for the mistakes of the other Peters and of Doctor Strange.
- Poverty of Spirit: Tom Holland’s version especially embraces this trait by the end of the movie by accepting total solitude. He does not even lay claim to knowing his own adopted mother when talking with Happy at Aunt May’s grave.
No Way Home was designed to make Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, if you will, the “Light of Spider-Men”. The greatest and best of all Spider-Men, avoiding the pitfalls of predecessors while embodying what makes them so great in the first place.
Some of you see where this is going.
The Patriarchs
Where we meet the flawed heroes of the Old Testament.
We are going to do a quick survey of the great men of the Old Testament. As we do, allow yourself to experience the crescendo God is orchestrating in the lead up to Saint Joseph. Just as with Spider-Man, the best way to really appreciate these characters is to read their stories and fall in love with their world.
Adam
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Genesis 2: 15-17
Enoch
“Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.“
Genesis 5: 24
Noah
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually... But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.”
Genesis 6: 5
Abraham
“And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
Genesis 15: 6
Jacob
“Then [God] said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
Genesis 32: 28
Joseph
“When he summoned famine against the land,
Psalm 105: 16-22
and broke every staff of bread,
he had sent a man ahead of them,
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
His feet were hurt with fetters,
his neck was put in a collar of iron;
until what he had said came to pass,
the word of the Lord kept testing him.
The king sent and released him;
the ruler of the peoples set him free.
He made him lord of his house,
and ruler of all his possessions,
to instruct his officials at his pleasure,
and to teach his elders wisdom.”
Moses
“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land.
Deuteronomy 34: 10-11
Joshua
“But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua 24: 15
David
“I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after my heart, who will carry out all my wishes.’
Acts 13: 22
Fulfillment
Finally, after all these (and many more, far more for me to list here)……..
We get Joseph, the Patriarch of Patriarchs, the man who avoids the mistakes of all his predecessors and embodies the very best of who they are.
- Joseph is the priest and ruler over the new Eden, the house of the Holy Family.
- Like Enoch, Joseph walked with God both figuratively and literally. In fact, it was Joseph who taught Jesus how to walk.
- Noah was singled out among all humanity for having found favor with God. Yet Joseph found all the more favor, for out of all men who ever lived or ever will live, he alone was chosen to be the caretaker and father of Jesus Christ.
- As the father of Christ, Joseph had to have extreme faith in God from the very beginning all the way until his dying breath. Moreover, he suffered just as Abraham suffered in thinking of what would happen to Isaac, for Joseph knew that the Messiah, his son, was to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
- Much like how Jacob wrestled with God for his blessing and to understand the nature of God, Joseph wrestled with the miracles and impossible scenarios that God presented him with, to the point of being visited by angels in his sleep.
- Pharaoh made Joseph lord of his house and master of all his possessions. In a similar fashion, God, has made Joseph the king of His house and ruler of His possessions, both in earth AND in Heaven. Joseph too had to travel to Egypt to smash the gods of the land. Moses was granted to do his Exodus and subsequent ministry to the people of Israel through signs; they were not ready to see the face of God. Joseph was not given signs or miracles, for he had God himself, and he did in fact commune and share Jesus’ face everywhere he went.
- Joshua’s proclamation ought to be the clarion call of every man. Joseph, being the head of the holiest house in the world, could confidently say that his house served the Lord.
- Finally, as we tasted yesterday in a more experiential way, Joseph has an intimate connection to David. To have something to chew on, think of David’s relationship to the Ark of the Covenant. David reverenced it so highly that he sent it away from himself, thinking that he was unworthy to have it near him.
Joseph almost made the same mistake in thinking himself unworthy of the new ark, Mary. Mary is the ark of the new covenant. In her womb was Christ, the new law, the bread from heaven, and the ultimate high priest. It was the angel of the Lord that kept Joseph from falling into the mistake of his predecessor.
For these and many more reasons, we see Joseph as the shinning splendor of the patriarchs, who sheds light on their best aspects while being preserved from their most tragic downfalls.
