Saying “Yes” to God like St. Joseph
(Jer 23:5-8; Ps 72; Mt 1:18-24)
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Two small boys, having a sleep-over at their grandparents, were saying their night prayers. One was praying out loud with all his might that God would get him a bike for Christmas. The other told him he didn’t have to pray so loud, as God was not deaf. To which he replied, “But grandma is!”
Today’s readings invite us to be like St. Joseph and always say “Yes” to God.
Have you noticed that before the 17th of December, throughout the season of Advent, the readings focus on the coming of Jesus at the end of time. After that date, however, they focus on the coming of his birth at Christmas. So, in today’s readings, we hear a prophecy from Jeremiah about a righteous king who will come, and hear the familiar story from Matthew about how the birth of Jesus would take place. The psalm adds the theme of peace and justice, and that this king would reach out to the poor and needy.
Today’s liturgy invites us to be like Joseph in two ways – to pay attention to our dreams, and to always respond to God’s invitation with a sincere and heartfelt “yes” that we would live out regardless of the consequences.
For the most part, we pay too little attention to our dreams, or dismiss them too lightly. They are important, and can play very much the same role in our lives as they did in the life of St. Joseph. They can communicate a message to us that God wants us to hear, or reveal and affirm what God is doing in our lives at that stage of our journey.
Glenda has been coming for spiritual direction for some years now. Often, she will come with a dream, and at times, as many as five dreams that I always invite her to share. We then discuss the dream(s) and try to discern what God may be trying to tell her. Without fail, every one of her dreams related to her spiritual journey.
At the beginning of our sessions, her dreams were darker, involved things like being stuck, loss, running into obstacles, etc. Here is one of her earlier dreams: she dreamt of losing a black purse and finding a brown purse, as well as driving a car. I suggested the black purse was what she had to let go of, the brown purse what she had let go of already, and driving a car an affirmation of the healing journey on which she had embarked.
In a later session, she shared her dream of being at a bus stop alone in the country by the road. The driver got out to make a phone call. She asked if there was room and there was. She was carrying a footstool and a black bag. Her destination was unknown, other than somewhere near a city where she had studied. She was wondering what to do to get there. The driver said that the next bus would know. She sat at the back on a terrible seat, while a lady was stretched across two better seats. She went up front to find two empty seats, but when she went to buy the ticket, was shocked to find that all she had was $5 and a change purse. She then woke up.
My interpretation was that she was on a journey into the unknown; that she is both passenger and driver of her own destiny; there will be very tough times like that seat; obstacles like that other lady, and times of progress like the two empty seats up front. She is the subject of her own destiny and healing (the driver). This journey is a biblical one to the waters without money and without price. The dream seems to reflect back to her where she is at on her journey; where she is coming from, and where she is heading to.
Her most recent dreams had her looking for something. After some discussion, we discerned that what she was really looking for was intimacy. All of her life, within her family and within the situation she was living now, she had never really experienced intimacy. She did have a fairly close friend in a city not too far away, and I invited her to develop that friendship and allow it to mature into a more trusting relationship that would give her an experience of greater intimacy that would mirror the intimacy that God wants to have with her.
The other invitation is for us to respond to God’s invitation to us, whatever that might be. The Word Among Us states that because Joseph obeyed God, he is forever part of salvation history. For someone who never said a word in Scripture, his yes was rather important. It made the Holy Family complete, and it gave us a moving portrait of what trust, surrender and faith really look like.
God has given us this beautiful gift of our free will. We can be willing, and cooperate with God’s Spirit, or we can be willful, stubborn and insist on doing our own will. It is doubtful that any of our decisions will be as consequential as Joseph’s was. But they still involve saying yes or no. They still involve embracing one possible future and closing the door to a host of other possibilities.
That is the beauty of our free will: every time we say yes to God, even in the smallest things, we take one more step along the path that God has laid out for us – a path that leads us more deeply into the kingdom of God. Not only that, every time we say yes to God, God says yes back to us. God fills us with God’s grace, reassures us of his presence, and makes us a little bit more like his Son, Jesus.
God is always calling us to do something. Usually, that call includes small, everyday decisions. But saying yes to each of these small decisions can help prepare us for those bigger, more consequential decisions God asks of us. That is what happened to St. Joseph, and is meant to happen to us. Never forget – every yes is filled with God’s power and grace.
The Eucharist is the result of Jesus’ tremendous “yes” to his Father’s invitation to reveal to us the depth of the Father’s love for humanity, even at the cost of his life.
May our celebration empower us to be more attentive to how God may be speaking to us in our dreams, and open us up to respond to God’s gentle invitations with a sincere, heartfelt “yes” like St. Joseph.
Bishop the message is teaching us to always trust God and the Lord Jesus Christ who is about to be born. Yes: God always calls us to do things in our prayers and private moments. In the past God asks me to keep on studying in University even when I collapsed or seize up while studying in School. I seize up a couple of times in school, but I never gave up. My illness started happening after High School. Like right now I am supposed to be off to work , but I received a message taking care of my mother and keep on taking that Wheat germ . It can improve my illness and other health problems. There is mysterious things and miracles happening to all people if you believe in God. Thanks again
These two days the messages are pretty much the same except the readings . I did not seem to notice while reading the homilies.
The message is from God telling my mother that she cannot prevent me from eating those wheat Germ and other organic food . If she does it is her fault . I am doing good I have very few seizures these couple months even before going to Mexico. I pretty much on the road to recovery like nothing is happening to me. The wheat germ does not work for her so she would prevent other people from taking it. Everyone is different in absorbing certain foods and supplements . Many Blessings!