Church history explained through the Holy Family: Part II

The Silent Martyrdoms of Joseph and Mary

In this second part of a series in which I attempt to explain church history through the Holy Family, I will have to devote my entire attention to the silent martyrdoms of Joseph and Mary on behalf of Christ their Son during their earthly lives and thus ultimately on behalf of His Mystical Body, the church. Because this is a topic not directly treated of in Scripture, it is not well known or understood by the faithful, especially in our increasingly unmoored and individualistic (even within the church) modern and postmodern times; but it is absolutely essential and foundational to any subsequent explanation and understanding of the history of the church in the two millennia since the Holy Family lived its earthly life in Nazareth.

I start where I left off in my first part: the loss and finding of the twelve-year-old Jesus by His parents in the Temple in the Gospel of Luke.

The young Christ's adulthood effectively began in this celebrated episode in which He was lost to Joseph and Mary for three days in Jerusalem to debate with the Jewish teachers of the Law in the Second Temple. St. Luke apparently determined that this single event said so much about what kind of life Jesus would subsequently have with Joseph and Mary that he saw fit to then skip right to the start of His public ministry some two decades later - after mentioning only that the adolescent Son of God was again subject to His earthly parents upon returning to Nazareth and that the Blessed Mother stored up more ponderings of Him in her heart. Indeed, the key aspects of not only the future Sacrifice of the Cross of Christ Himself, but also the sufferings of reparation for sinners that would be borne by Joseph and Mary in their remaining earthly lives - which would ultimately amount to martyrdom - were collectively made present in this drastic coming-of-age incident.

For in the end, Christ's Passion and death would be the free choice of Joseph and Mary to cooperate with the Father's plan to offer up the Son - their own Son - as an oblation to satisfy the debt incurred by the entire species on account of Original Sin. It was Christ alone Who in His own body would destroy the dividing wall of hostility between the Law of God on the one hand and the Mercy of God on the other; it would be up to His parents, however, to offer the proper prayers and penances on behalf of their Son to pave the way for His ultimate Sacrifice, and this they did humbly and quietly in the remainder of his adolescence and adulthood until the death of Joseph and the start of Christ's public ministry shortly thereafter.

Mary's Martyrdom of Church Motherhood

For Mary, these two decades were a preparation and even preliminary experience of the "martyrdom of mercy" she was to later suffer in its supreme expression at the foot of the Cross: the painful witness of losing her Son according to her very own flesh and blood so that she could give spiritual birth to His many brothers and sisters, namely the church. On their journey back to Nazareth after finding Jesus in the Temple on the third day, it became clear to the Blessed Mother that never again could she have her Son for herself as before: He now truly belonged to His Father, and as such truly belonged to all Israel and all humankind. No longer could she lay any exclusive claim to Jesus, but instead she would have to open the chambers of her heart even wider to embrace the worst sufferings of the poorest sinners - in whose redemption by her Son's blood she was to herself undergo an entirely new maternity.

Although it was this latter hope that would ascribe meaning to the ordeal of separation from Jesus, in practical terms it could only mean that from hereafter Mary must wholeheartedly immolate her beloved Son in the depths of her being on behalf of every single one of the countless lost souls who would not have any chance of knowing Him otherwise but through a mother's deepest tender sorrows; only through her pierced heart of mourning for her Son would she - and thereby He as well - be united to the tragically fatal condition of the human race, namely that of being cut off from the Father on account of Original Sin, utterly unable, ultimately, to fulfill the latter's commandments. In taking upon her own Sorrowful Immaculate Heart the penalty of that first transgression, Mary would thus redeem the misery of sinners through her Son's broken and crucified Mystical Body, to which her tears of blood (figurative as well as literal) on the spiritual Mount Calvary across the ages would, as the very substance of the Holy Spirit Himself, join those furthest from the Law to the very fulfillment of the Law. Her martyrdom of mercy was to be, in effect, a martyrdom of ongoing (and everlasting) ecclesial motherhood.

Joseph's Martyrdom of Church Fatherhood

For Joseph, these two decades before his foster Son's public ministry were a preparation and even preliminary experience of the "martyrdom of justice" which he would ultimately undergo as the last of the Patriarchs of Israel to fall asleep - and therefore their light and champion in the realm of the dead. Upon his own shoulders, Joseph would have to take and carry all the scrupulosity and legalism that God's chosen race had come to cling onto for dear life and identity in a world where rival nations with pagan beliefs were larger and stronger. Great as his love could only have been for Mary and Jesus, Joseph's charge was to love his people Israel - and the future Israel the church - with no less zeal to serve and protect; his personal affection in the former case must not hinder in the slightest way his dedication to the latter mission he had received as God the Father's earthly vicar.

Far from belittling or circumventing the holy Law of the Torah in any manner whatsoever, Joseph had to observe it - and impart it to no less than Christ Himself - with ever deepening care and attention, so that through its fulfillment in his own life he could lay the spiritual foundations for the New Law of Grace that his foster Son would introduce. This Joseph achieved through ever greater perfection in works of corporal and spiritual penance and mortification on behalf of the Jewish religious establishment which was utterly incapable of accepting the coming judgment of the Cross - and therefore especially needed his sacrifices, if not for conversion during Christ's life, then certainly for eternal life one day in the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Scripture attests, will never be revoked as a pledge from God to His people Israel.

In a yet deeper and more ultimate sense, however, Joseph's living sacrifice of his very self was on behalf of the eternal Patriarchy of the Law: with the Messiah having come into the world, this preexisting order of Moses would in every generation be challenged and eventually upended with the unstoppable, unceasing current of Grace that would flow out from the church to continually renew both the people of God themselves and the wider world through them. Especially in the later epochs of church and world history - as Christendom acquired the unprecedented practical knowledge of science and technology, thus enabling each successive generation to feel less imperative to respect its traditions than the preceding one - this self-abnegation of the guardians of the letter of eternal Truth would grow more acute. Joseph's martyrdom of justice was to be, in effect, a martyrdom of ongoing (and everlasting) ecclesial fatherhood.

The Martyrdom of Christ: A Reconciliation of the Martyrdoms of Joseph and Mary

From the silent martyrdom of both His parents, Jesus Himself would take his cues as He matured from adolescence into young adulthood, and then further as He spent the final years of His earthly life before the start of His public ministry. In a real sense, the mission of salvation that He had been born to undertake was at its core a mission of reconciling the opposing and contradictory martyrdoms of Joseph and Mary: the latter an oblation of complete submission to the Law of Truth, the former an oblation of complete submission to Mercy and Grace.

Long before His public ministry began - indeed, it can easily be seen to have started that very day when as a twelve-year-old prodigy in the Temple Jesus was abruptly compelled to return home with His parents - the Word made flesh had to live out this interior existential conflict within Himself. He had come into the world as Grace and Truth Itself, but such would be the ever-present tension of which His brush with the Jewish Temple hierarchy and its aftermath was a mere foretaste: ultimately it would be His own family - not merely His earthly parents, but ultimately His Father in Heaven Himself - that would crush and crucify Him, using, of course, first Joseph and Mary but then also sinful men as His mere instruments.

For beginning with His loss and finding in the Temple, Christ would be destined to continue shaking up the established powers-that-be in Israel with radically fresh revelations of Grace, only to be compelled - principally by His own parents in the flesh - to resubmit Himself to mere human authority, namely that of human parents at home and that of human teachers in the organized faith. In this, Christ experienced in His own body the conflict and thereby reconciliation of the two humanities which it was God's mysterious plan from before the beginning of the world to achieve through His only-begotten Son's incarnation: the final harmony between the Law of Truth and the seemingly incompatible (in human logic and conception) Law of Mercy and Grace. Or in other words, the mysterious communion of Christ's holy parents - Joseph and Mary.