December 1998 Issue

At last we are about the enter a more familiar set of stories that are traditionally associated with the Christmas season. This will probably come as a welcome relief to many in our congregations. No matter how much we try to respect the integrity of the liturgical calendar, on an emotional level most of us merge Advent into Christmas. However, it must also be noted that this passage and the lection to follow are not the usual stories read during Christmas. If anything, they tend to perpetuate a mood of trouble, conflict and uncertainty, even as we begin a season of celebration.

The faith struggle of Joseph can be compared for the sake of continuity with that of John the Baptist. Joseph, too, was faced with a faith crisis when he learns that the woman he is about to marry is pregnant. Mary's pregnancy forces him to consider his alternatives as a person of faithful obedience who tries to do what is right. A discreet annulment of betrothal seems the most considerate option. The immediacy and delicacy of his crisis is sharpened for parishioners if they also know that, in this historical context, betrothal is not the exact equivalent of engagement in contemporary courtship practices. Since betrothal was considered the first stage of marriage, ending the relationship meant nothing less than delivering a bill of divorce against Mary and, by implication, bringing dishonor to her family. Not to do so, however, was even worse, because it would leave Joseph complicit in a violation of Jewish law.

This passage suggests that there are two levels of consciousness in our psychological and spiritual lives that remain in constant tension. On the one level, we are always trying to figure out how to control life, understand our problems and reach a resolution we can live with. Ours is an age in which such psychological insight and mastery of our issues and relationships are highly prized. In so much of contemporary life we are continuously challenged to take charge and accept responsibility for our problems and find our own solutions. This resourceful and pragmatic approach to life certainly has its merits. In Philip Rieff's well-known phrase, this is the "triumph of the therapeutic" that so clearly dominates our age of recovery and its related commitment to personal (and sometimes exclusively
individualitic) well-being. Thus, on such a prudent and practical level, Joseph knew what he had to do to respect himself and spare Mary and her family further humiliation. Fortunately, he decided to sleep on it.

Another level of consciousness, however, is also present in Joseph's moral and spiritual dilemma. This is a level of receptivity beyond a thoughtful application of psychological principles by which we try to remain in control of all the variables most of the time. It requires an astute appreciation for how life emerges or reveals itself to us through events and circumstances we did not anticipate and had no intention of creating for ourselves. At first appearance, these events seem to us to be the result of inadvertence or chance. Later, perhaps, we come to see them, quite rightly, as revelatory.

If we live only on the pragmatic level of life, it is difficult for us to trust mystery and discern the possible meanings in circumstances we did not anticipate or want. On his own Joseph would have done the prudent and decent thing by following the accepted wisdom of his culture. However, he did not act immediately on his practical assessment of the situation, even after he had seemingly made up his mind what to do. He waited. In order to trust mystery we also have to wait. We have to be willing to stay in the quandary for a while so that a deeper congruence between the pragmatic and the revelatory has time to come into our awareness. Though we no longer believe that dreams portend future events, the fact that Joseph received a dramatically different understanding of the meaning of what was happening to him while he slept suggests that we, too, might perceive more accurately the purpose of life events if we relied less on our efforts to figure everything out and allowed ourselves, instead, to be open to the mystery of the unexpected. Sometimes this kind of truth emerges only indirectly and after we have given up trying to find just the "right" psychologically sophisticated answers.

Therefore, another pastoral insight prompted by this passage is that the problems of life are not necessarily to be solved, but rather experienced as a context for growth. Carl Jung once observed that the most significant problems of life are completely insoluble. At first this statement seems quite pessimistic, if not completely cynical. His point, however, is that life is not a problem-solving exercise, and we would do well to realize that some of our most perplexing problems are themselves invitations to emotional and spiritual maturity
and, perhaps, even occur for that very purpose. Contemporary studies in symptom formation, for instance, whether psychological, physical or situational, clearly indicate how symptom and meaning go together. The symptom is a sign, a symbolic representation that tells us how it is that our lives are out of balance. This often happens after we have successfully ignored other, more subtle, indications. Symptoms and problems are not merely annoyances that require relief. When we are preoccupied with the need to fix ourselves and others, to find the short-term solution to our dilemmas, we are prone to forget the deeper messages to our souls contained in the language of symptoms.

Thomas Moore, in his much-debated book, Care of the Soul, emphasizes just this perspective on how we deal with our life problems: It's remarkable how often people think they will be better off without the things that bother them. " I need to get rid of this tendency of mine," a person will say. "Help me get rid of these feelings of inferiority and my smoking and my bad marriage." If, as a therapist, I did what I was told, I'd be taking things away from people all day long. But I don't try to eradicate problems. I try not to imagine my role to be that of an exterminator. Rather, I try to give what is problematical back to the person in a way that shows its necessity, even its value.

To leave the discussion here, however, might be to preclude the idea that some type of decisive action is also required of us in many of our life crisis situations. The scriptural passage goes on to describe Joseph's response to the angel's announcement. We are given to understand that immediately upon awakening, Joseph acted quickly in response to the message in his dream. He took Mary into his home, which in that culture was the final confirmation of the marriage. When the baby was born, he and Mary (cf. Lk 1:31) named the child Jesus as they were instructed to do. Joseph acted with purpose and faith. Like Joseph, once the pragmatic and revelatory dimensions of life are granted their full authority, and allowed to complement each other, it is possible for us, as well, to respond with both an integrated sense of purpose and an obedient faith.

Frank J. Stalfa, Jr.

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).
Thomas Moore, Case of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life(New York: Harper, 1992).