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From the figure of ancient Joseph, son of Jacob,
the evangelical traits of Joseph of Nazareth are obtained.
The latter lives together with Jesus and Mary a life "relative" to them.

of Msgr. Silvano Macchi

Gospel texts that speak of Saint Joseph are few. They don't tell us how long he lived with Jesus and Mary and what happened to him afterwards... He simply disappears! Of the two evangelists who speak about it, Luke favors Mary's point of view, and only says her name about Joseph. Matthew, on the other hand, offers us some more details, because in the episodes of Childhood he favors Joseph as a reference figure. But even in the case of Matteo we have very few elements for the characterization of the character. We don't have his physical traits or external appearance and we aren't even vaguely told his chronological age. This should not surprise us, because Matteo's intention is to outline the symbolic profile of Joseph and he is not interested in the realistic profile of the character. 

The symbolic and theological depth of Joseph is suggested through the reference to two figures from the Old Testament: Joseph, the son of Jacob, and Moses, the legislator. I want to focus on the suggestions that come from the symbolic association between Saint Joseph, foster father of Jesus, and Joseph, son of Jacob (a perfect "literary double" starting from the name itself). 

Let's refer to the passage that tells of the flight into Egypt (see Mt 2, 13-15). An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said to him: «Rise, take the child and his mother with you, flee to Egypt and stay there until I warn you. In fact, Herod is looking for the child to kill him." Joseph obeyed (as always!), got up in the night, took the child and his mother and took refuge in Egypt, where he remained until Herod's death, so that what had been said by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled (Hos 11 , 1): «From Egypt I called my son». It is therefore no coincidence that Jesus - as had already happened to Joseph, son of Jacob - ends up in Egypt, in a foreign land, in which the God of Israel is unknown and the life of his children is only possible in the condition of slaves. 

Later the eleven brothers and their father Israel/Jacob go to Egypt due to hunger; there they find their brother Giuseppe, previously sold and lost. At that point Joseph becomes almost a father to his brothers and to their father Jacob himself. Caring father, but also cautious and hidden, like all his fathers. We can see that for Joseph, son of Jacob, hiding has different aspects. First he is hidden by the brothers, who put him in a cistern and sell him to Egyptian merchants; they construct for their father Jacob the false narrative of his death at the hands of a lion. In a second moment, his hiding depends instead on his own initiative; he doesn't let himself be recognized by his brothers, he waits for them to convert, to reread their ancient envy for their favorite son with different eyes. By hiding from his brothers, Joseph propitiates their conversion. 

These traits of the hiddenness of Jacob's son illuminate the figure of Mary's husband and putative father of Jesus. He too is almost hidden, not only because little is said about him in the Gospel, but above all because it is said of him that he is someone who he pulls aside, who stays aside (but not in the sense that he pretends nothing is happening and doesn't care about anyone) and at the same time he is very close, he is close! he is with Jesus and with Mary, his wife.

It could be said that Saint Joseph is entirely and always “relative” to Mary (as husband) and to Jesus (as father). Using the scheme of "actants" - in modern linguistics they are the characters in an action, in a story - the actantial role played by Giuseppe is that of helper, guardian, as he offers initial and indispensable help to the main subject of the story who is Jesus and, with Jesus, to Mary. Being an obedient and docile executor of the word received from God, he stands aside, from beginning to end. At first when Maria is pregnant; then during the birth of Jesus; then in the retreat to Egypt; at the end when she retreats to Nazareth in Galilee. To say that Joseph "withdrew", the Gospel uses the verb anachorein, from which the term derives anchorite. In the first centuries of Christianity, anchorites retreated into solitude to dedicate themselves to prayer and an ascetic life; they were the so-called “desert fathers” of the third and fourth centuries. 

Joseph, despite being a secondary character, is decisive in safeguarding and guaranteeing the safety of the great protagonist of the Gospel, as well as being an obedient and docile executor of the word received from God. Joseph - and with him also Jesus - lives a long stretch of his life as "anchorite". The hidden yet essential and fundamental trait of Saint Joseph returns. In this regard, it is useful to remember that Christian tradition has chosen the name "hidden life" for the years of Jesus' life spent in Nazareth.

In conclusion it could be said that Joseph is the witness of God's "distant proximity" to our life. We can say about Saint Joseph what the Letter to the Hebrews says about Abraham: "By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign region, living in tents" (Heb 11:9). Saint Joseph, heir of the patriarchs, also lived in his land and with his Son of David, but almost like a foreigner.

Saint Joseph help all of us to be witnesses of the Father of heaven, close and at the same time incomprehensible. Even God cannot be seen, he cannot be touched, he cannot be heard, it seems that he is standing aside and that he does not notice us. And yet he is always very close to those who always kneel anew in front of his mystery and ask for help for themselves, for their own life and for the life of the world. Let us try to identify with Saint Joseph - although treated soberly in the Gospels, as we have seen, but also with "sympathy" - in order to make his attitude our own and imitate him.