Here in this final week of Advent, our readings turn to the big stories of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth. This year, the focus is on St. Joseph in Matthew 1. This gives us an opportunity, a little bit before Christmas, to reflect on the circumstances leading to the Nativity. Though the Gospel writers do not spend a lot of time on these questions—only Matthew and Luke talk about them directly—the scenes we do get are quite memorable and have always figured prominently in the Church’s worship and teaching.
Matthew frequently shows a particular interest in questions of prophecy and continuity. He begins his book with a genealogy! It is hardly the kind of action-packed beginning we get in Mark, or the poetic heights of theology that we get in John, or for that matter the somewhat cryptic beginning of Luke with Zechariah in the Temple. After the genealogy, we get this matter-of-fact introduction to the story proper: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.”
The fact of Jesus being conceived in Mary without a man was no less incredible two thousand years ago than it is today. Sometimes modern people can be painfully naïve about this, scornfully imagining that ancient peoples somehow did not understand the way nature works. Judging by our falling birth rates in the West and our constant attempts to redefine human biology, I think rather the opposite is the case.)
So it is not so much that they found the Virgin Birth easier to believe than we do, but that, in light of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, this detail about his origin was a relatively minor thing. More often the modern skepticism about this is less about a disbelief in anything supernatural than it is a cynicism about human relationships—or at times it stems from that strange Protestant overcompensating negativity about Mary that, in fear of overemphasizing her role, zealously removes from her agency even what Scripture clearly gives her. (Case in point: we recently saw on display at a store a nativity set complete with every figure of the scene . . . except Mary and Joseph. It’s almost as if some people would prefer to believe that Jesus fell down to earth in a space shuttle than that he was born of a virgin who willingly cooperated in the miracle.)
But why the Virgin Birth? The early Church felt little need to justify the fact. But there is a long line of speculation on why it was fitting. This is a common theological way of suggesting how something makes sense and is somehow harmonious with reason, even while stopping short of suggesting that it constitutes some kind of necessary proof. Arguments from fittingness are often a form of speculative wonder; rather than forcing the mind into a certain reason, they delight the imagination.
I think some of these descriptions of fittingness are better than others. Many of the Fathers had a somewhat dim view of even chaste marital relations, taking to heart the Apostle’s praise of celibacy. In some cases, like St. Augustine, this comes from their own bad experience and wandering ways. Whatever their motivations, they thought it would have been inherently risky for the Lord to have been conceived in the ordinary way. In light of the now formally defined teaching about Mary’s immaculate conception—i.e., that she was preserved from original sin even though she was conceived by her parents in the ordinary way—we have to be cautious about this line of thinking. But certainly we can recognize that there is some truth in the Fathers’ instinct here to recognize sexuality as one of the most obvious ways that people can fall into sin.
Apart from that general suspicion of marital relations, there is in the tradition a long line of thinking about the meaning of the Virgin Birth. Adam, it is said, was conceived without man or woman; Eve was conceived only from a man; other human beings are conceived from a man and a woman; therefore, it is a sign of completion that the new and more perfect Adam would be conceived only from a woman. So that’s another idea about fittingness.
Perhaps the most enduring and, I think, compelling reason for the Virgin Birth centers on the full revelation of the Trinity. Jesus is the incarnate divine Son. His Father is God the Father. In fact, this relationship of filiation and paternity is the only way we can identify and distinguish the persons from one another, being otherwise absolutely equal in power, wisdom, goodness, and all the other divine attributes. So it would not be fitting—indeed, it would be somewhat scandalous—to have any confusion about who is the Father of the Son. Mary is his Mother, and there is no confusion about that. Joseph is his foster father or his guardian.
Tradition often speaks of Mary as the new Eve, reversing the curse of Genesis 3. St. Paul speaks directly of Christ as the new Adam. But St. Joseph is an adamic figure as well, as Remigius writes in an ancient commentary: “Life returned by the same entrance through which death had entered in. By Adam’s disobedience we were ruined; by Joseph’s obedience we all begin to be recalled to our former condition.” Here is another quite beautiful observation about fittingness.
Again, by speaking of Mary as the new Eve, the tradition emphasizes her “yes” to God in contrast to Eve’s “no,” her obedience in response to Eve’s disobedience, her willingness to cooperate with God rather than doing her own thing. But of course Adam had a role as well—and, to be frank, it is not a flattering one. Joseph’s response to our Lady, then, is also a fitting redemption of husbands and fathers. Adam failed to guard his wife from evil. Joseph rises to the challenge of guarding his wife and her divine Son. Interestingly, Matthew doesn’t show Mary explaining herself at all. Joseph has to listen and obey God. So it’s almost as though Mary is standing back, allowing Joseph to rise to the challenge. And he is given the privilege of naming Mary’s son Jesus, which means “salvation.”
Most modern readers assume that Joseph’s desire to “put Mary away quietly” is in response to the potential scandal of her pregnancy. But an older view is that he was hesitant to marry a woman he knew to be consecrated to virginity. Origen expresses it like this: “He sought to put her away because he saw in her a great sacrament, to approach which he thought himself unworthy.” So there are two sides to Joseph’s obedience: trusting God in the face of doubts and public scandal or trusting God that he is able to fulfill this very great vocation. Perhaps it is both.
Either way, there is an amazing strength and courage from this silent figure at the heart of the Gospel story. No wonder Joseph has often been called “terror of demons”! May his prayers prepare our hearts for the coming festival, and may his love inspire us to cherish and guard the life of Christ that has been entrusted to us.