4th Sunday of Advent 2025

Sermon: 4th Sunday of Advent 2025

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This past November, I had the chance to visit the city of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. And considering Josephs’s centrality in today’s reading, I thought about the largest shrine dedicated to St. Joseph in the world, St. Joseph’s Oratory right in the middle of Montreal, a beloved site of pilgrimage. This site was conceived by the humble inspiration of Br. Andre, the porter of a seminary and school and a beloved Canadian saint known for miracles of healing. I was struck by the enormous size of this church, but more than that, I was moved by the different motifs about Joseph’s life depicted there, especially around the altar. There was an inscription that said in French: Protector of the Universal Church, Model of Workers, Patron of the dying. The one that caught my eye the most was the second one. In the chapel/crypt area, you could see again St. Joseph patron of workers, but this time you see him with the tools of his trade, that of carpentry. It moved me to see that even in the ordinary work of people’s hands, God is not far apart, He is near. As a model of workers, Joseph lived this. His arduous working livelihood was no doubt what allowed Jesus and Mary to subsist daily. Joseph is always in the background of the main story, yet there would be no story if Joseph had not taken on this role. In the same way, how many workers today are in the background of our lives and often we are not thankful for their essential presence in our livelihood, how without all those quiet workers in the background of society, we could not exist as we do. So we receive from Joseph a healthy sense of existing in this world, rejoicing in the fact that God pays attention to those on the background, while so often other fellow human beings forget and focus wrongly on

the idols of this world. The Kingdom of God is not being born in our midst through one individual. It is the work of a family. It is the caregiving of a loving father and husband, the tenderness of a mother, the support of many within a community that bands together around the Christ-child that seeks to show us the Way of being God’s children. God incarnates Himself in fraternal community, not alone or alienated from others.

So as I saw depicted at St. Joseph’s Oratory, we heard today in Matthew’s Gospel the Annunciation of Jesus’ birth given to Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father. Joseph is a quiet figure of the New Testament. He doesn’t leave a lot of trace in regard to his words or thoughts. But what we do have are his actions. His actions that laid the foundations in the background of what became Jesus’ ministry. Joseph quietly offered the works of mercy and simply the labor of his hands, he did not seek glory, nor did he shirk his special duty given to him by God. He did not assert the social privileges or powers conferred to him by being a husband, a breadwinner, or a man. He shed these in favor of the special calling of God, understandable to only a few, a calling that led him to support in the background the central mission and place of his wife Mary, and ultimately, His son Jesus. Joseph speaks to us of a man whose faith gives us a great example of lived faith, lived humbly and fully in the trust of God, even though it might be hard to understand in the beginning. I think many of us live and work like Joseph. We are not necessarily at the center of things, many times we don’t know the full picture, but with faithfulness we fulfill the work entrusted to us, with great love and not a lot of fanfare, we care for those we love.

So as Advent comes to an end, as the One who saves us is soon to be born, in Joseph’s story we receive the last practice of Advent. That of listening and saying yes to God, despite not knowing where the path will lead. Like Joseph, we are confronted with God’s ways. There is a clash between what Joseph thought was the way of the world, its expectations, and God’s new and unexpected thing. The situation Joseph found himself in could not be traversed with the usual roadmaps of customs. Joseph sought to do the compassionate thing under those expectations by dismissing Mary, but God was announcing a new thing. And the greatness of Joseph is that when God allowed him to see who this baby would be, what good news God was bringing to His people, it meant to throw all caution to the wind, to be joined to Mary and to trust God with this unexpected journey. The story of the Holy Family is one of surprise, the unlikeliest of people, the marginalized people, that were adventurous to say yes to God. It was not about being the perfect image of piety, it was not about being or having all the right qualities which the world rewards with their attention. It was about being open to the ways of God’s Love, it was about a compassionate and adventurous faithfulness.

Joseph’s faithfulness brings back to my memory the quote from George Eliot’s Middlemarch: “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” While we have a small portion of Joseph’s life recorded in the Gospels, the time he spent caring for Mary and Jesus, him teaching Jesus how to be a carpenter, all the laughs and sorrows of parenthood, are not known to us. They are hidden in the mind of God, approachable to us only by meditating on the Scripture. So I invite all of us to ponder

the spaces where we live in obscurity. Where we work in hiddenness, visible only to God and those closest to you. How are we faithful when the eye and praise of the public is absent? How do we respond when our lives of faith and love are meant to be held hidden? Joseph reminds us that perhaps the most important work we do is precisely in this obscurity visible only by a few. The home-grown routines and habits that make up our days, our caregiving and ordinary presence, these things often take up the majority of our earthly walk of faith. Yet what would we do without them? Eliot poses the larger question, what would the wider world be without these hidden lives lived in obscure and loving faithfulness? God is then indeed nearer than we thought possible. The night of Advent is ready to receive the light of God in Christ. Every hidden and quiet life is a hymn to God’s transformative love, they are signposts of God’s kingdom moving about the world, growing slowly and replenishing like forests upon the Earth. So different is Joseph’s example from those we receive from this day and age of social media publications. But no matter how the world rolls and turns, Christ will be born in every heart and mind, and grow in the quiet work and faithfulness of those He calls. Let us then be like Joseph, let us model our work according to God’s Love for all people, let even the quiet hours of your life preach the Gospel. God is indeed near, as near as every breath and every love and care you share. Let us then pray: