Where was St Joseph at the Epiphany?
Led by the star, the Magi find not a palace but the fulfilment of the world’s oldest promise: the Child with His Mother.
Led by the star, the Magi find not a palace but the fulfilment of the world’s oldest promise: the Child with His Mother.
Editor’s Notes
In this passage, Fr. Coleridge tells us:
How God guided the Magi with precision when human signs, places, and witnesses fell silent.
That the obscurity of Bethlehem and the poverty of the house tested their faith.
Why St. Matthew insists on the Child being with His Mother, fulfilling the earliest promises of redemption.
He shows us that divine guidance does not merely point the way, but leads the faithful to exactly where God has chosen to dwell.
For more context on this episode, see Part I.
The Epiphany
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Chapter X
St. Matt. ii. 1—12; Vita Vitæ Nostræ, § 12.
Burns and Oates, London, 1885. (1915 edition).
Headings and some line breaks added.
Their footsteps guided
The star which filled these holy Sages with so much intense joy must probably have appeared to them now, not simply to crown and reward their faithfulness and to console whatever anxiety may have racked their souls, but also for the purpose of guiding their footsteps in the little city which they were approaching.
For there also, as well as at Jerusalem, the Child and His Mother were obscure and unknown. If the probable opinion as to the date of the Epiphany be right, all that could be known there would be that the Child had been born there some months before, and that His parents, after a short absence, had come and taken up their abode somewhere in the city.
St. Joseph could hardly yet have begun to practise at Bethlehem the trade which he followed at Nazareth, and the home of such a family, if it was as yet a home, must have been very humble. St. Matthew calls it a house, and a very poor tenement would go by that name. If their present sojourn at Bethlehem was one only of devotion, and for a short time, they may have been close to the cave in which our Lord had been born, if there was not, indeed, some small house opening into it.
There is nothing to show that the people of Bethlehem were in any way conscious of the treasure which was in the midst of them. And so, if these remarkable strangers had been left to themselves to find out our Lord, they would have to make inquiries of one person after another, and might have wandered far into the night in their quest for the Child.
The star, as St. Matthew tells us, went before them, until it came and stood over the place where the young Child was. They were guided by its motion as long as it moved, and when it stood still over one house they knew that they had reached the end of their search.
What was this palace of the King, and who were His attendants and courtiers?
They find our Lord and His Mother
“And entering into the house, they found the young Child, with Mary His Mother.”
We are not told of any miraculous appearance of majesty about our Lord at the Epiphany, of angels waiting on Him, and the like. It was the faith alone of the Wise Princes, aided by some special supernatural illumination, and strengthened, undoubtedly, by the appearance of the star, which enabled them to discern in Him the fulfilment of the prophecies.
He was the Child to Whom the star had led them, and that was enough. The Evangelist also mentions specially the presence of our Blessed Lady. It was not, indeed, likely that she would be absent from her Child, Who at that tender age was almost always in her arms or at her breast. But this, which would be common to our Lord with all other infants, can hardly be a sufficient reason for the mention of the Blessed Mother in this very short narrative.
The words of St. Matthew, which speak of the Wise Princes finding our Lord, refer to the quest for Him on which they had set out. And the words seem to signify that they found that which they sought, and that they sought what they found. That is, they had sought a Child in His Mother’s arms.
St. Matthew and the prophecies
Here, again, we have a touch given us by St. Matthew, full as he was of the prophecies, reminding us of the origin and the burden of the whole prophetic cycle.
The first great promise of the Redemption made to mankind had spoken of a Woman and her Seed, and all the subsequent prophecies, more or less distinctly, referred to this original promise. The original prophecy had been in the possession of mankind for long centuries before it became the peculiar heirloom, so to speak, of the chosen nation, and it had been carried all over the earth by the children of Noe and the nations which issued from them.
Thus to say that the three Wise Princes found the Child with His Mother, is as much as to say that they found the fulfilment of the earliest traditions of redemption which had been in the possession of the human race.
If these Princes had no knowledge of the distinctly Jewish prophecies—a fact which cannot be assumed without proof—they might have seen in the form of the prophecy of Balaam a repetition of the original two-fold promise made in Paradise. For Balaam had prophesied of a star and a sceptre, as Isaias had prophesied of a rod of Jesse and a flower rising up therefrom. They might have seen the Mother as prefigured in the star, and the Child-King as prophesied in the sceptre.
The words of St. Matthew, then, may be understood as showing us that, in the predictions which guided them, they had been brought to expect the Mother as well as the Son.
No mention of St. Joseph
It is sometimes remarked that there is no mention of St. Joseph in this part of the narrative of the Gospel. It is thought that his name may have been omitted because it was arranged by the providence of God that he should be absent from the house at that moment.
A reason is assigned for this arrangement, namely, in order that the Wise Princes might not think that he was the father of the Holy Child. This speculation does not seem to have any certain foundation, unless it be in the fact that some great names may be cited as having held it as true.
In the first place, as has been said already, the whole of the two first chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew have the appearance of being derived, indirectly, from St. Joseph himself. He died, indeed, before there were any disciples gathered around our Lord. No one Evangelist, except perhaps St. John, probably had seen and known him, and thus it is not easy to see how any part of the Gospel story can be traced to him.
It must, however, be remembered that our Lord’s relatives at Nazareth were numerous, and it is far from unlikely that St. Matthew may have drawn his materials from some of them. The genealogy which is found in his first chapter, seems evidently to come from that side. It is an old family document, fragmentary in many parts.
And these two chapters are, in the same way, just what might be expected from St. Joseph. They give us his witness to the facts in which he was mainly concerned, in the shortest possible words. They mention his betrothal, his difficulty, the vision whereby he was enjoined to take to him his wife, the virginal character of her conception, the Epiphany as introducing the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the Innocents, and the return of the Holy Family to Galilee.
In all these mysteries and incidents St. Joseph is personally concerned, as the principal agent, the person to whom the communications of the will of God are made. The Evangelist uses them all as furnishing occasion to his proofs about our Lord drawn from prophecy, and this gives us a sufficient account of the whole of these chapters.
Reasons for this omission
In the mystery of the Epiphany, St. Joseph had no special part, and it is only when the flight into Egypt becomes necessary, that his action, so to say, begins.
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that his name should be omitted. He would omit himself wherever he could. It is, therefore, very probable that this is the simple reason for the absence of any mention of him in the Epiphany. It is not easy to see how the belief that our Lord was the Son of Joseph would have been a trial to the faith of the holy Princes, if it was not such to the multitudes of believers, who must have shared in the popular supposition for a time.
Nor is it clear how the mere fact that no one was present, as the husband of our Blessed Lady, when these Eastern Sages paid their homage to our Lord, would have been any proof to them that the Child Whom they worshipped had no earthly father.
And, lastly, here also we have seen one of those tacit references to prophecy of which the first Gospel is so full. We have already said that St. Matthew may here have in his mind the first prophecy. It spoke of a Child and a Mother, not of a father.
The Epiphany
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Very enlightening, with much to aid and inspire prayer, especially to St Joseph. Much appreciated!