Matthew’s Birth Story: Saint Joseph in an Authoritarian World

Dear Friends and Readers,

I offer this updated meditation from my book, Church Matters, pp. 125-128 as a way of enhancing our celebration of the great feast of Epiphany.

Peace,

Fr. Jim Bacik

Epiphany, 2025

Matthew’s Birth Story: Saint Joseph in an Authoritarian World

In 2026, we celebrate Epiphany on Sunday, January 4, 2026. The gospel for this feast comes from Matthew 2: 1-12. Although Luke’s story of Mary giving birth to Jesus in a stable is more familiar, Matthews’ infancy narrative that focuses on Joseph has its own spiritual significance worth pondering. Mainstream biblical scholars tell us that Matthew, a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian, wrote his Gospel sometime in the 80’s, perhaps in Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria, for a largely Jewish Christian community with a growing number of Gentile converts. Not an eyewitness to the public life of Jesus, Matthew used the Gospel of Mark, written around 70, as one of his main sources. Since Mark wrote nothing about the birth of Jesus, Matthew constructed his infancy account out of existing oral materials and his own distinctive theological understanding of Jesus.

Matthew begins his infancy narrative with a genealogy that suggests Jesus is heir to the promises made to Abraham and to the messianic hopes associated with King David through his father Joseph, who plays a major role throughout Matthew’s infancy story. The great scripture scholar Raymond Brown in his massive study, The Birth of the Messiah suggests that Matthew may have used the witness of Joseph to refute the charge that Jesus was illegitimate and therefore could not be the promised Messiah – a charge that was actually made in the second century and may have existed earlier when the Gospel was composed. In Luke’s Gospel, the conception of Jesus is explained thorough the annunciation by the angel Gabriel to Mary that the power of the Most High will overshadow her. In contrast, Matthew centers the annunciation of the divine plan on Joseph, who is portrayed as a model of Jewish righteousness. His reaction to Mary’s pregnancy, which he can only interpret as due to rape or infidelity, is to shield her as much as possible from public humiliation and to end the marriage process quietly. At that point, the angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream explaining that Mary has conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and that he should not be afraid to complete the marriage process and take her into his home. Joseph responds not with memorable words, but with decisive action, taking Mary into his home in accordance with the divine command.

After informing us that Joseph was the one to name Mary’s firstborn son Jesus, Matthew simply reports that the birth, during the reign of King Herod, was in Bethlehem. He apparently assumed that Mary and Joseph are already living there and stayed for almost two years until fleeing to Egypt and then returning not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth where they raised Jesus. Within this broad narrative, Matthew highlights the story of the visit of the magi from the east. The silence of the Gospel on the identity and number of these presumed astrologers has invited various embellishments, such as making them kings, naming them Balthasar, Melchior and Casper, and suggesting that one of them must have been a woman since they stopped to ask for directions.

In telling the story of the magi, Matthew may have had in mind the folktale of Balaam, a famous seer from the east who was summoned by the King of Moab to curse Moses and Israel, but ends up delivering four oracles that blessed Israel and foretold its future victories and glories (Nm 22-24). The Balaam story has parallels with the Gospel story of the wicked King Herod, who wants to use the magi from the east to destroy Jesus, the new Moses, only to have them worship him and thwart his murderous design. The magi story served Matthew’s purpose in addressing a mixed community of Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. It justified the inclusion of Gentiles since the first to worship the newborn Jesus were not Jewish shepherds as in Luke, but Gentiles from another culture who recognized Jesus as the king of the Jews. Along the same line, it warned the Jewish Christians not to consider Gentile converts as somehow inferior. The story also made a connection between Herod and the Jewish leaders in Matthew’s day who rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

The next scene in Matthew’s infancy account begins with another significant dream of Joseph in which the angel of the Lord tells him to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt because Herod wants to kill his son. Joseph did as commanded and his family lived as aliens in a foreign land until Herod died in 4 BC. Matthew interprets this whole event as fulfillment of what the Lord said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos 11:1). Furious that he had been deceived by the Magi, Herod ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under – a stark reminder that violence would stalk Jesus throughout his life. Eventually, some religious leaders would succeed where Herod had failed by handing Jesus over to Pilate for execution.

The final scene in Matthew’s infancy story begins with another dream of Joseph. The angel of the Lord tells him to take Mary and Jesus back to Israel because Herod has died. Fearing to return to Judea, where Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod, Joseph took his family to Galilee and settled in Nazareth. Matthew tells us that this was to fulfill the prophecy: “He shall be called a Nazarean.”

Matthew helps us achieve a deeper understanding of Jesus by recognizing his total immersion in Judaism. His identity was shaped by Jewish parents, the history of Israel, the Mosaic Law and the Hebrew Scriptures. He went to the synagogue, celebrated the major feasts, and for the most part restricted his mission to his fellow Jews. He understood himself as the messiah promised by the prophets who would save all people and definitively establish God’s kingdom. Matthew presents him as the new Israel who relived the Exodus experience, the new Moses who proclaimed the high ideals of kingdom living and the new David who would rule with justice. Prayerful reflection on Matthew’s Jesus can make our celebration of Epiphany less abstract and more rooted in the concrete experience of this world; less theoretical and more practical for Christian living; less materialistic and more oriented to spiritual growth; less individualistic and more directed to the common good; and less sentimental and more attuned to the real challenges of following Christ on a daily basis.

Reflecting on the story of St. Joseph, we can identify traditional moral virtues, which Americans need today to counter the growing authoritarianism in our country. We need the virtue of prudence to make good decisions about how to best use our limited resources to preserve our democratic norms under multiple attacks. For example, a democrat and a republican who often engaged in fruitless discussions based on partisan talking points decided to put their energy into supporting legislators in their own party who have a proven record of working across the aisle to produce constructive legislation. The Lugar Center in Washington publishes an annual report rating members of Congress on their commitment to bi-partisan legislation. The virtue of justice encourages us to stand up for the most vulnerable in our society, including poor and disadvantaged persons, immigrants, and asylum seekers. In this regard the American Bishops issued a rare “Special Message” to end “dehumanizing immigration enforcement.” Pope Leo supported the statement suggesting that it has an important message not only for Catholics but all people of good will. The virtue of solidarity prompts us to form alliances and join organizations to erect stronger barriers against creeping authoritarianism. We can imagine a parish, where the social justice committee and the pro-life committee work together to assist and empower the legal Hispanic immigrants in their parish and work to protect them from ICE raids. We can also support Network, a Washington based organization founded in 1972 by catholic sisters to promote social justice by lobbying Congress and applying Catholic Social Teaching to contemporary issues. Finally, the virtue of hope, which is based on the faith conviction that in Almighty God’s kingdom the good will ultimately triumph over all the evil forces, empowers us to maintain the struggle to protect our constitutional rights no matter how pessimistic the situation seems. As authoritarianism gains ground in our country, let us reflect on St. Joseph of Nazareth who inspires the virtues of prudence, justice, solidarity and hope which are desperately needed to preserve our nearly 250-year experiment in self-government.