Pinoy Kasi : Joseph the father

First posted 02:09am (Mla time) Mar 22, 2006
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A15 of the March 22, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

[Yorax's Note: The photo below is not the one mentioned in this article. This is the statue of St. Joseph at San Jose Seminary, AdMU.]

I BOUGHT the Dec. 19, 2005, issue of Time magazine, attracted by the cover's blurb: "The Best Photos of 2005." The photographs were a powerful way to synthesize a turbulent year, yet in the end, the issue's best picture was actually an early 18th-century painting from Peru, entitled "St. Joseph and the Child Jesus."
The painting, by an unknown artist, is very masculine with its solid dark colors, yet it touches the viewer in the way Joseph carries the Child Jesus, and in the way the child clings to his father with his two hands.
The painting was there to accompany an article, "Father and Child," by David Van Biema, focusing on a revival of interest in the "hidden virtues" of St. Joseph. I looked up that Time article again last Sunday, March 19, St. Joseph's feast day.

Stand-in
Joseph is actually almost invisible in the New Testament, almost like a substitute or stand-in actor, waiting to play a bit role. He is silent, without a single quote attributed to him. He figures only in Jesus' early years, disappearing when Jesus turns 12 and acknowledges his heavenly Father.
Now there's renewed interest in Joseph and, surprisingly, this comes from the Protestants, who don't usually give that much attention to saints. Van Biema explains how Presbyterian minister Howard Edington, mourning the death of an adopted son, went headlong into writing a book about Jesus' adoptive father. The product, "The Forgotten Man of Christmas: Joseph's Story," was published in 2000, based on extensive research into the Bible as well as non-biblical sources.
Joseph also plays a lead role in a religious novel, "Holding Heaven," by Jerry Jenkins, author of the apocalyptic "Left Behind" series. On a more secular front, Anne Rice's latest bestseller, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," gives Joseph a revitalized role, guiding the pregnant Mary to Egypt to escape Herod.

Courage
Ironically, it is the lack of biblical information about Joseph that allows writers, religious or secular, to create and recreate him in different forms, according to the needs of the times.
A 2nd-century text, called "The Protoevangelium of James," glorifies Joseph's role as a "chaste caretaker." When you think of the circumstances here, we should probably add "courageous" to the description of Joseph. We have to remember Mary was probably a controversial figure: pregnant, very young (probably 14 or 15) and unmarried. The "Protoevangelium" describes Joseph's own reluctance when asked, in his own version of an Annunciation, to care for Mary.
The "Protoevangelium" depicts Joseph as a very old man, with children from a previous marriage. On one hand, that depiction was probably meant to emphasize he couldn't have been the one who got Mary pregnant. On the other hand, the "Protoevangelium" describes doubts, maybe suspicions of Joseph as a dirty old man. When this May-December couple shows up at the temple for their betrothal, the high priest supposedly subjects them to a trial by ordeal, drinking a "drink of conviction": If one of them had been lying about the pregnant Mary's virginity, they would have died from the drink. The "Protoevangelium" has Mary and Joseph surviving, of course, since the early Church needed to emphasize female chastity.
Joseph was to remain invisible for the next few centuries, until the 14th century, when he was rehabilitated, as a younger man, into a more involved father. This was at a time when Europe was going through famine, war and an epidemic. Social institutions, especially the family, were threatened, so the reemergence of Joseph, this time to head a Holy Family, was convenient.
Van Biema analyzes the current revival of interest in Joseph against a backdrop of religion in America. Joseph's important again for evangelical Christians, as they seek ways to "masculinize" religion: convincing more males to attend church services, and finding ways to allow male bonding, similar to that of Joseph and Jesus, in churches.
Catholic or Protestant, our religious leaders might want to look at how they might recruit St. Joseph to handle some problems in 21st-century Filipino society.
In macho societies like our own, fatherhood is seen mainly as a biological act, which is in turn closely linked to notions of masculinity. In the Philippines, men don't think twice about boasting that they have five children, "lahat panganay" [all eldest], meaning the children were sired with different women.
The boasting will often include claims that they're not supporting the children, that they were able to sow their wild oats and get away with it, free of any responsibility to the woman he impregnated, and to the product(s) of that liaison.
Still another perverse variation on these drinking session stories is how they were able to impregnate a married woman, so that it's another male, the cuckolded one, who has to take the responsibility for raising the child.

Act of faith
Yet when you look hard at Filipino machismo, you'll find there's a strong undercurrent of insecurity, especially around fatherhood. Motherhood, after all, is said to be an act of knowledge, while fatherhood is an act of faith. Put another way, women know who their children are, men can only believe the children are his. Traditionally, a child resembling the neighbor could be explained away as part of "paglilihi," meaning the mother had stared too hard at the neighbor while she was pregnant. Paternal angst has grown in this age of overseas workers, as men leave their wives behind for a year or two.
Because of the traditional values that encourage men to abscond after getting a woman pregnant, other men will come into the picture, challenged to accept a woman and offspring from other relationships. There are good men like St. Joseph all around us, who won't ask for a DNA test to validate paternity. I know one man, who works as a government clerk, raising four children, only one of whom is his own biological offspring. The other three are his common-law wife's, from previous relationships. I have never seen him favoring his own biological child over the others.
I would like to think there are many more like him, but I know too of stories where a cuckolded husband takes out his rage, day after day, on the child produced from the adulterous affair. And we know, too, of the statistics around child sexual abuse, where many cases involve a stepfather as an offender, rationalizing that he has sexual rights over his stepchildren because he has to support them.
Religious leaders will need to find ways to get St. Joseph to help deal with these problems. The messages can revolve around the theme of a "tunay na lalake," or "true male." A true male chooses to be a father. A true male, like St. Joseph, becomes more male when he learns to go beyond biology to care for children, not his, and yet, eventually, his.