A Poem ABout St. Joseph (Mid-week Message)

 

 

A Poem about St. Joseph

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

December 18, 2013

 

Last Sunday, we talked about the Magnificat and Luke’s story of the annunciation to the Blessed Virgin.  Luke’s story is the main source of the “Hail Mary” devotions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Old Catholics, Coptic and Armenian churches, as well as many Anglicans and some Lutherans.  (Martin Luther himself said a “Hail Mary” was a good devotion to the Mother of our Lord, and thus to our Lord himself, and not a prayer, as long as you stick to the Biblical language and don’t lard it with extravagant petitions to Mary for intercession that sound like petitionary prayer.) 

 

This coming Sunday, we will hear Matthew’s very different story about the Virginal Conception of Jesus, this one focused on St. Joseph rather than St. Mary.  My friend Susan Church shared with me the following poem by a Benedictine monk about St. Joseph and this coming Sunday’s reading, told in Mary’s voice: 

 

       JOSEPH, I’M PREGNANT 
       BY THE HOLY GHOST

-- Killian McDonnell

“Her Husband Joseph, being a righteous man…
planned to dismiss her quietly.”  —Matthew 1:19

Life was simple before that angel
pushed open the kitchen door,
announced light and trouble, as though
a foe had roiled the bottom of the well
and now the pail brings up only

murky water. I’m chosen for some
terrible grace beyond the well.
After short light long dark,
left to stumble through Sinai

Desert. No manna to gather, no quail
to catch. Nothing. When I tell Joseph
I’m pregnant by the Holy Ghost,
he stares, ox dumb in hurt. I’ve asked

him to believe that I, God’s
Moses-girl, part seas, give Torah. He turns, leaves
without a word. Why should my dearest

love believe? Yahweh’s not fair.
Where is the voice of light? Where
the pillar of fire? My man drops
me cold, as though I were a concubine

dismissed without a drachma for cheating
on her master’s blanket with that
swarthy Roman soldier from the barracks.
Joseph doesn’t expose me; I will not

be stoned. My heart eats Yahweh’s
cinders; I drink the last date wine
gone sour at the dregs.
God does nothing. But I carry life.

 

 

Grace and Peace,  

Fr. Tony+