“Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.” What follows these words in Matthew’s Gospel is not the straight, narrow and easy road we would expect from heaven’s plan. What follows are some pretty hard decisions for Joseph: avoid the divorce; take Mary into your home as a mother with child; assist her in every way to give birth to the Son she carries. Joseph will do all this. A messy road from the start though, like driving up a mountain road with twists and turns, then downhill quickly. Joseph saw in Mary’s stomach his relationship going downhill quickly, with no brakes to stop the disaster. But this is the sort of stuff that lies behind the greater purpose of Jesus’ birth. The Incarnation offers greater purpose and meaning to all our messiness left behind by none other than Adam & Eve; most notably the messiness of death they left us with. The birth of Jesus, the Word becoming flesh, making his dwelling among us, taking on the fullness of our mortal nature in every way but sin; his birth offers us the hope we need to overcome the separations (especially in time of pandemic), the divorces, our personal sufferings and those of loved ones, the financial woes and addictions. His birth is the one light God sent from the throne above to allow some joy to settle within us. A Christian without joy is missing a very large part of being a Christian. Was Joseph bummed out after discovering Mary pregnant with a child not his? He would not be human if he was not bummed out, disappointed, distraught, weeping in the silence of night. That small space of time between Joseph discovering Mary’s pregnancy and the appearance of Gabriel in a dream was a time of total bewilderment. His life drove over the mountain; his carpentry work became meaningless to him; the ice cream stand was sold out of his favorite flavor. Now that’s rock bottom. St. Joseph the just man was graced by God to gain some perspective on his personal downfall. The pregnant child inside the womb of his wife Mary was the answer to his prayers. In the same way he remains the answer to every petition we speak out loud or silently. Joseph coming to understand through Gabriel the greater purpose of these seemingly crooked events that confronted him; that’s the very same understanding that graces us with the favor of seeing the greater purpose of our lives too. And the understanding that raises our dignity above the clouds is this: that God has sent to Israel – and the new Israel – a savior, Jesus. If our hearts are absent this understanding, then we remain in Joseph’s space of time between seeing Mary’s stomach grow, and the appearance of the angel Gabriel in a dream. That space of Joseph’s time was by far the worst time in his life, and the worst place that any Christian can place ourselves. That place of hopelessness. Jesus’ birth commands us to live in hope. We are not hopeless. God has come to us. God has become us. We still experience the same hard issues that Joseph did in his trying space of time. It will remain with us until Jesus returns. Until Jesus is “born” again before us, calling our bodies home in the resurrection. But let’s not speak and act like Joseph’s dream of understanding never happened. It did happen, by God’s favor. It happened so that we can be assured that the messiness is worth putting up with, because the light at the end of the tunnel has moved from the end of the tunnel to be born in front of us in a stable. Let’s never speak and act like the dream was only a dream. It wasn’t. It was a dream – a real communication – where God, through Gabriel, enlightened the entire world that we matter to him. The new Israel. The Church. The People of God. And this Christ-child, the Good Shepherd, carries us on his shoulders from that bad space of Joseph’s time of uncertainty, to the greater purpose of who we are; which is to be with him forever, as so many of our loved ones have already come to know with lasting joy. “Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.” And this is why his birth came about too.