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Running on Faith: Choosing Key Next Steps

STM Advent 2020_3450

I love running in the snow. There’s something serene and meditative about an early morning run on a snow day, when the streets are empty and the world is so quiet that you can hear the flakes landing. One sort of gets lost in their head in contemplation while choosing key next steps for the journey ahead—literally—as every step while ideally in stride, must be thoughtful and careful, given the slippery, potentially dangerous conditions.

Yesterday morning, while navigating the snow-covered streets of New Haven, I was thinking of a scene from The Nativity film, in which Mary and Joseph are making their way to Bethlehem. Just beginning to get to know each other, they now must rely on each other for the journey ahead. They are contemplating in their own ways the mysteries revealed to them by the angelic messengers. Although Joseph is completely silent in the infancy narratives, I wonder what was going on in his mind on those desolate desert nights on the way to Bethlehem, as he grapples with the mystery; comes to terms with the fact that his life’s dreams have been flipped upside down; and thinks through every step of the journey ahead—which must have been dangerous.

St. Joseph, to whom our Holy Father, Pope Francis just last week declared a year of dedication, was a righteous, compassionate and thoughtful man, who would welcome God’s son as his own. He would have to place his trust in God, in his betrothed, and be, as our Holy Father reflects, “ever ready to carry out God’s will as revealed to him in the Law and through dreams.”

But the thing that lingers on my mind, and what haunts me from time to time, is the fact that a crucial part of the story of our salvation hinged on Joseph’s broken heart, and his acceptance of God’s plan, which replaced his own. This really resonated with me while reading this section in the Holy Father’s apostolic letter Patris Corde:

“Often in life, things happen whose meaning we do not understand. Our first reaction is frequently one of disappointment and rebellion. Joseph set aside his own ideas in order to accept the course of events and, mysterious as they seemed, to embrace them, take responsibility for them and make them part of his own history. Unless we are reconciled with our own history, we will be unable to take a single step forward, for we will always remain hostage to our own expectations and disappointments that follow. Joseph is not passively resigned but courageously and firmly proactive…he did not look for shortcuts, but confronted reality with open eyes and accepted personal responsibility for it. In our own lives, acceptance and welcome can be an expression of the Holy Spirit’s gift of fortitude. Only the Lord can give us the strength needed to accept life as it is, with all its contradictions, frustrations and disappointments.”

There has been much cause for disappointment this past year. In many ways, our own plans and expectations have been flipped upside down. And no doubt there have been some broken hearts along the way. But the story leading up to Jesus’s birth, the story of our own salvation, reveals that God “acts through events and people,” gives us the strength and the “interior healing to accept our personal history and embrace even the things in life that we did not choose.” Through the story of St. Joseph, we also learn that through faith, God gives us the creativity and the eyes to stay focused on the road ahead while choosing our steps wisely, knowing that “God always finds a way to carry out his saving plan.”

Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain

Fr. Ryan Lerner, Chaplain

Fr. Ryan Lerner is Yale's 8th Catholic Chaplain.