Joseph is commanded stop dreaming and wake up: “Get up!” His dream corresponds to the dream of God, which is to awaken human beings from their somnolent state. It is necessary to live life, not just dream about it. Joseph wakes up and responds to the divine summons not with words but with his flesh: with deeds and in truth.
Obeying means listening to the Word and translating it into action. How? Take the Child and his mother with you. To accomplish the great exodus of life, to set out on the journey of self-completion, we are invited to take “the Child” with us.
Enraged by this, Herod (the authority figure of Joseph’s day) killed the innocent. It has always been like that, but the Gospel tells us that he was vanquished by a child, that is, by a different and completely new logic.
On the stage of history we have on one side kings, the powerful and the violent, and on the other, dreams, silence, women and men who believe success is possible, even if they themselves are not victorious. For the Lord, dreams, even very fragile ones, are enough to move his plan of salvation forward, to foil Herod’s murderous intent or, if nothing else, to prevent it from prevailing at the expense of his plan, which is that all the innocent people of history be preserved in love.
From the book: Ogni storia è storia sacra by Paolo Scquizzato, FSP Editions 2019
May Christ ‘s peace
reign in your hearts;
may his word dwell in you richly.
