Many of us assume that St. Joseph was clueless about the unusual circumstances of the pregnancy of his betrothed, until he was filled in by an angel in a dream. We read: “Jesus’ mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly” (Matt 1:18-19). 

So, do we assume that a Jew, “faithful to the law,” would violate the Law of Moses…to be nice? Because Mary’s unexplained adultery was, “you know, just one of those things”? 

Some commentators (remaining nameless) even suggest that Joseph was oblivious to Mary’s pregnancy until he and Mary visited together her pregnant cousin Elizabeth in the hills of Judea. When Mary began showing, they surmise, Joseph got the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” from the folks in Zachariah’s household. Which seems a little disrespectful of Jesus’s adopted father. 

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What the angel really said in his dream was, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary into your home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:20). If we suppose that Mary already shared her angelic message with her husband—as she should—then Joseph already knows she is not guilty, and simply wonders if he has any part in it all. The angelic message was really, “adopt this child, because your fatherhood is part of God’s plan.” So why did we assume they did not share the most important event in both their lives? 

Our confusion partly arises from having two separate accounts of Jesus’ divine origin without knowing how they interweave. For his Jewish readers, Matthew is fixed on establishing Jesus of Nazareth’s claim to the throne of David. So he spends his first sixteen verses, proving Joseph was the true heir to David’s crown—regardless of Herod—and then showing that Jesus was legitimately adopted by his royal father. Hold on to that: Joseph of Bethlehem was already the legitimate King of Israel.

Luke however gives us the Virgin’s story, intent on proving Christ Jesus’ miraculous origin to Gentile readers. Tradition says Mary spent her last decades living in St. John’s community in Ephesus, and Luke’s narrative bears all the flavor of her “first person” account: the Angel Gabriel’s words, Mary’s visit to her cousin, Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary’s Magnificat, her presence at John the Baptist’s birth, and Zechariah’s Benedictus. Elizabeth was a descendent of Moses’ high priest Aaron, and Zechariah, a member of the temple priesthood. Hold on to that: Joseph and Mary had important and learned family connections. 

There’s much we don’t know from these parallel accounts. We don’t know that Joseph escorted Mary to Zechariah’s house—but would he let her to travel alone across Israel? We don’t know that she stayed for John’s birth, but having stayed three months, would she then abandon her cousin? We don’t know that Joseph could read, but when much later Jesus visits his home synagogue, he reads from the Isaiah scroll, so wouldn’t his father be equally literate? Finally, we don’t know Mary and Joseph constantly discussed everything that was happening, scouring the Scriptures (especially Isaiah) for some grasp of their own place in history’s most earth-shattering event. But why wouldn’t they? 

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So, the real issue is: why do we assume that Mary and Joseph did not share everything that was happening to them, while it was happening? This tells us something important about ourselves, and our attitude toward the possibility of real conversations between spouses. 

Consider a parallel example: Traditionally, Joseph was always portrayed as an old man, a senior citizen, leaning on a stick and observing his young bride from a distance. Why? Culturally, the broader society could not imagine that a virile young man could live in celibacy with a beautiful young woman. We assumed that, if Mary remained virginal, Joseph must have been impotent. 

Only in the past century did Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva insist that Joseph must have been “a young, strong, upright man…a man with fortitude,” capable of defending his family, fathering his son, and yet remaining celibate. It’s taken centuries for our culture to imagine that. 

Likewise, if we assume that Mary and Joseph did not talk, what does that say about our attitude toward probing spousal conversations? This is one of humanity’s most urgent, immediate issues. If men and women are complementary, they are in fact different. So they bring different emphases into their family, say, male pragmatism and female sensitivity. So, no surprise, for fallen humans, the temptation is simply to segregate their concerns, men’s business versus women’s business. And child-rearing was women’s business. 

Does not every marriage counsellor complain that couples do not talk? Yet, the interests of both spouses—and therefore their conversations—must converge on their most important issue, the fate of their children. In a crisis, decisions can’t just be “left up to mom,” and the Nativity was the most spectacular crisis of all time. 

For the sinless mother and the saintly father, their conversation must have been constant and wide-ranging. As Frank Sheed says in his perceptive To Know Christ Jesus, from the moment of their angelic visitations, the Holy Parents must have poured over the Law and Prophets, trying to understand what to expect. Parenthetically, it’s worth noting that infant development has become a topic of scientific study only in the last 80 years. When we lived in more traditional, less chaotic communities, the growth of a healthy human consciousness and language acquisition happened naturally. Only in our contemporary, unnatural society—given our pathologies—has it become clear that much, much more goes into nurturing children than simply nursing them when they fret, changing their diapers, and hugging them when they cry. And the distinctive role of fathers in nurturing healthy souls still remains largely or entirely a terra incognita.

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In fact, the sinless Mary must already have known what to expect, at least a little, prior to her first conversation with Joseph. When she was first offered her divine maternity, the angels held their breath for her answer, as an old hymn sings. But as Hans Urs von Balthasar observes in Mary, the Church at the Source, for her consent to be free, it had to be informed. As the source of Jesus’ humanity, she had to consent on behalf of all mankind, turning over everything in her life, all of human nature, to the service of God and her Son. Free of Jewish tribalism and expectation of a conqueringMessiah, she must already have known that being the mother of the “suffering servant” (Isaiah 53) would not be a picnic.

  Joseph Woodard is a Research Fellow at the Gregory the Great Institute.