Issue nº 122

The man who followed his dreams

     I was born in the Saint Joseph maternity in Rio de Janeiro. As it was a quite complicated childbirth, my mother consecrated me to the saint, praying to him to help me live. José became a reference in my life, and every year since 1987 - the year following my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela - I throw a party in his honor on March 19. I invite friends and hard-working, honest people, and before dinner we pray for all those who try to maintain their dignity in their actions. We also pray for those who are jobless and have no prospects for the future.
      In the short introduction I give before the prayer, I usually recall that four of the five times that the word “dream” appears in the New Testament refer to Joseph the carpenter. In all the cases, an angel is always trying to convince him to do exactly the opposite of what he was planning to do.
      The angel asks him not to abandon his wife, although she is pregnant. He could say things like “what are the neighbors to think?” But he returns home and believes in the revealed word.
      The angel sends him to Egypt. And his answer could have been: “but I’m already established here as a carpenter, I have my clientele, I can’t just leave everything now.” Nevertheless he packs his things and sets out for the unknown.
      The angel asks him to return from Egypt. And again Joseph could have thought: “now that I have managed to establish a new life for myself and have a family to support?”
     Contrary to what common sense dictates, Joseph follows his dreams. He knows that he has a destiny to fulfill, the destiny of almost all men on this planet: to protect and support his family. Like millions of anonymous Josephs, he tries to see to the task, even having to do things that are far beyond his comprehension.
      Later on, both his wife and one of his sons become the great references of Christianity. The third pillar of the family, the workman, is only remembered in the Nativity scenes at the end of the year, or by those who have a special devotion for him, as is my case, and as is the case of Leonardo Boff, whose book on the carpenter contains an introduction I wrote.
      Here I reproduce part of a text by the writer Carlos Heitor Cony (I hope it really is his, because I discovered it on the Internet!): “Now and again people find it strange that a confirmed agnostic like me, who does not accept the idea of a philosophical, moral or religious God, should be a devotee of some saints in our traditional calendar. God is too distant a concept or entity for my resources and even for my needs. As for the saints, because they were earthly beings with the same clay foundations that I was made of, they deserve more than my admiration. They really deserve my devotion.
      “Saint Joseph is one of them. The Gospels do not register a single word of his, only gestures, and just one explicit reference: "vir justus" – a just man. Since he was a carpenter and not a judge, it can be deduced that Joseph was above all a good man. A good carpenter, a good husband, a good father to a boy who would divide the history of the world.”
     Beautiful words by Cony. And often I read aberrations such as: “Jesus went to India to learn from the masters of the Himalayas.” For me, every man can change the task he is given by life into something sacred, and Jesus learned while the just man Joseph taught him to make tables, chairs and beds.
      In my imagination I like to think that the table where Christ consecrated the bread and wine was made by Joseph – because there was the hand of an anonymous carpenter who earned his living with the sweat of his brow, and precisely because of that allowed miracles to take place.