What was Joseph Thinking?

Fr. Frederick Edlefsen

What was Joseph thinking when he heard Mary was “with child.”  Was she fooling around?   Amusing answers abound.  Here’s my favorite:  

“She was in her sixth month.  And then, behold! Joseph came home from work. He entered his house and found Mary great with child.  He smote his face.  He cast himself down on sackcloth and wept bitterly, saying: ‘How am I to respond to this young woman? I received her from the Lord my God a virgin, and I have not kept her safe. Who is he who violated my home? Who has defiled my house and my virgin?’ Joseph arose from the sackcloth and called Mary.  He said to her: ‘O you, who were cared for by God, why have you done this? You have forgotten the Lord your God!’” (Proto-gospel of James)

There is a problem with this.  Joseph was “righteous” (Matthew 1:19).  In Hebrew, that means he impeccably observed the Law of Moses, no small feat.  “Righteously” observing Moses’ Law, he should have had her stoned (Deuteronomy 22).  St. Jerome, biblically coached by a rabbi, had another explanation:  Joseph was confused. 

Jerome said Joseph trusted Mary but decided to call it off.   He said, “Knowing her chastity and marveling at what had happened, Joseph buried in silence a fact whose mystery he did not understand.” But would a “righteous” man abandon Mary because he was confused?  

I propose this: Mary came clean. She told Joseph she conceived by the Holy Spirit.  He believed her.  Feeling unworthy, he decided to bow out and rent a studio overlooking the Sea of Galilee.  However, an angel reassured him in a dream to take Mary into his home (Matthew 1:20).  

St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) wrote, agreeing with St. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century), “Joseph wanted to put away the Blessed Virgin, not as suspected of fornication, but because in reverence for her sanctity he feared to live with her.”  Jesuit theologian, Ignace de la Potterie, said Joseph’s angelic dream assured that he could “take her into his home.” “Even though he decided to draw back so as not to interfere in God’s plan, which was fulfilled in Mary, Joseph obeyed the angel’s command and took Mary into his home, while respecting that she belonged exclusively to God” (Pope John Paul II, Guardian of the Redeemer, 20).