NOTES for Mat 1:24-25

What is family life? What is each spouse's share in it? Different people answer this question in different ways, and it is hard to find two completely identical families. So much psychological and religious literature has been written about family relationships that by now one could drown in it. Meanwhile, family problems do not appear to have become fewer.

Perhaps this is because in these books, and often even in religious books, marriage is discussed as a union of two people. In fact, it is never a union of two. It is always a union of three. It is a union in which God participates as the third, whether or not the spouses think about Him. Even whether or not they know about His participation. In this respect family life resembles human life in general: we become human beings because of the breath of life that God breathes into us at conception, but we can live our whole life without remembering God even once. God does not force Himself on us. He will not remind us of Himself if we ourselves do not want to remember Him.

And if we do remember Him, we will have to think about how much room in our life we are ready to give Him. This applies fully to family and married life, just as it does to life in general. The more self-will there is in our life, the less room there is for God with His plans and designs. And, accordingly, the less He can influence our life. God can do something in our life only with our consent. There are also things that only He Himself can do in it. In that case all that remains for us is to step aside, yielding the field of action to Him. This applies fully to the birth of the Messiah. He had to be born free from the power of the sin that entered the world with the fall.

Human nature, if it had been directed even a little by human will, could only have spoiled the matter here. It had to be given entirely into the power of God's will. Only He Himself could solve this supremely difficult task. From Mary only one "yes" was required, after which her body was no longer under her own control: it became the place where that breath of God acted, the breath to which everything is subject, even original sin.

And from Joseph, the Messiah's adoptive father, only one thing was required: to be near and not interfere with this action. Such is every conception: God always participates in it, revealing His presence and His action as much as the future parents allow Him to. It depends on the parents how much their child will belong to God. The Messiah had to belong to God absolutely. And the possibility of His birth into the world turned out to be connected not only with the "yes" Mary said to God, but also with the "yes" Joseph said to God's angel. Joseph, who through this "yes" became the Messiah's adoptive father.