Mary and Joseph: God’s Chosen Team, by Julie Onderko

The Blessed Virgin Mary is all things to God: she is a daughter of faith to God the Father; she is the spouse of the Holy Spirit; and she is the Mother of Jesus. In that sense, we can accurately say in the words of the Council of Ephesus that she is the Mother of God. But even with her favored relationship with the Trinity, her obvious spiritual superiority, Mary needed Joseph.

There has never been a married couple in all of history with a more important mission than the Blessed Virgin Mary and her husband, Joseph of Nazareth. They had a child to raise, and this was no ordinary child. He was God incarnate. He was the Savior, the New Adam, the only One in human history who could restore mankind’s relationship with God.

Jesus was at the center of Mary and Joseph’s relationship. In this way, their marriage prefigures sacramental marriage in which Christ is central. Jesus was the motivation for everything they did, whether it was the ordinary tasks of life, or extraordinary events concerning Him. Mary and Joseph are the prototype for the ideal; they are the example given to us by God. And although they had different roles, the two were complementary in mission as the parents of the divine Child.

Jesus received His human nature completely from His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Even so, Joseph is the virginal father of Jesus — not in the biological sense, to be sure, but in all the ways that make a man truly a father. Saint Luke writes of both Mary and Joseph as Jesus’ “parents.” And when Mary addresses her Son, she refers to Joseph as His father: “His mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety’ ” (Luke 2:48). ….