What St. Joseph Knew

Although the accounts surrounding the conception of the Lord Jesus are well-known, the Fathers and the commentators of later times continuously provided new insights and interpretations for the faithful.  Here is an excerpt from a homily by the French Benedictine monk, Remigius of Auxerre (d. 908):

“ ‘Before they came together’ (Matthew 1, 18).  These words, ‘coming together’, do not mean ‘having relations’, but signify the time when of the wedding, when a betrothed woman became a wife.  ‘Before they came together.’  The sense is, before the wedding was solemnly celebrated.  The fact that Joseph took her, the Evangelist shows when he says that he took her when the angel exhorted him to do so, and to show that they did not have relations, he added: ‘he did not know her.’  Now, ‘she was found with child’, and this was certainly by no one but Joseph, for he knew nearly everything of his future wife, and he carefully discerned her swollen womb.  ‘Now, since Joseph her husband was a just man, he did not wish to display her, but to send her away secretly.’  It is well said that he was a ‘just man’, for he was a guardian of justice: when he saw that his betrothed had conceived, he knew that this had not happened by any other man.  He saw the woman, heavy with child, and knew her to be truly chaste.  He had read in the Prophet: ‘A rod shall go forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower from the root shall grow up’ (Isaiah 11, 1), and he knew that the blessed Mary was descended from the line of David, the son of Jesse.  He also had read: ‘Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son’ (Isaiah 7, 14), and so he did not lack belief or trust that the prophecy would be fulfilled in her."