Posted on 12/11/2006 6:29:15 AM PST by xzins
What happened to Joseph the father of Jesus
We know very little about the years of Jesus prior to His public ministry. The gospels are without notation of any childhood events beyond Christ's birth except one reference that is found in Luke. It is the very last time that Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus, is ever mentioned.
Luke 2:41 reads: "Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, 'Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.' 'Why were you searching for me?' he asked. 'Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?' But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men."
It is supposed that Joseph, the father of Jesus, died during the quiet years of Jesus' life. We do know that he trained Jesus in his trade, as that of a carpenter. He do know that Joseph and Mary had children after Jesus was born: James, Joses, Simon, and others.
Perhaps the cause or timing of his death is not nearly as important as the strength of character he displayed. In first hearing about Mary's pregnancy, Joseph did not want to subject Mary to public scorn. After hearing from the angel who confirmed Mary's incredulous story, Joseph obediently accepted the role as surrogate father for the baby Jesus, the Christ child. Matthew 1:24-25 says, "When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus."
The last reference about Joseph in Luke confirms that Joseph was a devout follower of the customs of his religion with his observance of Passover. It implies that Joseph made certain of good spiritual training for the children in his family. Joseph proved his integrity and willingness to be obedient to God's direction and guidance.
Excuse me, I may have misunderstood you.
Are you saying Mary is a "package"? And that her being hailed by the Messenger of the Almighty as Full of Grace, overshadowed by the Power of the Most High, conceiving by the Holy Spirit, --- this amounted to some kind of drive-by insemination? She's just an object -- a "package" -- that He would use, knock up and then toss to somebody else?
I heard a radical lesbian feminist, Ti-Grace Atkinson, say this in a public lecture in about 1971. A woman in the audience walked up to her and slapped her face. I found the whole experience very disturbing. But I guess Atkinson's ideas have traction, even among Christians.
That wouldn't have been you, would it Mrs. Don-o?
:-)
-A8
Well, that's still more time than we spent on it. :-0
But go ahead, carry on.
Oh, dear. Now you've gone over the line.
My worship is "acceptable to God" because it is God-given and God-centered.
And the ONY sacrifice that is capable of paying for my sins is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.
I have been redeemed by His sacrifice. You have, too, although you appear to struggle with understanding that fact.
"Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy." [1] And "The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification . . . ." [2] It is necessary therefore to define justification biblically, and to determine its location. The teaching of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is an example which gives the exact meaning of justification. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Christ Jesus was not "made sin" by the infusion of vice or sin, nor is the believer "made righteous" by the infusion of holiness. The Lord was personally All Holy; yet as the substitute for the believer's sin, He rendered Himself legally responsible to the wrath of God. The consequence of Christ's faithfulness in all that He did, culminating in His death on the cross, is that His righteousness is credited to the believer. It was God who legally constituted Christ to be "sin for us." He was "made sin" because the sins of all of His people were transferred to Him, and in like manner, the believer is made "the righteousness of God in Him" by God's reckoning to the believer Christ's faithfulness to the precepts of the law. Quite clearly, therefore justification is a judicial and gracious act of God whereby a believing sinner has legal right standing in Christ...The most important difference between Biblical faith and Roman Catholicism is the issue of what is necessary for an individual's salvation before God. Right through the Scriptures justification is seen to be necessary for salvation and in the New Testament it is the major theme of the Apostles. The Church of Rome proclaims her seven sacraments as necessary for salvation and that justification before God is given through the sacrament of Baptism. Thus she officially teaches,
I noticed that too. In this case, they also hijacked the thread, which was NOT about the BVM or her Perpetual Virginity.
And by what criteria did you judge yourself?
If Adam and Eve had not sinned against God, you would be correct.
But in Catholic as well as Protestant Scripture, our first parents both sinned.
No man walked the earth without the stain of Adam's Original Sin but Jesus Christ.
The interesting thing is this used to be stressed in Catholic catechism. Lately, not so much.
I find it incredibly ironic that you would trot out reformers as though Biblical Christians would believe that they were "infallible" or something?
How come you site their views when it serves your purposes, yet cry anathema about them at other times?
See, there you go again. Putting all the emphasis on the vessel and not what the vessel contains.
I'm not responsible for some idiot feminist's words.
Would you feel less angry if I said "Concentrate on the gift and not the wrapping?"
What Catholic Bashing? Are Christians not allowed to discuss these questions?
Such farce.
This post was not addressed to you, yet you zoom right in and in no time at all take offense.
Really, you might just ignore it. Or is it that you are not so confident in your position?
She was not simply blessed.
To understand Mary as just some woman who got lucky and was picked to bear Christ is to completly ignore the hewbre prophecies Christ fullfills which begin in the Garden after Adam sinned.
Mary is the 'Second Eve'.
-A8
There are a whole lot of quotes from Fathers of the Church of the first centuries of the Christian era, here on this Immaculate Theotokos page [Theotokos means God-bearer].
My impression is that the Eastern Church, from their earliest writings about Mary, have acclaimed her with titles like "Spotless," "all-blessed," "without sin," "Panagia," all-pure, and are very much in agreement about the fact that she was sanctified in the womb. The East and the West don't define it in exactly the same way, though, because of differences in emphasis about the heritable defects that come down to us from because of our First Parents' transgression.
I'm inviting Kolokotronis am Agrarian into the discussion, so they can correct me where I might be in error.
It's my understanding Catholics are fairly well-grounded in the Trinity. If you're not, then I withdraw my assumption of your salvation. It is a deal-breaker.
does you denomination believe baptism washes away original sin?
I don't see you being silenced.
Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all endorsed the perpetual virginity of Mary and rejected the idea that she had other children, so I'm at a loss as to how you can frame this as a "Catholic versus Protestant" thing.
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