If you remember from your history, Deism was the prevailing religion of many of our nation’s (USA) founders. It is a philosophy that basically teaches that God created the world and then walked away. So that leaves us called to build upon God’s creation.

You may remember in the 1990’s there was a song made popular by Bette Midler entitled “From A Distance” and many people wanted the song as part of funerals, mostly. They would be unhappy when we said, No, for they did not understand that the song was not liturgical, but more so is Deist, it is not a Catholic philosophy. God is not at a distance, he is transcendent which is beyond the limits of the universe and imminent which is near us as well. God is beyond our understanding, but He is not at a distance.

He is intimately involved in our lives and calls us to bring that intimacy in relationship with Him through our prayer. We bring to God in prayer our pains, our joys and our realities. This leads us to recognize Him intimately involved in our lives as we struggle through life. He is intimate and transcendent.

This is clearly seen in today’s gospel in the story of Joseph accepting that Mary is pregnant through the action of the Holy Spirit. If you feel that Mary telling Joseph how she is pregnant with Jesus was easy, then you do not know the bible nor understand the humanity reflected in it. Joseph did not believe her. Would you?

This passage in Matthew shows that Joseph intended to take upon himself the action of having Mary put away, which was the punishment for the sin of adultery when it happened in the rural areas of Judah. He could not accept that Mary was pregnant suddenly and did not accept her story of the angel. He acted in a similar way to what every human man would have.

When he receives the dream, he has the understanding that leads him to take upon the role of Father to Jesus. However, this must have been one in which he grew into full acceptance over time, because Joseph reacted humanly because he was fully human.

God is intimately involved in our lives, and we need to understand this, but we also need to put away every deist inclination of our lives. If you read the bible, there is a clear message that the believers of God will have an intimately relationship with Him and this relationship will reveal itself in wisdom and even miraculous signs. Miraculous signs are not necessarily of biblical proportion. I remember, in a difficult point of my life many years ago that every smile gave me the strength to just make it through the day and I saw the smile of another person as almost a miraculous sign of encouragement. Even though the person knew nothing of what I was going through and more often than not did not even know me.

God intimately involved in our lives is a  central teaching of the bible that often goes ignored, especially in the Northeastern United States, where reason without faith is the norm. We cannot be people who live in faith without reason, but as Catholics we are called to be people of faith and reason. This means we live in a co-operative relationship with God. We bring our everyday lives worries, joys and concerns to our prayer and we invite God to speak to us through them all. This is a central element of our faith. We may not see the lame walk everyday or even any day. But if we are open to the Lord’s action in our lives, we can expect that God is with us in every part of our lives and we learn to trust in Him. Our greatest crisis are the times we discover him intimately involved in our lives.

The Hispanic world has a saying “Si Dios Lo Quiere”, which I learned in high school spanish long before I ever actually spoke the language. The saying means if God wills it. The other side of the saying means, I will not worry, but I will trust in God’s will for my life. It is an attitude that the saints call us to have. Trust in God. However, you have to understand God’s presence in your life before you can trust in Him. Once you learn to trust in Him, you can say Si Dios Lo Quiere or as my family used to say in English. If it is God’s will, it will  happen, do not worry about it.

This is what the story of Joseph teaches. “Lord, if this whole story or Mary’s is real, you will have to help me understand it.” The Lord does this.

The same must be part of our lives. We need to see God’s interest in every part of our lives. Parents are concerned about the salvation of their children, but not as concerned as God is. So bringing your concerns to your prayer, will have a powerful affect on the lives of your children.

I may be interested in  bringing my experiences and service to the people of Holy Trinity Parish, but no one is as interested as God is in seeing that done. So I bring my priestly service to Him including concerns I have.

We can pray for miracles, and they happen everyday. They may not be so obvious, but I assure you they happen everyday and we need to live in that reality. We need to teach that reality and we do that by turning our back on the Deistic interpretation of our faith and embracing God who is transcendent over us, but intimately involved in every aspect of our lives every day. The more we understand that, the closer to God we become by seeing His action in our lives.

Be open to God’s action in your life, and be expectant of it. Know that He is intimately involved in our lives and pray expectantly in all  that you do. Just as He does in the life of Joseph, so will He do with you, be expectant in all you do when you bring your needs, ideas, plans to God in prayer.

God bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr

Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor ofHoly Trinity Parish, Quincy, MA and is the editor of this blog. He also has a regular radio program on for Canção Nova NUSA.Which he podcasts for Canção Nova available at Mixcloud and here on Catholicismanew.
You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook