Endanger
Those who love cannot endanger life in the name of love. Those who are seeking seeking truth cannot endanger life in the name of truth.Those who are seeking justice cannot endanger life in the name of justice. It is Satan who endangers life and humankind, not God. Joseph, name that could come from the Hebrew Yosèf, “expanded by God”, from the verb Yasàf, “add”, or from Yasàppu, “God builds”, from which the more modern Hebrew term Yosàbu, “the one who inundates, irrigates, provides abundance”, is presented in the Gospel as a just man. The just man, the dìkaios, “the one who does not have prejudices or partiality”, is the one in whom being and doing are perfectly attuned or, even better, the one who adheres to God, to His will, as opposed to the evil man who adheres to Satan’s will. The just man is the one who sees with God’s eyes and is in deep intimacy with Him. Joseph is a just man because, even though shocked, stuck in a no way out situation and oppressed by unanswered questions – enthymèomai is the verb used to describe this inner state of brooding, whirling, raging and agitated thinking –, he does not wish to endanger Mary’s life, no matter what her fault might have been. Endangering someone else’s life, even though in the name of love, is not love, never. And even when it is done in the name of truth, it is never for the sake of truth, or when it is done in the name of justice, it is never for the sake of justice. It is always evil, pure and simple, it is adhering to the rotten heart of Satan. Joseph was unwilling to expose her to shame, or, as it is literally written: to make public display, because making public display of a person’s life’s shadows always and inevitably endangers that person’s life, and it is evil. Satan and his demons were looking forward to push Joseph to make public display of Mary’s situation, because they knew how that would have triggered the perverse and destructive mechanism which would have slaughtered Mary’s life, on every existential level, making the very birth of Jesus unlikely. If Mary’s situation had been made public, Mary would have been stoned to death, and so, honouring the law, Jesus would have been killed as well. Satan, more than anybody else in the universe, knows in which way and how much making public display is destructive both for a single person and for the entire humanity. Making public display of someone’s life is a work that first of all aims to destroy the image of that person to the eyes of people, until people are lead to indifference and contempt. This allows the media to intrude, with arrogance and the violence of slanders, in a person’s life, while keeping a façade of flawless professionalism at the service of the community. If Joseph had made public display of Mary, she, and Jesus in her womb, would have been destroyed by people in the name of law, of holiness, purity, virtue, honour, religion, God. Joseph was a just man who adhered to God, to God’s desire, he was not an evil person who adhered to Satan and, even though he was troubled and confused, he avoided, as a love’s and honour’s choice, to endanger Mary’s life. This is the definitive choice of the just man who, even when troubled and confused, keeps adhering to God, trusting Him, letting Him decide, so that he does not turn into an evil and destructive person. This is the choice that sets in motion the cosmic divine energies that allow life to find, in its own time, the best and more effective solutions for any trouble and difficulty. On the other hand, the one who decides not to adhere to God and chooses, as solution to his problems, to make public display of his fellows’ existential situations, endangering their life, and all that is connected to it, chooses not only to adhere to Satan, to be destructive and evil as Satan is, but also, and this is really tragic, he chooses for his life, and all that it is connected to it, not to be protected by God anymore, but to be voraciously bitten by Satan’s jaws. The just man adheres to God, and leaves decisions to God, not only because of his faith and love, but also thanks to his wisdom and intelligence, because by choosing not to endanger someone else’s life, not making public display of it, he chooses to always and constantly be protected and defended by God Himself.