A Reflection for the Solemnity of St. Joseph

Today’s message from Luke’s Gospel provides early insights into the purpose and character of Jesus. The passage begins with the annual pilgrimage of Jesus’ family to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Jesus, at only twelve years old, is found engaging the teachers in the temple, astonishing them with his understanding and his poignant answers to their goading questions.

But on the feast of St. Joseph, what strikes me is how incredibly relatable this Gospel passage is to any of us who are parents.

Relatability is essential in the Gospel because it enhances connection and empathy. The story of Joseph and Mary losing their child in the temple resonates with our own lived experience. My fellow parents can easily imagine the terror of Jesus’ parents when they realized he was not part of the caravan of relatives and acquaintances. Joseph and Mary then had to return to Jerusalem to find him.

This Gospel brings me back to a time when our oldest child was a teenager and had taken the train from Connecticut to New York City to meet up with friends at a Knicks basketball game. When he didn’t return home at the time we had agreed on and was no longer answering his cell phone, we started to become concerned. The minutes turned to hours and soon it was the middle of the night. Not knowing what to do, I hopped in my car to drive seven miles to the train station where he had left his car. While I was in the early part of the drive I noticed something or someone walking in the opposite direction on the side of the road. My heart skipped a beat and low and behold it was him. He had dropped his car keys onto the train tracks while exiting the train and his phone was dead.

“When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and 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.”

How many parents have uttered those same words through the centuries? Son, why have you done this to us?

Certainly, the Jesus who is teaching and answering questions in Jerusalem is an early sign of the divine, but the Jesus who caused terror in the hearts of his parents puts the exclamation point on his being human!

The relatability in this Gospel becomes a source of comfort, and inspiration, guiding us all on our spiritual paths and fostering a deeper understanding of both the human and the divine.

Traug Keller was the President of America Media and now serves as Business Strategic Advisor. Prior to joining America in March 2020, Mr. Keller served as Senior Vice President of ESPN.

As ESPN senior vice president, Mr. Keller led ESPN Audio and the ESPN Talent Office. For ESPN Audio, he oversaw all aspects of the business including talent, staffing, national programming content, scheduling and event production. ESPN Audio is comprised of ESPN Radio, the country’s largest sports radio network, ESPN Deportes Radio, ESPNRadio.com, and ESPN Audio On Demand. ESPN Radio offers more than 9,000 hours of talk and event content annually, reaching nearly 24 million listeners per week on more than 500 stations, including ESPN owned and operated stations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and more than 375 full-time affiliates. Under Mr. Keller’s leadership ESPNRadio.com became the most listened to live stream of any terrestrial broadcaster in the world.

Prior to joining ESPN, Mr. Keller served as president of ABC Radio Networks, leading all aspects of network programming, affiliate relations, engineering, finance, research, IT, international programming, and marketing. Prior to ABC, Mr. Keller was New York sales manager of the CBS Radio Networks and held marketing and sales positions with the New York Times Company. Mr. Keller is a graduate of Fairfield Prep in Connecticut and Boston College. Traug and his wife, Connie, live in Connecticut and have three grown children.