To be a Father

16 To Be a Father realized in the call ( Jesus! ), just as there is a vir- ginal motherhood, fulfilled in her reply ( Fiat! ). It is because his paternity is the purest and most radical that Joseph can guide us in these extreme times. • For indeed, the days are coming when people will say, “Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed” (Lk 23:29). In times past, more often than not, one became a father by surprise. A woman dragged you away from your business affairs to draw you into her desire for a child. Today, gripped by a litany of forthcoming disasters, this desire tends to flick- er, and it’s often the man, through his conta- gious confidence, who rekindles that flame. But how? By calling Jesus by his name, by inscribing him among his descendants, Joseph brings the Absolute into the contingent, the Eternal into our chaotic history, the Word of God into a tale “ told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth , Act V, scene 5). Through Mary, our suffering, mortal flesh becomes divine. Through Joseph, having a name becomes divine: to be someone in particular, a particular being (called for example Fabrice Hadjadj), appearing at a certain point in history and disappearing later, in a world often brutal,