The patriarch Joseph, the son of Jacob, is in many ways a type of Joseph, the foster father of Jesus and the patron of the universal Church. The Mass readings from Genesis over the last couple of days call to mind parallels between the two Josephs. In his magnificent daily devotional series, In Conversation with God, Fr. Francis Fernandez notes some of the most striking similarities, summarized below:
1. Both Josephs were forced to go to Egypt – the patriarch was sold into slavery by his brothers (prefiguring the handing over of Jesus by his kinsmen), while the husband of Mary was forced there to avoid the wrath of Herod, who sought the infant Jesus’ life (cf. Matt. 2:13-15).
2. God enabled the OT Joseph to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh; God spoke to the NT Joseph through dreams. In a sense, a particular dream of the first Joseph would be fulfilled in a greater way by the second: “…and behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me” (see Genesis 37:5-10). Joseph meant by this his parents and brothers. Later, the Sun of Righteousness, Jesus Christ, and his Mother Mary, (the Christian who best reflected God’s glory, as the moon best reflects the sun), would, in a sense, “bow” to Joseph by submitting to his leadership in the holy house of Nazareth.
3. Joseph the patriarch won the favour of the most powerful king on earth, so much so that when hungry nations came to Egypt looking for food, Pharaoh could say confidently, “Go to Joseph, and what he says to you, do” (Gen. 41:55). Today, the world is hungry for spiritual food – true Christian teaching, because “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). We, too, must “go to Joseph”, for he, like Mary, will lead us to the Lord they know better than anyone ever did. And Joseph protects the members of Christ ‘s mystical body just as surely as he cared for Jesus himself.
Truly we can see here that, as Scott Hahn puts it, “God writes the world the way humans write with words”. Just as a human author used devices like foreshadowing to make a point, God uses historical events and people of the Old Covenant – like the patriarch Joseph – to preview far the far greater personages and events of the New.