Joseph Teaches Us Courage Through Silence – OpEd |
We are drowning in visibility. Every platform screams at us to build our brand, grow our following, optimize our presence. Success has become synonymous with being seen. And then there is Joseph—utterly silent, completely hidden, and somehow more essential than almost anyone else in the story.
Arnold Janssen understood this. I do not think we do anymore.
It is 1875. Germany’s Kulturkampf laws are strangling Catholic institutions. Arnold has no money, no political connections, nothing that looks remotely like a path forward. People are not just skeptical about his plan to start a missionary society—they think he has lost his mind. But he kneels in front of a statue of Joseph and decides to try anyway.
That is not how we approach things now. We would write a business plan. Run the numbers. Build a coalition of supporters first. Secure funding. Arnold just… started. With nothing but this bone-deep trust that if God wanted it, it would happen. The contrast makes me uncomfortable, which probably means there is something there worth sitting with.
The Courage of Doing Small Things
Joseph does not speak once in the Gospels. Not a single recorded word. But watch what he does: Angel appears with impossible news about Mary? He takes her as his wife. Dream warns of danger? He is up in the middle of the night, leading his family toward Egypt. No hesitation. No hand-wringing. Just immediate, quiet obedience.
Arnold saw in that silence something we have almost completely lost—the idea that the most profound courage might not announce itself at all. Joseph worked as a carpenter. Paid bills. Kept his family fed and safe. Nothing about his daily life looked remarkable. Yet he was entrusted with protecting God incarnate.
That should mess with our heads more than it does.
We obsess over impact. We want our work to matter, to leave a legacy, to be remembered. Joseph died before Jesus’ ministry even began. Never saw a miracle. Never heard the Sermon on the Mount. Did not witness the crucifixion or the resurrection. He just did his part—loving, working, trusting—and then he was gone.
What if that is actually enough?
When Silence Becomes Strength
Silence scares us now. We equate it with irrelevance, with being forgotten. Our entire culture runs on constant output, perpetual content creation, the endless feed. Staying quiet feels dangerous.
But Joseph’s silence is not empty. It is full—full of attention, of presence, of love that does not need an audience.
When Arnold Janssen’s missionary house was failing, when money ran out and critics multiplied, he did not mount a PR campaign. He did not defend himself in the papers or rally public support. He prayed. He worked. He trusted Joseph to understand what it meant to protect something fragile.
And somehow, it survived. Then grew. Then became something neither Arnold Janssen nor his critics could have imagined.
There is a word for us here, especially those of us running on fumes. We are burning out because we have believed this poisonous lie that everything depends on us being visible, being productive, always performing. Joseph offers something different: you can be fully engaged without being anxiously driven. You can protect and provide without needing applause. Faithful presence matters more than impressive results.
I think we have forgotten that. Or maybe we never really believed it.
Hidden Fidelity Still Matters
Here is what stops me cold: Jesus obeyed Joseph. The Son of God—fully divine—submitted to instruction from a carpenter for thirty years. He learned a trade from Joseph. Probably got corrected by him. Listened to his advice.
That is staggering if you actually think about it.
What we do in obscurity matters. How we love when nobody is watching matters. The faithfulness we maintain when there is nothing to show for it—no metrics, no growth, no visible fruit—that matters to God even if it never trends on social media.
Arnold built something that spread across continents, but he never mistook himself for the architect. He knew he was just… doing his part. Like Joseph. Standing slightly to the side. Making sure others had what they needed. Content to be forgotten if that is what the work required.
We desperately need this right now. Burnout is not just a personal problem—it is a spiritual crisis born from measuring our worth by all the wrong things. Joseph does not care about your metrics. He just asks: Are you faithful? Are you present? Are you trusting God with the results?
Arnold Janssen knelt before that statue with empty hands and an impossible dream. It was enough. Not because Arnold Janssen was remarkable, but because he had learned what Joseph knew: God builds the house, or we are just exhausting ourselves for nothing. But when we offer our ordinary, hidden faithfulness to his purposes? That is when silence starts to speak louder than all our noise ever could.
This article was published at Vivat Deus