St. Joseph, Patron of the Triumph, Part VI

Joseph, Man of Faith

St. Joseph is acclaimed by the Church as "the just and obedient man who helped to carry out the mysteries of our salvation" (1). The word "obedient" here refers to "the obedience of faith" (Rom 1:5). And what this text tells us is that St. Joseph gave an instant and unequivocal Yes to everything God had revealed, besides embracing and carrying out the least indication of his will. Indeed, what the Redeemer was later to say of himself could equally be applied in its measure to the guardian of his formative years: "My meat is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish the task he gave me" (Jn 4:34).

So undiluted, in fact, was Joseph's obedience of faith, and so unhesitating and unswerving, that from earliest times it has been recognized as something of a prodigy by a whole galaxy of theologians, saints and mystics. Many of these even pay Joseph the compliment of measuring his faith against Mary's, rating it second only to hers among all God's creatures. So Cardinal Peter d'Ailly of Cambrai was really speaking for all Christian tradition when he apostrophized the saint as follows (2).

Two Faiths Meet

We shall presently be looking at some of these "novel and unheard-of things" that were to exercise Joseph's faith. But let us first recall St. Augustine's key formula for reaching a correct assessment of the Virgin's spouse and his contribution to the Messianic Kingdom. The formula goes: it is through Mary and because of Mary that St. Joseph is what he is and does what he does.

This applies in very particular to Joseph's faith, which, besides being focused entirely on serving Mary's maternal mission, drew constant light and support from her own superlative faith. And, like his cherished spouse, he was blessed because he believed that the promises God had made her would be fulfilled (cf. Lk 1:45).

Being a true Israelite and therefore a staunch believer, St. Joseph gave the assent of faith to everything revealed by Yahweh to the People of Israel and duly enshrined in the sacred books of the Law and the Prophets. Again like every true Israelite, he believed with passionate conviction in the central prophecy that ran like an ever-recurring motif throughout the inspired books.

This prophecy told of a stupendous and exciting truth, for the fulfillment of which a long line of patriarchs, prophets and kings had yearned and prayed. It stated nothing less than that the Son of God, the mighty Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, would come among us in person as Emmanuel, God-with-us, the Word-made-flesh, the Messianic Redeemer of the world.

Joseph's already strong faith was soon due to receive a quantum increase through his personal involvement in the Messianic scenario. He was informed through a private revelation not only that the Messiah's advent was imminent but, wildly impossible though it seemed, he himself, the lowly carpenter of Nazareth, had actually been chosen by providence to play a leading role in the enactment of this sacred event.

Nor was that all. Through the same revelation Joseph's faith took an additional quantum leap forward when he learned—and accepted—that the principal part in the drama was to be played by the woman who was his wedded wife. Virginal though Mary was and would remain, she was nonetheless the mother-elect of the Messianic Savior; indeed, she had already conceived him in her womb through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Adventure and Pilgrimage

Before proceeding any further into this rarefied and transcendent faith-world to which Our Lady and St. Joseph found themselves elevated, it will be as well if we briefly refresh our memories as to what faith as such essentially means. In general terms, it is the free and undoubting assent we are enabled through God's grace to give to whatever truths he reveals about himself and his designs for our salvation. As for a good working description of faith, it is the on-going adventure of our mind and heart—under the action of grace—into the truths communicated by God.

In this light we can see how Mary's faith and Joseph's became very much of a joint adventure through being focused so personally on the mystery of Emmanuel and their own momentous responsibilities in his regard. In other words, their linked involvement to such a hands-on degree in the drama of Jesus brought their respective faiths together on closely parallel lines.

Pope John Paul II likens their joint adventure into the new world brought by Emmanuel to a co-pilgrimage of faith; it began when the God-Man, though still in his mother's womb, as it were joined his parents' hands and hearts in his love and service. The papal text reads (3).

A Virgin Shall Conceive

The first "novel and unheard-of thing" to test Joseph's faith was Mary's virginal conception of the Christ-Child. We can readily understand how perplexed he initially was at his spouse's inexplicable pregnancy. Reasoning that it could only be explained in terms of some high and supernatural design into which Our Lady had been caught up as an instrument, and in which he himself was bound to be a complete outsider and an unworthy one at that, he decided to divorce her privately.

Again we can readily understand how relieving and consoling for the troubled Joseph the angel's prompt intervention proved to be at that critical juncture:

The point here is that, so high was the caliber of Joseph's faith, he accepted this explanation immediately and without questioning; moreover, he acted upon it straightaway. Abandoning his divorce plan, the man of faith duly went ahead with the all-necessary formality of receiving Mary into his home, thereby setting the definitive seal on their marriage and preparing the way for the future Holy Family.

To get the full measure of what can fairly be described as Joseph's mega-faith, we have only to compare him with Abraham, who is upheld in the Old Testament as the exemplar of perfect faith—a title he earned chiefly for having believed that a sterile woman would bear a child. Joseph, on the other hand, said the Yes of faith to the angelic message that a like miraculous phenomenon had actually and recently befallen someone who was a virgin—indeed, his very own Mary. With the simplicity and directness of a child, the saint, in John Paul II’s words (4). "accepted as truth coming from God the very thing that Mary had already accepted at the Annunciation."

Another "New and Unheard-of Thing"

Nor was that the only prophesied miracle regarding Mary's motherhood to which Joseph gave his unqualified assent. A further miraculous dimension, one infinitely greater in every respect, was tied in with the virgin's miraculous conception. It was that the Conceived would be of divine origin. The angelic message had made this abundantly clear:

We can be quite sure that Mary knew from what the angel had told her that the Infant in her womb was the eternal Son of God. And this had been confirmed when Elizabeth acclaimed her as "the mother of my Lord" (Lk 1:43). We can be equally sure that Mary would have informed Joseph about these and other circumstances surrounding her virginal maternity, thus serving to build up his faith still further in the divinity of her unborn Son.

Some commentators have expressed doubt whether Mary and Joseph knew from the outset that the living being cradled in her womb was a Divine Person who had taken a humanity drawn from her own. While Mary and her spouse knew that he was the Messiah, these commentators contend, it was not till a later stage of the Messiah's life that his parents came to realize that their miraculously conceived Offspring was actually the eternal Son of God.

But, as Suarez for one has pointed out, such an interpretation contradicts the whole sense and tradition of the Church, which goes back to the theological giants of the patristic age. Pope St. Leo the Great, for example, declared (5).

The same belief is championed by many doctors of the Church, including Saints Thomas, Alphonsus and Francis off Sales, as well as by a succession of modern popes. Pius XII, for instance (6), taking up a theme advanced by St. Thomas, says that at the Annunciation Our Lady "stood proxy for all mankind and contracted a spiritual marriage between the Son of God and human nature." It stands to reason, then, that she could not have done what she did without knowing that her Son was God.

Clearly the heavenly messenger would seriously have misled Mary and Joseph if he had really meant to announce that her Offspring was human and nothing more. Moreover, why would God wish to be the Father by supernatural conception of a child who was not in actual fact his own Divine Son? Furthermore, this is the only example throughout Scripture where the term "Son of God" is applied to someone due to be conceived through a direct and divine intervention. And later on Christ confirmed this when he showed that "Son of God" referred to his own divine filiations.

The Eyes of Faith

The mystery and beauty of Christmas have been well expressed in a liturgical prayer (7):

Mary and Joseph had the distinction of being the first-ever to see the Christ-Child with their bodily eyes. Similarly they were the first to behold with the eyes of faith the new and radiant vision of God-made-visible, the Word-made-flesh, the Infinite-made-Infant, the Maker of heaven and earth now lying helpless in the manger. Besides, Mary and Joseph were the first to adore the sacred humanity of the newborn Savior, "in whom the whole fullness of deity dwelt bodily" (Col 2:9). And their adoration was soon to be followed by that of the Bethlehem shepherds and the Three Wise Men.

A unique privilege Joseph shared with his spouse was that of being, in Leo XIII's words (8), "the first depositary of the divine mystery." The divine mystery in question was, in fact, twofold, comprising two key elements in God's redemptive plan: the Virginal Conception and the Incarnation.

So Joseph, together with Mary, was the chosen confidant and guardian of what St. Paul refers to as "the mystery hidden for ages in God"—the mystery of the Incarnation due to be fulfilled "in the fullness of time when God sent his Son born of a woman" (Eph 3:9; Gal 4:4-5).

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Close to the Incarnation

We have seen that Joseph's adventure of faith, like Mary's, was from start to finish ordained towards the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation. For they were the couple chosen to provide the infrastructure, so to call it, for the Eternal Word's entry into our world in an appropriately normal way; this would serve to identify him more closely with his fellow-men not only by having parents but by being reared in a stable family setting.

Herein we see how indispensable was the cooperation of Mary and Joseph in God's redemptive plan for his Son's Incarnation. This signifies the uniting of the Second Person of the Trinity with a humanity drawn from his mother. In other words, Jesus is a divine person with a dual nature, divine and human; he is the God-Man, fully God yet fully Man. St. Thomas wrote of this stupendous mystery (9):

Both through their faith and in actual fact Mary and Joseph welcomed this "immense reality" into their lives, even sharing their home with him for long years. And because their lives were wholly at the service of their Messianic Son, in whom the divine-human union was literally embodied, they themselves were raised by God to a uniquely exalted status and role in his life and mission.

Upon the God-Man's mother, says St. Thomas (10), was conferred "a quasi-infinite dignity." As for St. Joseph, it is generally agreed that his ministry in the divine scheme of things exceeded in honor and importance every other ministry, angelic or human, barring that of his spouse. St. Basil gives the underlying reason. "Which angel or saint," he asks, "has ever deserved to be called father of the Son of God?"

Previous pages have shown that the defining feature of St. Joseph's contribution to God's plan of redemption was his fatherhood of the Redeemer. And, as we would expect, Joseph's faith found in the performance of his paternal duties a wellspring of support, illumination and consolation. Pope Pius XI (11) had a deep insight into how both faith and love operated in the saint's relationship with the Child who called him father:

Shadow of the Trinity

Joseph's faith further enabled him to perceive yet another dimension to his ministry within the divine-human mysteries. It was that his fatherly relationship with Jesus became an earthly reflection, howsoever faint and distant, of the First Person's role towards the Second in the life of the Trinity. As St. Francis de Sales once put it (12), "Joseph was the deputy father of Our Lord in lieu of the Eternal Father."

Like every human father, Joseph shared the authority of him "from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its title" (Eph 3:15). But, unlike every other human father, Joseph took from the Heavenly Father the title that dignified him as his earthly representative, vicar, shadow, image.

What Joseph and Mary also beheld with the eyes of faith followed logically from the foregoing: namely, together with Jesus, they formed not simply an ordinary human trio but an earthly trinity in the image and likeness of the heavenly one. Hence Gerson hails the Nazareth family as "the wonderful trinity of Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

This theme has been taken up and developed by many saints and doctors. Francis de Sales, for example, writes (13), "We may say that the Holy Family was a trinity on earth which in a certain way represented the Blessed Trinity itself." He further points out that the counterpart of the Holy Spirit in the earthly trinity is, of course she upon whom he descended on that day of days in Nazareth.

St. Alphonsus Liguori was similarly devoted to the "earthly trinitarian family," whose head was Joseph, the man of faith, a man, moreover, whose care for Our Lord combined the tenderest fatherly affection with the purest creaturely adoration. In his touching poem dedicated to Christ's earthly father, Alphonsus puts on his lips the following well-known prayer:

Joseph's Ladder

A belief that permeates the Old Testament and exerted a major influence in Joseph's life is the existence of an invisible spirit-world of angels and demons. How dramatically this belief found concrete expression at certain crisis-points in the saint's career, even determining the direction and shape of momentous things to come, is found in the New Testament's so-called Infancy Narratives.

"An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream" (Mt 1:20). Thus does the gospel begin its recording of the first angelic apparition experienced by St. Joseph. And we know how significant, indeed crucial, was its sequel: his mental anguish over Mary's inexplicable pregnancy was instantly dispelled; his marriage no longer faced the prospect of divorce; and his future destiny as the Messiah's paternal guardian was set firmly on course.

The second recorded instance of angelic activity in Joseph's life was on the night of the Savior’s birth. He and Mary doubtless heard the chorus of angels serenading the new-born King with those first-ever Christmas carols. Which for the Child's wondering parents would surely have been a feast of faith as well as heavenly melody. Doubtless, too, they would have heard the shepherds tell of how it had been angels who directed them to the Nativity scene.

Meanwhile fallen angels were likewise taking an active hand in proceedings by aiding and abetting King Herod's murderous plot to liquidate the newborn King and so remove a potential threat to his throne. Again an angel of God appeared in a dream to the Savior’s guardian, instructing him to flee immediately with mother and Child to Egypt and so escape the imminent massacre.

In God's good time an angel appeared once more in a dream to the exiled Joseph, telling him to return with Mary and Jesus to his homeland. Finally, he was favored with a fifth recorded dream-vision, the angel directing him to settle in Galilee instead of Judea because of the threat posed by Herod's son.

But by no means were St. Joseph's communications with the angelic world limited to these critical episodes early on in his guardianship. Gifted as he was with eyes of faith that enjoyed the keenest vision, he was on familiar terms with everyone and everything within the invisible kingdom of God. Consequently his Nazareth home was transformed through faith into a hallowed sanctuary of the supernatural world, including the angelic hosts forever adoring their Incarnate Creator and reverencing their queen-elect.

So the promise that Christ would later make to Nathanael as reward for his faith had become an everyday reality for St. Joseph: "You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (Jn 1:51). Similarly, just as the patriarch Jacob saw, pitched between heaven and earth, "a stairway for the angels of God to ascend and descend" (Gen 28:17), the patriarch of Nazareth beheld daily, with his eagle-eyed faith-vision, the identical mystical ladder linking us with the angels of God.

Lord, Increase Our Faith

As we have been seeing, St. Joseph was richly endowed with what is technically known as the virtue of faith. Being a created reality and therefore finite, this virtue is ever capable of growth, enlargement, development, deepening, improvement, purification—all of which processes find a place in the gospel prayer, "Lord, increase our faith" (Lk 17:5). Even Mary's faith, which was strong enough to move mountains, grew ever stronger and purer as she advanced on her pilgrimage down the years, seeing daily ever deeper into the divine truths she treasured in her heart (cf. Lk 2:51).

The same principle of growth applied, of course, to St. Joseph's faith. And, as is always the case, this growth took place in two distinct ways. Firstly, he came to see divine truths ever more clearly and pimply defined; that is, his eyes of faith developed an ever-keener vision of supernatural realities. As a result, the virtue of faith, which basically empowers us to believe in God and his kingdom, took on I in Joseph an added intensity, an ever-higher voltage.

In the second place, Joseph's faith grew in his grasp or understanding of the supernatural truths contained in the package of revelation as he knew it. In which growth that special gift of the Holy Spirit we know as understanding played a dominant part. Thus the Head of the Holy Family was enabled to penetrate and comprehend ever more lucidly, as well as relish more appreciatively, the mysteries of salvation that daily filled his life so intimately at a domestic level.

It was precisely that level of everyday familiarity with Jesus, the Author of faith, which made St. Joseph the outstanding believer he was. For he shared his home with him who is the Light of the World, and in that heavenly radiance his faith became ever more luminous.

Paul VI proclaims in his Credo: "Jesus is the light; Mary is the lamp." From this latter source as well—the living lamp that lit up their Nazareth home—Joseph's faith drew constant illumination. As Newman points out, it was only to be expected that Joseph, through sheer proximity to his two all-holy treasures over so long a time, would himself become a giant in faith and holiness.

The preceding was excerpted from St. Joseph, Patron of the Triumph, Queenship, 2002.

Notes

(1) Votive Mass of St Joseph: Post-Communion prayer.

(2) Cardinal Peter d'Ailly: Tractatus de Sancto Josepho.

(3) John Paul II: Redemptoris Custos, 5.

(4) John Paul II: op. cit. 4.

(5) Pope St. Leo the Great: PL 54, 191.

(6) Pius XII: Mystici Corporis.

(7) Christmas Mass: Preface Two.

(8) Leo XIII: Quamquam Pluries.

(9) St. Thomas: Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, 27.

(10) St. Thomas: Summa Theol: 1-25—6 (ad 4).

(11) Pius XI: Address 19 March 1935.

(12) St. Francis de Sales: Complete Works of St. Francis de Sales, La Pleiade.

(13) St. Francis de Sales: Discourse 19, Complete Works of St. Francis de Sales, VI.