Joseph, Man of God

On the occasion of his pilgrimage to Nazareth, Paul VI (1) described the Holy Family's home as "the school where one begins to understand the life of Jesus, that is, the school of the gospel." What can also be said of that sacred home school is that there one begins to understand why and how the carpenter of Nazareth grew to be such a spiritual giant.

Many authorities have pointed out that, given the circumstances of Joseph's life and his mission in God's plan, he would as a matter of course have been blessed with a high degree of holiness. For he had been endowed with all the graces needed for his role as virginal father of the Redeemer and spouse of the Co-redemptrix. Over and above that, he steadily grew in holiness through his long-continued proximity and familiarity both with the Author of grace and his full-of-grace spouse. Small wonder, then, that, through spending all those years under the same roof with the Holy One of Israel and the Panhagia-Mary, the all-holy-and thus sharing their lives so intimately, the saint was mightily helped and inspired to scale the heights of holiness.

Emmanuel's Physical Presence

Joseph's ongoing sanctification through being so close for so long to the God-Man throws a revealing sidelight on the mystery of the Incarnation. It does so by illustrating the fact that the Word Incarnate invariably distributed his favors to individuals through his humanity; that is, through the instrumentality of his bodily presence, his words, his deeds, his sufferings. St. Thomas makes this point very clearly (2).

It was by virtue of his divinity that Christ's human actions were salvific in our regard, producing grace within us either by merit or by a certain efficacy.

This theme was taken up by John Paul II (3) with reference to St. Joseph's sanctification, which, he explains, was enhanced and honed to a wonderful degree because of his physical closeness over the years to the sacred humanity. And this same "physical closeness" factor would later manifest itself during the Savior's public ministry of sanctification and healing. An amazing early example is seen in the gospel episode we know as the Visitation. There it was the mere physical presence of Emmanuel, albeit still in his mother's womb, which caused that other unborn babe-the future John the Baptist-to "leap with joy" (cf. Lk 1:41).

The School of Nazareth

To return now to our opening point: St. Joseph's dwelling-place in Nazareth functioned at the same time as a school of a very special kind-a school of the gospel, a school of holiness. Its Founder and Principal was the Word "who has the words of eternal life" (Jn 6:68). And his first and all-time star pupils were (in this order) his mother and his legal father, themselves both destined to become leading models, tutors and guides for countless future Christian disciples in the centuries ahead.

As does every well-ordered school, the Nazareth one has a definite syllabus or curriculum; it was drawn up by the Founder, and he would subsequently formulate and preach it as the Christian gospel. Both doctrinal and moral teachings comprise the syllabus, which aims at instructing Christ's followers in revealed truth as well as promoting within them the imitation of the Master in thought, word and deed. In St. Paul's summary phrase, the gospel-school trains disciples to "put on the mind of Christ" (cf. 1 Cor 2:16).

It is in this context that Nazareth presents us with one of its many paradoxes: the Divine Apprentice who applied himself so diligently to obeying and learning his trade from Joseph was at the same time the spiritual Master and Exemplar from whom his guardian drew daily lessons in Christian wisdom and holiness. That is to say, the head of the Holy Family, during his long years of discipleship, was implicitly addressing the school's divine Founder in the prophetic words of their royal ancestor:

Direct my way, Lord, as thou wilt, teach me thy own paths. Ever let thy truth guide and teach me ... Teach me goodness, discipline and knowledge, for I have believed thy commandments (Ps 24:4, 5; 118:66).

Joseph's All-Round Holiness

As we have been seeing, all tradition recognizes that, among God's multitudinous holy ones, only the sinless Virgin Mary has surpassed Joseph in holiness of life. His unique brand of sanctity, says St. Francis de Sales, combines the faith of the patriarchs, the light of confessors, and the strength of martyrs. In other words, the carpenter of Nazareth was second only to Mary in graduating with high distinction from the school conducted by their Son and Lord for all who believe in him. Moreover, Joseph's holiness was not only dazzling but comprehensive and all-inclusive; in a word, it exhibited the whole panoply of virtues and gifts distributed by the Holy Spirit.

Something of this all-round fullness is reflected in the Litany of St. Joseph; it hails him as being, among other things, faithful, chaste, just, prudent, courageous, obedient, loyal, patient, industrious, pious, an exemplary parent, and a pillar of family life. It could be said, then, that the exhortation later to be addressed by St. Paul to all Christians was amply fulfilled in advance by the "just man" of Nazareth: "Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home in you" (Col 3:16). Accordingly a good number of papal documents from Pius IX onwards have upheld St. Joseph as a model of everything a follower of Christ is called to be. Benedict XV, for example, refers to his virtues as being "numerous and exalted," and this because "no virtue was lacking to ennoble the man who was to be the husband of Mary Immaculate and the foster-father of Jesus" (4).

The Anatomy of Holiness

In order to assess the depth and richness of Joseph's interior life, we first need to ask ourselves what holiness basically means. One can appropriately speak of its having an anatomy, since holiness is, in actual fact, a form of life-life of a very precious kind, being nothing less than God's own life in which we are privileged to share. The technical name for this life is grace, sanctifying grace, and this it is that the Son of God had in mind when he declared: "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly" (Jn 10:10).

Being a participation in Christ's own life, grace produces Christ likeness, alias holiness, within its recipients, ennobling and consecrating them as temples of worship, prayer and devotion. From this it follows that the degree of anyone's holiness is determined by the amount of grace they possess. What also follows is that Mary, being full of grace besides being God's mother, is his top-ranking masterpiece of holiness.

As for Mary's spouse, he was the next-ranking masterpiece of holiness formed at Nazareth with such loving care by the Savior. Through the divine life with which Joseph was so superabundantly endowed, every fiber of his being, his every thought, word and action, each single duty, trial and cross that came his way-in sum, every tiny detail of his life-was sanctified through being caught up into the supernatural sphere of grace and merit.

In the Service of Grace

As was to be the case with all baptized Christians, Christ's earthly father received, along with sanctifying grace, the complete spiritual apparatus, so to call it, that equips us for prayer and the other operations and activities proper to our supernatural status.

This spiritual apparatus or equipment is manifold, comprising first and foremost the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Hereby Joseph was enabled respectively to see and appreciate the living reality of God and his invisible kingdom; to desire and aspire towards God and his kingdom with a burning longing and complete confidence in the divine goodness; and, most important of all, to love God with the love of his whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and his neighbor as himself.

Again as is the case with all baptized Christians, further virtues-the so-called moral ones: namely, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance-were infused by God the Sanctifier into Joseph's soul, each of them designed to promote and facilitate in its distinctive way the operations of grace.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Likewise forming part of the supernatural apparatus, and designed to promote and facilitate in souls the operations of grace, is the Holy Spirit's sevenfold gift-wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord. Each after its own particular fashion, the gifts enhance the effectiveness of the virtues we receive along with grace, especially in difficult and trying situations.

These gifts of the Spirit, which St. Joseph received in such full measure, made him a pliant and generous instrument in the Lord's service. Wisdom enabled him to discern with great clarity God's presence and designs in all things and at all times. Through the gift of understanding he was enlightened to penetrate the inner meaning of sacred scripture, particularly those texts relating to the life and destiny of the Messiah entrusted to his care. And when the saint found himself beset by problems and crises arising from his demanding duties and concerns, the Holy Spirit's gift of counsel proved invaluable. As for fortitude, it supported the Redeemer's guardian amid the many dangers, difficulties and obstacles he had to face.

A happy characteristic of these supernatural gifts is that, provided we remain faithful to God, they increase as we go through life. So, too, for that matter, do all the various endowments forming part of the spiritual apparatus. The reason is that they are closely associated with and subsidiary to divine grace; and grace, being a form of created life-indeed, the highest possible-is a dynamic reality that seeks of itself to grow. St. Peter was aware of this. "Grow up in grace," he exhorts us (2 Pet 3:18). And St. John the Baptist meant much the same thing when he said of the Author of Grace: "He must increase, and I must decrease" (Jn 3:30).

Just and Obedient

That St. Joseph was a "just man" we know from Scripture. The Church widens the compliment by referring to him as "the just and obedient man" to whom the Father entrusted his Incarnate Son (5).

What we learn from this is that St. Joseph was totally submissive to the divine will. This is evident from the prompt and unquestioning way he carried out God's instructions conveyed to him on several occasions through mystical agencies. His meat and his drink, he could say with the Savior, was at all times to do the will of the heavenly Father (cf. Jn 4:34). And like his beloved spouse, the Lord's handmaid, Joseph conformed his entire life, down to its smallest details, "according to God's word" (cf. Lk 1:38).

Pope St. Gregory the Great said of obedience that it is not just a virtue but the mother of all virtues. This explains why the ever-obedient Joseph attained the heights of holiness in its every department. Obedience to God was the solid bedrock upon which his entire lifework rested. Or to put it another way, the divine will was the lodestar of his life. He was "just," says St. Francis de Sales, essentially because he was united with the will of God.

In the first place, this meant keeping God's commandments with scrupulous care and faithfully observing the rules, rites and ordinances of Israel. It further meant complete fidelity to the promptings and warnings of conscience, that inner, divine voice which Newman describes as "the messenger from him who in nature and in grace speaks to us behind a veil."

Incidentally, it was largely from St. Joseph's inspiring example that one of his closest clients-St. Jane Frances de Chantal-made it a rule of life that God's will must at all costs be done, "with no ifs, no buts, and no exceptions." What she further learned from St. Joseph is that our wayward, willful selves need to be totally submitted to the divine will if we are to make progress in the school of holiness. What God wills, St. Paul declares, is our sanctification (cf. 1 Thess 4:3). But the reverse of this formula is equally true: our sanctification lies in obeying God's will.

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