Notes Upon the Feast of Saint Joseph

One of the things I've been doing lately is cultivating my relationship with Saint Joseph.

He brought the Messiah into Egypt, anointing balm into the land of sin & jahiliyah

I have a short litany of saints I invoke at the end of every rosary, of saints that have a particular meaning to me.  I have begun beginning it with him, then going to SS Joachim and Anne, then SS Anne and Simeon, then SS Elizabeth & Zacharias et S. Jean Baptiste, then SS Charles Borremeo, de Foucauld, of Austria and Wotyla, and so on, all the way through to Saint Philip Neri and Father Solanus Casey. I always end with those two, because I love them.

Anyway, in the course of this prayer, I have been thinking how great he is, Joseph:  a silent saint, whom we know relatively little about.  He may not even have been alive during Christ's public ministry. He is I suppose then of the Old Testament order, like John the Baptist.

He's mysterious, isn't he? Like so many things about the Faith, I like how his role seems best understood axiomatically.

You start with a recognition, a reality, a revelation "Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.." then the truth unfolds from it, by implication. The Incarnation is radical in this way. Faith in it is the greatest revolution then, in all human history. It is a transfiguring and radicalizing reality. If this is true, then..

So many other amazing things are, too. 

For example, Mary: her title, her role in salvation, is expressed by way of a simple syllogism. Her son is God. Therefore, she is the Mother of God.  So then is it likewise true that Joseph is the husband of Mary. The patriarch of her family. He is therefore the patriarch of the mother of God. Likewise, he is thus the patriarch of her son. Quod erat demonstrandum.

He becomes what he is through her, and she through her son.

سلام عليك  يا مريم الرب معك

It is interesting, because she in herself is nothing. A mere frail reed, an insignificant vessel. But through her faith and humility, she becomes the means by which our history is redeemed.  The eternal cycle of meaninglessness in its great grinding nihilism is caught and brought to a cataclysmic halt by the assent of a young woman to the will of God. God, who is always independent and transcendent and sufficient to all things unto himself, chooses this thin reed to span all the works of hell, and smash them. The empty eternal void is filled by the grace over- welling this tiny vessel. Her gentle acceptance of this will, that incredible prophetic burden, is an act of this grace.

It is the same with her betrothed, Joseph. He is asked to accept the putatively impossible, the incredible. And he does.     

It's also interesting how the protestants usually ignore him, and her. They talk and talk, babble on for hours in those talkathons they call church about any other person in the Bible - finding the oddest characters (like, say, Jabez) to fixate on. The only time I seem to hear Joseph brought up in that quarter is when they are stridently denying the Blessed Virgin's perpetual virginity. That terrifying chastity.. It's too much for them, the poor buggers. I understand them.

Because it is rough. Rough, just like the grain of the cross. But when Joseph realizes that he has been betrothed to the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, he has to imitate her: offer himself in total surrender to that same Spirit. He has to gird his loins like a man, and offer his life in complete surrender, just as she has already done.

In this way, he is her first devotee. Every one of us who has since been entrusted to her, and had her entrusted to us (cf. John 19:26-27) is therefore following after him, except that his relation to her is not one of discipleship, but is rather one of husbandship, of authority.

He takes her, then offers her intimately to God, our Father. And then he is entrusted with her son, the Only Son of the Father, and receives him intimately into his own hearth. His home becomes the hearth of God himself (le Foyer de Dieu lui meme) in the most literal ways.

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you under my roof.. "

Think of how Paul says that the family, marriage, images the relation of Christ to the Church (cf. Ephesians 5) and therefore somehow images the inner life of the Trinity itself. In the Holy Family this mystery is  manifested in the most primordial manner. 

It's again interesting how so much about the early history of the Faith is hidden.  We do not know much about the intimate life of the Holy Family. It's similar to how the Acts of the Apostles just ends in mid-story. There are so many things you think they would have told us. Why are there no canonical records of the apostles' martyrdoms? The life of John and the Blessed Virgin at Patmos and Ephesus? Her ascension or dormition? What about Christ's childhood and adolescence, then his young adulthood prior to his baptism and Cana? We have the odd tale of his being lost then found at the Temple, and nothing more.

Why do we not a have a few more books of the infinite library (cf. John 21:25) that we would need to recount all the stories of his life and the life of his Church?  John 20:30 tells us there were *many* other things that Christ did that are not recorded in the Bible.  Not just a few.  Many.  What is this about?  Why must we be left so tantalized, gazing through all this glass so darkly?  

I am certain that it is because the things that are cloaked are so good, too very good for us to understand. We have been told enough to draw us toward that revelation. What is obscure is hidden for our own good.

It speaks to the sacred nature of the life of Joseph's family, this cloistered quietude and anonymity. That great scriptural silence testifies to his humility. He is one of those great silent saints.  Most of the saints are hidden.  I believe most of the greatest saints are hidden. They are unnoticed by the world, and have no interest in drawing any attention to themselves. Joseph is exactly like this. Very likely the greatest saint apart from his bride, and just as humble as she is.  He retires in silence and is consumed by prayer.

The world gets all exercised over the question of whether they had sexual relations.  What they fail to see is that the Holy Family is eschatologically ordered, a prophetic intimation of what is coming, when there will be no male or female, no marrying nor giving in marriage (cf. Galatians 3:28, Matthew 22:30), when we will be like angels in transfigured bodies, and all of our relations will be characterized by utter charity.

I suspect the sexual pleasure we're so obsessed with now will be somehow obsolete then. Just a gut hunch, that.

So, Joseph.  The saint who was the patriarch of the Blessed Virgin, the patriarch of her son.  In the economy of grace and humility this is the meanest office.  How is it that our God is so humble as to accept the authority of a man in this fashion?  Because he did. As he still does, see Matthew 16:19 for that incredible gift of authority. "What you loosen is loosened, what you bind is bound.." Isn't that astounding?

Joseph's name, incidentally, means "God increases, adds" or "God does it again"- the idea is one of divine augmentation, intensification. Like with Joseph the son of Israel in the court of Pharaoh, God's grace is manifested in the life of this quiet man in ways exponential infinitely beyond our poor hope and understanding.

And as I say, that my friends is why we don't know much about him. Because that knowledge is far too great for us.

Passover Consummate: Israel's Universal - "Orthodox Ecumenical Catholic" - Triumph.

And that reality should make you very glad and create in you great hope. Rejoice, and be not afraid.

This my friends is why today is a great feast. The Feast of the Patriarch of Humility, Our Dear Saint Joseph. 

Happy St. Joseph's Day everyone.

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