Saint Joseph

Joseph, teacher of the delicate transfer

“Love consists not in feeling great things,” says St. John of the Cross, “but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved,”

In some way, one must develop the habit of going from a mental activity, corresponding to our clear awareness, to what we feel, what we mentally recall, imagine, sense in our body or in our psyche, to a spiritual life where everything is apparently abolished.

This transfer is not easy: it is but a variation on the theme which is central to our study, the descent from Jerusalem to Nazareth; Jerusalem, the image of mental life as “religious” as one could wish, as rich as one could hope, and Nazareth, the image of a spiritual life, detached, silent, obscure. No, this transfer is not easy but, fortunately, as the angel said, “Nothing is impossible with God” (cf Lk 1:37).

When one senses his presence, thanks to Mary, Joseph appears to me to be the master of this delicate transfer.

People will perhaps be surprised to know that I do not often address prayers to Joseph, while I am deeply aware that I pray only in him. I do think of him (what could my thinking be focused on?) but he teaches me, precisely, the art of not thinking “in the human way,” a way which so often saddened Jesus when he was with his apostles (cf Mt 16:23).

Let us consider an example: the more someone is dear to us, the less we have to think of that person. We must reach him on a spiritual level whether he is present or absent, and not through imagination, daydreams or a set of impressions we interpose. The mental faculty must be at the service of the operation with the greatest discretion possible: it must not act as a screen, capturing, our arresting, and all the more so, distorting. We must realize that unless a kind of miracle takes place, things are bound to be so.

The human mental faculty is intrusive and, moreover, it is falsified most of the time, except in a tiny child and in those who end up by being like children after a long period of purification. Never were Jesus’ words so true: “No one is good but God alone!” (Lk 18:19). Human imagination, memory, feelings and the rest are a field of darnel dramatically mixed up with the good grain and it is preferable that we leave it so, as Jesus says. The more the affective aspect of our nature is unleased in what we call love or its opposites (anger, indignation, jealousy, fear, etc.), the more the mental aspect becomes delirious, tyrannical, dangerous, the more it risks falsifying objective reality.

What shall we say about fixed ideas, obsessions and other analogous difficulties which are so dramatically widespread?

Joseph teaches us the supreme art of dying to our mental life in order to allow ourselves to be born again to a way of perfection which is akin to that of Mary and is only remotely similar to what we could have known previously. Let us, for some time, try the experiment of never deliberately recalling the human being we love very much; we will then begin to realize that love comes from much beyond, from a much greater depth than our human heart alone, our feelings, our judgment, whatever qualities they may have. We will experience a freedom so new, an insight, a loving force so ingenious that we will no longer be able to deny that all comes from elsewhere.

St. John of the Cross, this accomplished son of the Carmel of the house of Mary and Joseph, had said as much but it was difficult to believe him.

“Take no heed of the creatures if thou wilt keep the image of God clearly and simply in thy soul, but empty thy spirit of them, and withdraw far from them, and thou shalt walk in the Divine light, for God is not like to the creatures.”

‘Saint Joseph: Shadow of the Father’ written by Father Andrew Doze

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St Joseph

The LORD spoke to Nathan and said:
“Go, tell my servant David,
‘When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors,
I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins,
and I will make his kingdom firm.
It is he who shall build a house for my name.
And I will make his royal throne firm forever.
I will be a father to him,
and he shall be a son to me.
Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me;
your throne shall stand firm forever.'”

St Joseph by El Greco

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St Joseph in a vision

The last words Joseph spoke to his Spouse were: “Blessed art Thou among all women and elect of all the creatures. Let angels and men praise Thee; let all the generations know, praise and exalt thy dignity; and may in Thee be known, adored and exalted the name of the Most High through all the coming ages; may He be eternally praised for having created Thee so pleasing in his eyes and in the sight of all the blessed spirits. I hope to enjoy thy sight in the heavenly fatherland.”

……….

The holy child Joseph was born most beautiful and perfect of body and caused in his parents and in his relations an extraordinary delight, something like that caused by the birth of Saint John the Baptist, though the cause of it was more hidden. The Lord hastened in him the use of his reason, perfecting it in his third year, endowing it with infused science and augmenting his soul with new graces and virtues. From that time the child began to know God by faith, and also by natural reasoning and science, as the cause and Author of all things. He eagerly listened and understood profoundly all that was taught him in regard to God and his works. At this premature age he already practiced the highest kinds of prayer and contemplation and eagerly engaged in the exercise of the virtues proper to his youth; so that, at the time when others come to the use of reason, at the age of seven years or more, Saint Joseph was already a perfect man in the use of it and in holiness. He was of a kind disposition, loving, affable, sincere, showing inclinations not only holy but angelic, growing in virtue and perfection and advancing toward his espousal with most Holy Mary by an altogether irreplaceable life.

For the confirmation and increase of his good qualities was then added the intercession of the Blessed Lady; for as soon as she was informed that the Lord wished her to enter the married state with him, She earnestly besought the Lord to sanctify Saint Joseph and inspire him with most chaste thoughts and desires in conformity with her own. The Lord listened to her prayer and permitted her to see what great effects his right hand wrought in the mind and spirit of the patriarch Saint Joseph. They were so copious, that they cannot be described in human words. He infused into his soul the most perfect habits of all the virtues and gifts. He balanced anew all his faculties and filled him with grace. In the virtue and perfection of chastity the holy spouse was elevated higher than the seraphim; for the purity, which they possessed without body, Saint Joseph possessed in his earthly body and in mortal flesh; never did an image of the impurities of the animal and sensible nature engage, even for one moment, any of his faculties. This freedom from all such imaginations and his angelic simplicity fitted him for the companionship and presence of the most Pure among all creatures, and without this excellence he would not have been worthy of so great a dignity and rare excellence.

Also in the other virtues he was wonderfully distinguished, especially in charity; for he dwelt at the fountainhead of that living water, which flows on to eternal life (John 4, 14); he was in close proximity to that sphere of fire and was consumed without resistance. The best that can be said of the charity of our saint is what I have already said in the preceding chapter; namely, that his love of God was really the cause of his mortal sickness and of his death. The manner of his death was a privilege of his singular love, for his sweet sighs of love surpassed and finally put an end to those of his sickness, being far more powerful. As the objects of his love, Christ and his Mother, were present with him always and as both of Them were more closely bound to him than to any of the woman-born, his most pure and faithful heart was unavoidably consumed by the loving effects of such a close union. —Sister Mary of Agreda, “Mystical City of God”

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Gratia Infusia

The apparent uselessness and faults of people chosen by God for the state of abandonment.

In the eyes of the world, these people are useless nonentities. They can expect neither esteem nor reward. This is not to suggest that people who hold important positions are thereby prevented from attaining the state of self-abandonment; nor, of course, is this state inconsistent with great holiness, which attracts universal veneration. Yet a vastly greater number of souls in this state have their virtue known only to Cod. Their condition sets them free from nearly every external obligation, and they are not suitable for worldly affairs or for anything demanding thought or steady application. They seem quite useless, weak in mind and body, with no creative power and lacking in all emotion. They involve themselves in nothing, they plan nothing, they foresee nothing and set their hearts on nothing. They are, as it were, quite uncivilized and have none of those qualities which general culture, study and thought give a human being. They are children before they have been taught how to behave, and we notice their faults which, though no worse than children’s, shock us more. God strips them of everything except their innocence so they have nothing but him alone. The world, knowing nothing of this, can judge only by appearances, finds nothing likable or worthwhile about them and so rejects and despises them. They are the laughingstock of everybody. more closely they are observed, the more they are disliked. No one knows what to make of them. Yet there is an indefinable something which seems to testify in their favor…

‘Abandonment to Divine Providence’ by Father Jean-Paul de Caussade

In honor of the year of St Joseph and a personal devotion: an angel guides Joseph as he sleeps.

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Mother of Sorrows

But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.
……….
And his father and mother were wondering
at those things which were spoken concerning him.
And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother:
Behold this child is set for the fall,
and for the resurrection of many in Israel,
and for a sign which shall be contradicted;

And thy own soul a sword shall pierce,
that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.
……….
And all that heard him (Jesus) were astonished
at his wisdom and his answers.
And seeing him, they wondered.
And his mother said to him:
Son, why hast thou done so to us?
behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
And he said to them:
How is it that you sought me?
did you not know,
that I must be about my father’s business?
And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them.
And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth,
and was subject to them.
And his mother kept all these words in her heart.
And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.

Gospel of Luke: chapter 2

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