Pope John Paul II: St. Joseph: Guardian of the Redeemer: Part IV

St. Joseph: Guardian . . .

 

W  ork was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth.

The Gospel specifies the kind of work Joseph did in order to support his family; he was a carpenter. This simple word sums up Joseph’s entire life. For Jesus, these were hidden years. The years to which Luke refers after recounting the episode that occurred in the Temple.  “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them”.  (Lk 2:51). This ‘submission” or obedience of Jesus in the house of Nazareth should be understood as a sharing in the work of Joseph. Having learned the work of his presumed father, he was known as “the carpenter’s son”.

The Sanctity of . . .

If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human families in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus’ work at the side of Joseph the carpenter. In our own day, the Church has emphasized this by instituting the liturgical memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. Human work, especially manual labor, receives special prominence in the Gospel. Along with the humanity of the Son of God, work too has been taken up in the mystery of the Incarnation, and has also been redeemed in a special way. At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption.

In the human growth of Jesus “in wisdom, age and grace,” the virtue of industriousness played a notable role; since “work is a human good” which “transforms nature” and makes man “in a sense, more human.”

. . . Human Work

The importance of work in human life demands that its meaning be known and assimilated in order to “help all people to come closer to God, the Creator and Redeemer, to participate in his salvific plan for man and the world, and to deepen … friendship with Christ in their lives, by accepting, through faith, a living participation in his threefold mission as Priest, Prophet, and King.”

What is crucially important here is the sanctification of daily life. A sanctification which each person must acquire according to his or her own state. And one which can be promoted according to a model accessible to all people; “St. Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up to great destinies; … he is the proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things; it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic.”

V:   The Primacy of the Interior Life

The same aura of silence that envelops everything else about Joseph also shrouds his work as a carpenter in the house of Nazareth. It is, however, a silence that reveals in a special way the inner portrait of the man. The Gospels speak exclusively of what Joseph “did”.  Still, they allow us to discover in his “actions” – shrouded in silence as they are – an aura of deep contemplation. Joseph was in daily contact with the mystery “hidden from ages past,” and which “dwelt” under his roof. This explains, for example, why St. Teresa of Jesus, the great reformer of the Carmelites, promoted the renewal of veneration to St. Joseph in Western Christianity.

The total sacrifice, whereby Joseph surrendered his whole existence to the demands of the Messiah’s coming into his home, becomes understandable only in the light of his pro-found interior life. It was from this interior life that “very singular commands and consolations came, bringing him also the logic and strength that belong to simple and clear souls, and giving him the power of making great decisions – such as the decision to put his liberty immediately at the disposition of the divine designs; to make over to them also his legitimate human calling, his conjugal happiness, to accept the conditions, the responsibility and the burden of a family, but, through an incomparable virginal love, to renounce that natural conjugal love that is the foundation and nourishment of the family.”

This submission to God, this readiness of will to dedicate oneself to all that serves him, is really nothing less than that exercise  of devotion which constitutes one expression of the virtue of religion.

Fatherly . . .

The communion of life between Joseph and Jesus leads us to consider once again the mystery of the Incarnation. Precisely in reference to the humanity of Jesus as the efficacious instrument of his divinity for the purpose of sanctifying man; “By virtue of his divinity, Christ’s human actions were salvific for us; causing grace within us, either by merit or by a certain efficacy.”

Among those actions, the Gospel writers highlight those which have to do with the Paschal Mystery. But they also underscore the importance of physical contact with Jesus for healing (cf. for example, Mk 1:41). And the influence Jesus exercised upon John the Baptist when they were both in their mothers’ wombs. (cf. Lk 1:41-44).

As we have seen, the apostolic witness did not neglect the story of Jesus’ birth, his circumcision, his presentation in the Temple, his flight into Egypt and his hidden life in Nazareth. It recognized the “mystery” of grace present in each of these saving “acts,” inasmuch as they all share the same source of love; the divinity of Christ. If through Christ’s humanity this love shone on all mankind, the first beneficiaries were undoubtedly those whom the divine will had most intimately associated with itself; Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Joseph, his presumed father.

. . . Love

Why should the “fatherly” love of Joseph not have had an influence upon the “filial” love of Jesus? And vice versa. Why should the “filial” love of Jesus not have had an influence upon the “fatherly” love of Joseph? Thus leading to a further deepening of their unique relationship. Those souls most sensitive to the impulses of divine love have rightly seen in Joseph a brilliant example of the interior life.

Furthermore, in Joseph, the apparent tension between the active and the contemplative life finds an ideal harmony that is possible only for those who possess the perfection of charity. Following St. Augustine’s well-known distinction between the love of the truth (caritas veritatis) and the practical demands of love (necessitas caritatis), we can say that Joseph experienced both love of the truth – that pure contemplative love of the divine Truth which radiated from the humanity of Christ – and the demands of love – that equally pure and selfless love required for his vocation to safeguard and develop the humanity of Jesus, which was inseparably linked to his divinity.

VI:  Patron of the Church . . .

At a difficult time in the Church’s history, Pope Pius IX, wishing to place her under the powerful patronage of the holy patriarch Joseph, declared him “Patron of the Catholic Church”.  For Pius IX this was no idle gesture, since by virtue of the sublime dignity which God has granted to his most faithful servant Joseph, “the Church, after the Blessed Virgin, his spouse, has always held him in great honor and showered him with praise, having recourse to him amid tribulations.”

What are the reasons for such great confidence? Leo XIII explained it in this way; “The reasons why Saint Joseph must be considered the special patron of the Church, and the Church in turn draws exceeding hope from his care and patronage, chiefly arising from his having been the husband of Mary and the presumed father of Jesus. Joseph was in his day the lawful and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family. It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph’s dignity that in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ.”

. . . in Our Day

This patronage must be invoked as ever necessary for the Church, not only as a defense against all dangers, but also, and indeed primarily, as an impetus for her renewed commitment to evangelization in the world and to re-evangelization in those lands and nations where – as I wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Christifdeles Laici – “religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and are now put to a hard test”. In order to bring the first proclamation of Christ, or to bring it anew wherever it has been neglected or forgotten, the Church has need of special “power from on high” (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8); a gift of the Spirit of the Lord. A gift which is not unrelated to the intercession and example of his saints.

Besides trusting in Joseph’s sure protection, the Church also trusts in his noble example, which transcends all individual states of life and serves as a model for the entire Christian community, whatever the condition and duties of each of its members may be.

Joseph’s . . .

Pope Paul VI invited us to invoke Joseph’s patronage “as the Church has been wont to do in these recent times, for herself in the first place, with a spontaneous theological reflection on the marriage of divine and human action in the great economy of the Redemption, in which economy the first – the divine one – is wholly sufficient unto itself, while the second – the human action which is ours – though capable of nothing (ct. In 15:5), is never dispensed from a humble but conditional and ennobling collaboration. The Church also calls upon Joseph as her protector because of a profound and ever present desire to reinvigorate her ancient life with true evangelical virtues, such as shine forth in Saint Joseph.”

The Church transforms these needs into prayer. Recalling that God wished to entrust the beginnings of our redemption to the faithful care of Saint Joseph, she asks God to grant that she may faithfully cooperate in the work of salvation; that she may receive the same faithfulness and purity of heart that inspired Joseph in serving the Incarnate Word; and that she may walk before God in the ways of holiness and justice, following Joseph’s example and through his intercession.

. . . Protection

One hundred years ago, Pope Leo XIII had already exhorted the Catholic world to pray, for the protection of Saint Joseph, Patron of the whole Church. The Encyclical Epistle Quamquam Pluries appealed to Joseph’s “fatherly love … for the Child Jesus” and commended to him, as “the provident guardian of the divine Family,” “the beloved inheritance which Jesus Christ purchased by his blood”.  Since that time – as I recalled at the beginning of this Exhortation – the Church has implored the protection of St. Joseph on the basis of “that sacred bond of charity which united him to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God,” and the Church has commended to Joseph all of her cares, including those dangers which threaten the human family.

Concluding . . .

Even today we have many reasons to pray in a similar way; “Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and sin … graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of darkness … and just as once you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God’s Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity”.  Today we still have good reason to commend everyone to St. Joseph. 

It is my heartfelt wish that these reflections on the person of Saint Joseph will renew in us the prayerful devotion which my predecessor called for a century ago. Our prayers and the very person of Joseph have renewed significance for the Church in our day.

. . . Thoughts

The Second Vatican Council made all of us sensitive once again to the “great things which God has done”. And to that “economy of salvation” of which St. Joseph was a special minister.  Commending ourselves, then, to the protection of him to whose custody God “entrusted his greatest and most precious treasures“; let us at the same time learn from him how to be servants of the “economy of salvation“.

May Saint Joseph become for all of us an exceptional teacher in the service of Christ’s saving mission; a mission  which is the responsibility of each and every member of the Church; husbands and wives, parents, those who live by the work of their hands or by any other kind of work, those called to the contemplative life and those called to the apostolate.

This just man, who bore within himself the entire heritage of the Old Covenant, was also brought into the beginning of the New and Eternal Covenant in Jesus Christ.  May he show us the paths of this  saving Covenant, in which there must be a continuation and further development of the “fullness of time”  that belongs to the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation of the Word.

May Saint Joseph obtain for the Church and for the world, as well as for each of us, the blessing of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Given at Rome, in St. Peter’s. On 15 August, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Given in the year 1989, the eleventh of my Pontificate.

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