S. JOSEPH
Joseph, her husband, being a just man--
S. Matt. I. 19.
O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon
thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the
glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St.
Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and
Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our
prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty
and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.
ROMAN.
When we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as
revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what
we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There
is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as
Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as
interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who
can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as
caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of
Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much
more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with
spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is
best expressed by the word _Father_. It is very significant that as the
volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler,
Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's
presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands
in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are
precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word
Father connotes.
And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His
Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation
which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There
was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the
humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was
also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and
Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things
which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is
thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother
would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be
committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and
His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man
who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature
of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the
will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the
husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of
her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very
choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature
which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long
nurtured by the richness of His grace.
We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the
office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals
the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose
judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the
consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view
events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who
can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such
men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow
discipline.
We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were
descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph
was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married
and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the
Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and
that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which
commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt
and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of
elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a
right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would
have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was
a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the
situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain
that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union,
the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of
Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of
deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God
for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no
revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest
themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may
safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact
is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the
basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of
her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic
Christians.
To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed
Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found
with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when
something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left
breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed
impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The
beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and
disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be,
he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could
he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid
publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that
we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate
wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any
circumstances of life.
We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the
course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There
could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while
he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto
him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the
Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his
name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."
It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic
message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing
a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act
when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are
delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of
things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in
his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the
coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the
charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child:
and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all
pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he
shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph
would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have
understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the
work of the redemption of Israel.
As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the
significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in
which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it
becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we
observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of
what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives
that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine
meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never
dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that
God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation
that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the
work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its
relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the
Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual
significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his
vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to
nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique
vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian
experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the
divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within
the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph
guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity
our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew:
but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in
sacramental grace.
Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of
S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments
after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we
habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There
is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the
Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important
as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to
think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a
side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and
inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the
Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us
that is the _appropriation_ of the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us
and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death;
and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go
farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual
opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward
evening and the day is far spent."
We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he
enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family.
The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now
enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full
protection.
So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had
brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so
misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was
consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no
such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well
known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without
any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage
which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is
utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the
Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before
and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic
named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by
all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and
clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never
been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows
a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a
superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.
The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity
and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised
by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the
superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are
the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness
is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness
which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is
praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality
failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude
of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have
an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions
loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to
abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which
to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to
base life on pure scepticism.
Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort,
whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to
believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming
a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never
reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And
it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was
open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions
and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they
are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual
development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage
of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as
having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to
contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try
to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible:
they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power
of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying
condition.
What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has
this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of
growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an
invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is
indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe.
The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not
mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean
a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates
what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to
the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear
that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the
test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and
consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.
Open-mindedness is sensitiveness to spiritual impressions, readiness for
spiritual advance, even when such impressions cut across much that has
seemed to us well settled, and such advance involves the upset of his
established ways of thought. What distinguishes the evolution in the
thought of the sceptic from that in the thought of the saint is that in
the one case the result is destructive and in the other constructive.
The sceptic is like a man who starts to build a house, and then
periodically tears down what he has so far built and begins again on a
new plan; the saint is like the house builder who broadens his plan in
the course of construction, and who finds that within the limits of his
general scheme there is room for indefinite improvement. The one never
gets any building at all; the other gets a palace of which the last
stages are of a more highly decorated school of architecture than he
had conceived, or indeed, could conceive, when he began his work.
In S. Joseph's case nothing could be more revolutionary in appearance
than the truth he was asked to accept. He was asked to believe in the
virgin-motherhood of his bethrothed, and in the fact that the Child soon
to be born was He Who was to save Israel from his sins. He was asked to
accept these incredible statements and to act upon them by taking Mary
to wife as he had proposed. And he did not hesitate to accept the
evidence of a dream and act in accordance with it. How could he do this?
Because the required action which seemed so revolutionary of all his
previous notions was, in fact, quite in accordance with his knowledge of
God and of the promises of God. Though a simple man, perhaps because he
was a simple man, he would know something of the teaching of the
prophets. That teaching would have given him thoughts about God which
would have, unconsciously, prepared him for these new acts of God.
Though we cannot see before how a prophecy is to be fulfiled, after the
event we can see that this is what is intended by it. We were actually
being prepared by the prophecy for what was to take place. And thus, no
doubt, S. Joseph's mind, being filled with the teaching of the
Scriptures which he had heard read in the Synagogue every Sabbath day,
would find that this new act of God on which he was asked to rely was,
in fact, but a new step in the unfolding of that Providence which had
for centuries been shaping the history of his nation.
It is a quality to cultivate, this simple open-mindedness which is
ready to respond to new spiritual impulses. It is precisely what
prevents that deadly attitude of soul which proceeds as though religion
were for us exhausted: as though we had reached the limit of expectancy.
But to expect nothing is to receive nothing, because it is only
expectancy that perceives what is offered. We move in a world which is
thronged with spirtual impulses and energetic with spiritual powers. God
is trying to lead us on to new spiritual experiences by which we may
attain to a better understanding of Him. There is no assignable limit to
our possible growth. But we fix a limit when we close our souls to
further experiences by the practical denial that they exist. If we are
childlike, we are always expecting new things of our Father; if we are
open-minded we are alive to the activities of the spiritual world. We
are conscious of possessing a growing religion, a religion truly
evolutionary, constantly bringing to our knowledge unsuspected riches
stored in the very principles whose meaning we had assumed that we had
exhausted.
Perhaps one of the treasures of our religion of which we have not
achieved full consciousness is God's choice of us to be the guardians of
His revelation. It is our charge "to keep the faith." I suppose that
this responsibility is commonly regarded as belonging to some vaguely
imagined Church which hands it on from generation to generation, to us
among others, but without imposing on us an obligation of any active
sort. But we are the Church--members in particular of the Body of
Christ. And in the dissemination of the faith the last appeal is to us,
not to some outside tribunal. When the Church wishes to discover its
faith and make it articulate, its place of search is in the minds and
hearts of the faithful. Our responsibility is to testify to the Catholic
Faith, not so much by positively asserting it as by making it active and
vivid in our lives so that its presence and power can by no means be
mistaken. You, for instance, in common with the rest of the faithful,
are the custodians of this truth of the perpetual virginity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. It may seem a small matter, but it is not. That it
is not is readily seen from this fact, that when the perpetual virginity
of our Blessed Mother is denied then also the Incarnation of her Son is
denied or is held only in a half-hearted way. The Church stresses such
facts, not only because they are facts, but because by their character
they form a hedge about the truth of the Incarnation of our Lord. And we
who are Catholic Christians must feel an obligation to hold fast this
fact. We ought actively to show our firm adherence to it. How? Chiefly
by our attitude towards Blessed Mary herself, by the devotion that we
show her. If we are quite indifferent to devotion to Blessed Mary, if we
show her no honour, if we likewise fail in honour to her guardian, S.
Joseph, is it not to be expected that our grasp upon the truths which
are enshrined in such devotion will be feeble, and that we shall hold
them as of small moment? The whole system of Catholic thought is so
nicely articulated, so consistently held together, that failure to hold
even the smallest constituent indicates a faulty conception of the
whole. Catholics are constantly accused of over-stressing devotion to
blessed Mary and the saints and thereby encroaching upon the honour due
to our Lord. The answer to the reproach is to be found in the question:
Who to-day are defending to the very death the truth of our Lord's
Incarnation and the truths that hang upon it? Are they those who deny
the legitimacy of invocation, or those in whose religious practise it
holds an important and vital place?
A PANEGYRICK ON THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
I do not tremble, when I write
A Mistress' praise, but with delight
Can dive for pearls into the flood,
Fly through every garden, wood,
Stealing the choice of flow'rs and wind,
To dress her body or her mind;
Nay the Saints and Angels are
Nor safe in Heaven, till she be fair,
And rich as they; nor will this do,
Until she be my idol too.
With this sacrilege I dispense,
No fright is in my conscience,
My hand starts not, nor do I then
Find any quakings in my pen;
Whose every drop of ink within
Dwells, as in me my parent's sin,
And praises on the paper wrot
Have but conspired to make a blot:
Why should such fears invade me now
That writes on her? to whom do bow
The souls of all the just, whose place
Is next to God's, and in his face
All creatures and delights doth see
As darling of the Trinity;
To whom the Hierarchy doth throng,
And for whom Heaven is all one song.
Joys should possess my spirit here,
But pious joys are mixed with fear:
Put off thy shoe, 'tis holy ground,
For here the flaming Bush is found,
The mystic rose, the Ivory Tower,
The morning Star and David's bower,
The rod of Moses and of Jesse,
The fountain sealèd, Gideon's fleece,
A woman clothèd with the Sun,
The beauteous throne of Salomon,
The garden shut, the living spring,
The Tabernacle of the King,
The Altar breathing sacred fume,
The Heaven distilling honeycomb,
The untouched lily, full of dew,
A Mother, yet a Virgin too,
Before and after she brought forth
(Our ransom of eternal worth)
Both God and man. What voice can sing
This mystery, or Cherub's wing
Lend from his golden stock a pen
To write, how Heaven came down to men?
Here fear and wonder so advance
My soul, it must obey a trance.
PART TWO