Saint Joseph and the Word
Saint Joseph was the most
silent saint of all.
No one has written down
one word of his
for our edification. Not
one small
word of his was saved
unless it is
the Word that was the sum
of all his life,
the precious Word he saved
for everyone
that It might speak the
cross and not the knife,
long, long after he was
dead and gone
and gathered to his
fathers, and never again
could he spirit the Child
and the young girl, his mother,
out of the dangerous
city. From all men
of all times he was chosen
and no other –
not one from among the
prophets – but this rarely heard
and wordless man, to save
God’s mighty Word.
Sister
Maris Stella
(ack.
‘The Mary Book’. Sheed & Ward. 1950)
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'A Carpenter's Son'
He was a carpenter’s son, from Nazareth.
I wish to begin with the utmost simplicity, and by saying that this was true. True in the sense that Our Lord was truly man and, legally, the son of Joseph.
When a Jewish girl was solemnly betrothed to a Jew, she became legally under his protection and passed out of her father’s control, even if she did not leave her father’s house. When Our Lady was betrothed to St. Joseph by law she was responsible to him, and he for her. I will ask you, though, only for one moment, to consider the appalling hour during which St. Joseph perceived that she would be the mother of a child who was not his own. Strictly speaking, it was his duty to hand her over to the law, and it was the duty of the terrible Jewish authorities to cause her to be stoned. Such was the agonising preface to the history of Our Lord, agonising, need I say, not only to St. Joseph but to the immaculate Virgin Mother of God. But the incredible purity of Mary had diffused its fragrance around herself: Joseph was, the Gospel says, a ‘just’ man, he knew by instinct that, whatever had happened, there could be no imaginable taint in her whom by now he appreciated sufficiently to know that at least, and he was making arrangements to send her quietly away, so that no-one should hear about what had happened. Then it was that God Himself let the mind of this simple working man know that he need have no fear; he kept Mary with him and he assumed full paternity, in the eyes of the world, of the child that was born; and legally, and in every way that human society could perceive and accept, he ranked himself as father of her child, and never did Jesus, during His childhood, adolescence, or afterwards, do anything which could humiliate or disconcert St. Joseph. I beg of you to delve into this episode so little spoken of, and to venerate the persons who went through so really dreadful an experience. But it is not of the legal and social parenthood or humanity of Christ that I wish now to speak.
Jesus Christ could not in any sense have been called son of Joseph had He not been truly man. It would have been an illegitimate fiction, a wanton delusion, so to call Him, had He been anything short of it. But to be a man involves at least your being partly body. A body is not a thing you ‘have’, but a thing you are. We are not body plus soul, soul in spite of body, soul inside a body, but persons, body-souls. Our Lord grew. He ‘increased in stature’ say the Evangelists.
He was a baby, Christmas does not allow us to forget that; if you had met Him then, you would not have been able to do towards Him more than you can towards any lovable little baby that looks at you with its blue whites to its eyes and catches hold of your thumb with its incredibly strong miniscule fingers ending in pink nails so tiny as to be almost laughable. You cannot say anything to such a baby; you can do nothing but love it; but it always knows if you do. He was a little boy, and you know how very little boys will trust you, take you for granted, never begin to dream that you are going to be unkind to them, instinctively sheer away from you if you begin taking airs or putting on affectations towards them, are very hurt if you do not accept their views of things exactly in the way they accept them. Little boys can be made very lonely if you act the aloof grown-up, but far more lonely if you act as a child, which they know very well you are not. Jesus was next a growing lad, and only for one moment is the curtain lifted upon those years, during an episode of three days, when, upon the occasion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, He stayed behind and was lost to Mary and to Joseph. They found Him, and thereafter, His history relates, He stayed at Nazareth, being ‘subject unto them’. He learned and gradually performed His work as smith and carpenter in a town which, though small, was a very active one. Nazareth lay near two roads, up and down which trade flowed continuously and also the Roman soldiery, and also the caravans taking people to and from the summer-court of Herod Antipas at Sephoris. When Our Lord was about ten, He, and all the folk of Nazareth, watched that town on its hill four miles away going up in smoke when the Romans, because of an abortive insurrection, burnt it; those Romans crucified two thousand men of the neighbourhood as an object lesson. Mary could not go to her well, nor Jesus to the social meeting place of any oriental town, the Gate, without seeing, or trying not to see, poor human corpses rotting upon crosses. He knew, perhaps she dreamed what was to happen after twenty years, not away in Galilee, but in Jerusalem, the holy city, the dear city, which yet should crucify its Lord.
C.C.Martindale, S.J.
(ack. ‘The Book of the Saviour’. Sheed & Ward. 1952.)
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‘Thoughts on St. Joseph’
Dear Friend,
You ask me to talk to you from time to time and tell you what my mind is full of. Well, what fills it at the moment is that great and rather mysterious figure, St. Joseph, whose very name provokes a smile from superior persons. He was at once a workman and a gentleman. He was cheerful and silent, with a big noble nose, muscular arms and hands, with one finger often wrapped in rag, as is the way with those who labour in wood. He was not popular with Nazareth folk, they scarcely are who follow a peculiar calling.
And what more singular for a man than virginity, especially at that period? Why had he taken it on himself? How patient he must have been and strong against boredom, like the sun beginning the same round every morning
without weariness.
I see him on an autumn day coming back from Caiffa where he went to fetch timber in a broken-down cart. I see him crossing the Sizon at the spot where the plain of Esdraelon unfolds before you, up to the trans-Jordanian mountains, the territory of six of the tribes. The cart sinks to its axles in the mud.
Then I see him in his workshop on a sunny morning. I hear the saw and hollow noise of balks of timber, and a child coming to look for him and calling “Joseph, Joseph” (perhaps that has some bearing one way or another on his departure for Jerusalem). His workshop must have been dear to children, as joiner’s workshops always are.
Next I see him coming back from Jerusalem with his Bride so young and gentle (not much more than he beloved by the townfolk): I see them landing at home, and the obliging neighbour who had been getting the household ready; the remarks about it all at the well that evening.
Joseph is the pattern of the hidden life, Scripture does not report a single word of his, it is silence who is father to the Word. What contrasts are in him! He is the patron of bachelors and of fathers of families, of laymen and contemplatives, of priests and business men! For Joseph was a carpenter. He had to argue with customers and sign small contracts; to follow up bad debts, to plead, to compromise, to buy his goods cheapest while ruminating on the second-hand, and so on.
How touching must have been his last days of failing health, between Jesus and Mary, when he could no longer work! I see the coachman of one of those fine ladies who went to the waters at Tiberias, drawing up at the sick carpenter’s to get the carriage mended. Jesus Himself takes it over and takes the tools from his hands.
All this goes on without a word when the Roman Empire was at its zenith, full of pride and crime like our present civilisation. It is neither Caesar nor Plato. Here are only three poor folk loving one another, and they are going to change the face of the world. It all goes on at the foot of a round mountain called Tabor; and in the distance is seen the long summit of Carmel. The villages nearby are called Cana, Nahum, Endor, Mageddo. In three hours you get the brilliant country round the Lake of Genezareth, which was then what Aix-les-Bains is today, but now lonely and unpeopled!
Paul Claudel, Prague 1932.
(ack. ‘The Mary Book’. Sheed & Ward.1950)
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The Crucifixion - Mathias Grunewald
‘Through Thy Cross and Passion’
O Christ my Lord which for my sins didst hang upon a tree,
grant that thy grace in me poor wretch, may still engrafted be.
Grant that thy naked hanging there, may kill in me all pride
and care of wealth, sith thou didst then in such poor state abide.
Grant that thy Crown of pricking thorns which thou for me didst wear,
may make me willing for thy sake all shame and pain to bear.
Grant that those scorns and taunts which thou didst on the cross endure,
may humble me, and in my heart all patience still procure.
Grant that thy praying for thy foes may plant within my breast,
such charity as from my heart I malice may detest.
Grant that thy pierced hands which did of nothing all things frame,
may move me to lift up my hands, and ever praise thy name.
Grant that thy wounded feet whose steps were perfect evermore,
may learn my feet to tread those paths which thou hast gone before.
Grant that thy bitter gall which did thy empty body fill,
may teach me to subdue myself and to perform thy will.
Grant that thy wounds may cure the sores which sin in me hath wrought,
grant that thy death may save the soul which with thy blood was bought.
Grant that those drops of blood which ran out from thy heart amain,
may meek my heart into salt tears to see thy grievous pain.
Grant that thy blessed grave wherein thy body lay awhile,
may bury all such vain delights as may my mind defile.
Grant that thy going down to them which did thy sight desire,
may keep my soul when I am dead, clean from the purging fire.
Grant that thy rising up from death, may raise my thoughts from sin,
grant that thy parting from this earth, from earth my heart may win.
Grant Lord that thy ascending then, may lift my mind to thee,
that there my heart and joy may rest, though here in flesh I be.
Blessed Philip Howard
(ack. ‘The Book of the Saviour’, Sheed & Ward, 1952.)
