27 March 1969
Dearest brethren, sons and daughters!
Today's feast invites us to meditate about Saint Joseph, Our Lord
Jesus' legal and foster father. Because of that function which he
performed in regard to Christ during his childhood and youth, he
has been declared Patron or Protector of the Church, which continues
Christ's image and mission in time and reflects them in history.
At first sight there seems to be no material for a meditation on
Joseph, for what do we know of him, apart from his name and a few
events that occurred in Our Lord's childhood? The Gospel does not
record a single word from him; his language is silence. It was his
attention to the angelic voices which spoke in his sleep; it was
that prompt and generous obedience which was demanded from him;
it was manual labour, in the most modest and fatiguing of forms,
which earned Jesus the reputation of being "the son of the
carpenter" (Mt. 13:55). ... That humble figure which was so near to Jesus and Mary, Christ's
Virgin Mother, he who was so intimately connected with their life
and so closely linked with the genealogy of the Messias as to be
the fateful and conclusive representative of the descendants of
David (Mt. 1, 20), is revealed as being full of significance if
we look at him attentively. He is seen truly to possess those qualities
which the Church attributes to him in her liturgy, which the devotion
of the faithful also attributes to him, and which gave rise to a
series of invocations that have taken the form of a litany.
A celebrated modern shrine of the saint, erected through the efforts
of a simple lay brother, Brother André of the Congregation
of the Holy Cross, at Montreal in Canada, illustrates those qualities
in a series of chapels arranged behind the high altar. All the chapels
are dedicated to Saint Joseph in honour of the many titles which
have been offered to him, such as Protector of Childhood, Protector
of Spouses, Protector of the Family, Protector of the Workers, Protector
of Virgins, Protector of Fugitives, Protector of the Dying...
If we look carefully into this life that was apparently so unremarkable,
we shall find that it was greater and more adventurous, more full
of exciting events, than we are accustomed to assume in our hasty
perusal of the Gospel story. The Gospel describes Saint Joseph as
a Just Man (Mt. 1:19). No greater praise of virtue and no higher
tribute to merit could be applied to a man of humble social condition
who was apparently far from being equipped to perform great deeds.
A poor, honest, hardworking, perhaps even timorous man, but one
with unfathomable interior life, from which very singular directions
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 that decision to put his liberty
at once 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 the nourishment
of the family; in this way he offered the whole of his existence
in a total sacrifice to the imponderable demands raised by the astonishing
coming of the Messias, to whom he was to give the everlastingly
blessed name of Jesus (Mt. 1:21), whom he was to acknowledge as
the effect of the Holy Spirit, and his own son only in a juridical
and domestic way. So Saint Joseph was a "committed" man, as we might say
nowadays.
And what commitment! Total commitment to Mary, the elect of all
the women of the earth and of history, always his virgin spouse,
never his wife physically, and total commitment to Jesus, who was
his offspring only by legal descendance, not by the flesh. He had
the burdens, the responsibilities, the risks and the labours Surrounding
the holy family. His was the service, the work, the sacrifice, in
the shadows of that gospel picture in which we love to meditate
on him; and we are certainly not mistaken, for we all know him now
and call him Blessed.
This is Gospel in which the values of human existence take on a
different dimension from that with which we are accustomed to appreciate
them. What is little becomes big, and in this connection we do well
to remember Jesus' fervent words in the eleventh chapter of Saint
Matthew: "I give thee praise, O Father, Lord of Heaven and
earth, because thou hast hidden these things (the things or the
kingdom of the Messias!) from the wise and learned, but hast revealed
them to little ones".
In the Gospel's account, what is lowly becomes worthy to be the
social condition of the Son of God made son of man; that which is
elementary and the product of fatiguing and rudimentary handwork
served to train the maker and continuator of the cosmos in the skills
of human hands (cf. Jn. 1:3; 5:17), and to give humble bread to
him who was to describe Himself as "the Bread of Life" (Jn.
6:48); what was lost for love of Christ is here rediscovered (cf.
Mt. 10:39), and whoever sacrifices his own life for Him in this
world saves it for everlasting life (Jn. 12:25).
Saint Joseph was the type of the message of that Gospel that Jesus
was to announce as the programme in the redemption of mankind, once
he left the little workshop at Nazareth and began his mission as
prophet and teacher. Saint Joseph is the model of those humble ones
that Christianity raises to great destinies, and he is the proof
that in order to be good and genuine followers of Christ there is
no need of "great things"; it is enough to have the common,
simple, human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic.
Our meditation now shifts from the humble Saint to our own personal
circumstances, as is usual in the practice of mental prayer. We
now turn to make a comparison and I contrast between him and ourselves;
we have no reason to feel proud of the comparison, but we can derive
some good suggestion from it for imitating him in some way which
our own life condition allows, in our spirit and in concrete practice
of those virtues which are so vigorously depicted in the Saint,
and one especially, poverty, of which there is so much talk nowadays.
And let us not be upset by the difficulties which poverty brings
with it today, in this world which is all devoted to conquest of
economic wealth, as if poverty were in contradiction with the line
of progress which must be followed, a paradox, an unreality in a
society of welfare and consumption.
Let us think again of Saint Joseph in his poverty and hard work,
all his energy engaged in the effort of earning something to live
on, and let us then remember that economic goods are indeed worthy
of our Christian interest, on condition that they do not become
ends in themselves, but are understood and used as means to keep
going life which is directed towards other and higher goods, on
condition that economic goods are not sought after with greedy egoism,
but be rather a source and stimulus of provident charity, on condition
again that they be not used as authorization for soft and easy indulgence
in the so-called pleasures of life but rather be used for the broad
and honest interests of the common good.
This Saint's laborious and dignified poverty, can still be in excellent
guide for us to follow the path traced by Christ's footsteps in
the modern world, and can also eloquently instruct us in positive
and honest wellbeing, so that we may avoid losing Christ's path
in the complicated and giddy world of economics, to avoid going
too far on one side into tempting ambitions of conquest of temporal
riches, and too far on the other side, into making use of poverty
for ideological ends, as a power to rouse social hatred and systematic
subversion.
So, Saint Joseph is an example for us, and let us try to imitate
him; and we shall call upon him as our protector, as the Church
has been wont to do in these recent times, for herself in the first
place, for spontaneous theological reflection on the marriage of
divine with human action in the great economy of the Redemption,
in which economy the first, the divine one is wholly sufficient
to itself, but the second, human action, which is ours, though capable
of nothing (cf. Jn. 15:5), is never dispensed from humble but conditional
and ennobling collaboration.
The Church also calls upon him as her Protector because of a profound
and most present desire to reinvigorate her ancient life with true
evangelical virtues, such as shine forth in Saint Joseph. Finally,
the Church invokes him as her Patron and Protector through her unshakeable
trust that he to whom Christ willed to confide the care and protection
of His. own frail human childhood, will continue from heaven to
perform his protective task in order to guide and defend the Mystical
Body of Christ Himself, which is always weak, always under attack,
always in a state of peril. Finally, we call upon Saint Joseph for
the world, trusting that the heart of the humble working man of
Nazareth, now overflowing with immeasurable wisdom and power, still
harbours and will always harbour a singular and precious fellow-feeling
for the whole of mankind. So may it be.
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