Chapter I
Saint Joseph Considered Through Relation to the Eternal Father and to Jesus Christ His Son
The admirable Saint Joseph was given to earth in order to visibly express the adorable perfections of God the Father. In his single person, he bore His beauties, His purity, His love, His wisdom and His prudence, His mercy and His compassion. One single saint is destined to represent God the Father, while one needs an infinity of creatures, a multitude of saints, in order to represent Jesus Christ; for all the Church labors only to manifest to those outside the virtues and perfections of her adorable Head, and Saint Joseph alone represents the eternal Father! All the angels together are created to represent God and His perfections; a single man represents all His grandeurs.
So it is necessary to consider the august Saint Joseph as the grandest, most celebrated, most incomprehensible thing in the world, and, through proportion, like God the Father, hidden and invisible in his person, and incomprehensible in his being and in his perfections. And is there nothing to confound and frighten our ignorance and our misery, in seeing that the purer and holier he is, the less capable he is being understood by us? If Saint Joseph, from this point of view, seemed incomparable to us and placed in a class apart, it is because he, he alone, is the universal image of God the Father on earth; because of this, this saint being chosen to be His image on earth, He gives him, with Him, a resemblance to His invisible and hidden nature, and, in my view, this saint is outside of the state of being comprehended by the spirits of men. In such a way that faith must serve us as a supplement in order to adore in him what we cannot comprehend.
§I: How Much God the Father Honored the Great Saint Joseph
Saint Joseph being chosen to be the image of God the Father, it was an admirable thing to see the virtues and the perfections of this holy person. What wisdom! What force! What prudence! What simplicity! I don’t believe there ever was anything similar in the world; for it is easy to comprehend that, if God the Father took this saint to be the idea and the image of His perfections, if He rendered visible in Him what was hidden from all eternity in the bosom of His being, the excellence of this great man is incomparable…
1: He is the image of the beauties of the eternal Father.—Doubtless, there was a grave and modest exterior, there was an admirable composition, a beauty without parallel, because of Him Whose figure he was in the very eyes of the Son of God; for if the heavens, earth, the elements, in a word, all the composition of the world, is so beautiful, so rare, and so admirable, ordered with such weight, number, and measure (Wis 11:20), that it must serve us in admiring the perfections of God and that it represents His beauty to us; what ought to be that [beauty?] of this great saint whom God the Father forms expressly, by His hands, in order to figure Himself to His only-begotten Son, and to place, ceaselessly before His eyes, His true portrait and His image, as a compensation in time for His absence and a kind of solace during the years of His pilgrimage?
And what is even more considerable is that this world, so beautiful and so perfect, and which publishes, on all sides, the beauty of its Author, represents to men only the admirable grandeurs of God, considered as a sovereign being and a perfect essence, that is to say, as grand, good, wise, and infinite; but it does not figure Him with the attractions and charms of the Father, it only represents Him as sovereign and as first cause, while Saint Joseph, formed based on the eternal Father’s idea to represent Him to His Son, himself represents Him in the quality of Father and bears in himself all the lovable traits, all the charms and the sweetness, of the divine fatherhood.
2: He is the image of the holiness of the eternal Father.—How great is the holiness of Saint Joseph, chosen to be the image of God the Father! This great saint lives in a perfect holiness, separated from all the goods of earth and from all creatures, and the Gospel represents him to us to contemplate as full of this incomparable holiness., in saying: Cum esset justus, “when he was just” (Mt 1:19), that is to say, holy. He is, furthermore, established with this unique characteristic of holiness, that he is destined to be the guardian of the holiest and most precious creature of the world. In effect, Our Lord chooses a saint, and one of the grandest saints of the world, to be the guardian of the most holy Virgin after His death, a saint who will be like one and the same person with Him, finally, a virgin man, to be the protector of His Mother. Here, God the Father chooses a man whom He makes the image of His holiness, so that he would be the surety and the protection, not only of the Virgin, but also of His Son, Whom He eternally engendered, in sanctitate et justitia coram ipso [in holiness and justice before him] (Lk 1:75).
3: He is the character and the image of the fruitfulness of the eternal Father.—The Church offers us Saint Joseph to honor for eight days before the holy mystery of the Incarnation, so that, in Saint Joseph, we would adore God the Father, preparing and bearing, in His womb, the adorable design of the holy mystery of His Son; this mystery being hidden in the ages, the adorable bosom of the Father is given us to venerate in Saint Joseph; this is why this same saint is represented to us bearing, in his arms and upon his breast, Our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father engendered Him in Himself from all eternity. The angels, who are not a characteristic of the fruitfulness of God, are not called “fathers” by one another; but Saint Joseph, image of this divine fruitfulness, is the father of Jesus Christ: he was like a sacrament of the eternal Father, under which God has borne, engendered His incarnate Word in Mary, and under which He inspired the divine substance. In this great Saint, God the Father appeared in His fruitfulness and yet separated from the flesh and blood, which in no way enter into the generation of the Father: qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo natus est [who is born, not from bloods, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God] (Jn 1:13).
4: He is the image of the love of the eternal Father for His Son.—God the Father, in choosing Saint Joseph to make him His image with regard to His Son, lived in the bosom of Saint Joseph, where He loved His Son with an infinite love, and continually saying of this only-begotten Son: Hic est Filius Meus dilectus in quo mihi bene complacui [This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased] (Mt 17:5). The Father in Himself loves His Son as His eternal Word, and, in Saint Joseph, He loves this same Son as the incarnate Word. He resided in the soul of this great saint and rendered it a participant, no only in His virtues, but also in His life and in His father’s love; this is why the divine Saint Joseph entered into the love of the eternal Father for His Son and loved Him in the extent and ardor, the purity and holiness, of that love.
5: Saint Joseph is the exterior character of the compassion and of the tenderness of the eternal Father for the miseries of men.—The eternal Father, having chosen Saint Joseph to make Him the image of His fatherhood, took, in him, a spirit of compassion and of tenderness for the miseries of men, and became, in him, the Father of mercies. Before His Incarnation, the Word was full of rigor: Vox tonitrui in rota, vox confringentis cedros [the voice of thunder in wheel, the voice shattering cedars] (Ps 77:18, 29:5). But since He became man, He is rendered sensible to our ills; He is full of sweetness and of tenderness: Mitis et humilis corde [Meek and humble of heart] (Mt 11:29). He is full of compassion for our miseries. And it is thus that the eternal Father made His image, in communicating Himself to the great Saint Joseph. From all eternity, God the Father was separated from the flesh, elevated in holiness, infinitely above our state; at that time, He was insensible to our ills and full of severity for men; but, from the moment that He was dressed in the person of Saint Joseph and that He veiled Himself under the humanity of this great saint, He became merciful, full of tenderness and of sensibility for human miseries. In him, He is Father of mercies; this is why Saint Paul, after having said God be blessed, Benedictus Deus, adds, Father of Jesus Christ, Father of mercies (Eph 1:3), that is to say, that, in rendering Himself the Father of Jesus Christ in Saint Joseph, He becomes Father of mercies, while, before, He was in His state of God, just and insensible.
6: Saint Joseph, image of the wisdom and of the prudence of the eternal Father.—Since God the Father willed to appear in the person of Saint Joseph, He made him an abundant communication of His spirit of Father, a quo omnia paternitas [from Whom all fatherhood] (Eph 3:15), and, in order to guide eternal Wisdom, He gave to him himself an admirable light and wisdom. For if God commits most powerful angels, and even the first of these grand and sublime intelligences to the guidance and protection of kingdoms, if He even deputes these pure spirits to guide the heavenly spheres and those immense bodies, what ought to be the grandeur of that saint to whom God commits the guidance of His Son, more precious than a hundred thousand worlds and than a hundred thousand million kingdoms! What light to guide and direct, in all things, this Son Whose movements and all of Whose steps were so precious and so dear! Ah! It is said that the holy Virgin had the perpetual vision of God and, sometimes, even the beatific vision, because of her Son; it is certain that her divine Son had this clear and distinct vision of the Divinity, so that, among other things, He does, at every moment, what His Father willed, quæ placita sunt ei facio semper [what is pleasing to Him I always do] (Jn 8:29), and so that He continually does what He saw Him do, facio quæ video Patrem facientem [I do what I see the Father doing] (Jn 5:19); be it in order not to ever disobey Him and to satisfy the adorable designs which God the Father had for all His steps and all His movements; be it, also, because of their importance for the human race. Now, the same motive obliges us to believe that the great Saint Joseph, charged with the guidance of Jesus, Whom he was to bring to the accomplishment of the adorable designs of God His Father, designs of so great a consequence for the salvation of men, was himself enlightened by that divine light, in order to do everything according to the spirit of God; further, I want to say something that comes to my spirit and to which I do not dare respond, since it seemed strange to me.
It is that the light of Saint Joseph, which had been given him for the guidance of the Son of God, was of the nature of that of the most holy Virgin, which the holy doctors said had been glorious, God having given her all the graces that His omnipotence could accord to a pure creature. If, then, the light of Saint Joseph is a light of glory, it had to have been always infallible, for guiding the Son of God, Who did not know how to fail; for, otherwise, one would expose the Son of God, obeying Saint Joseph, either to failing in the designs of God and in His duty, or to disobeying him who held the place of His Father and of whom it is expressly said that He follows all his wills: Et erat subditus illis [And He was subject to them] (Lk 2:51). Having been given by God to all men as the model of obedience, if He had disobeyed Saint Joseph, everyone would have found, in His disobedience, a pretext to excuse their own and to say that one could fail by obeying, and that superiors do not have all that is necessary for guiding with assurance; would this not make a God failing in His promises and in His providence, if H refused to superiors the spirit which is necessary for us, to direct us? No, one is never deceived in obeying, God Himself rendering Himself the guarantee of persons who guide others.
Jesus Christ Our Lord would thus be in a worse condition than the rest of men, who cannot fail in obeying. Jesus Christ would be in a worse condition than the inferior angels; they are submitted to their superiors with an entire confidence, and they receive from them assured, certain, and infallible lights in all their guidance, although it is not as important as that of the Son of God. Now, if the angels, because they are glorious, have superiors who are endowed with a light of glory, what ought to be the light of Saint Joseph, destined by God the Father to guide Jesus Christ as his inferior, and to govern the most holy Virgin, His Mother! And what shame to expose the Son of God to arguing against His Father and against him who is filled with the very spirit of God! Ah, what! Would God the Father have wanted to expose Our Lord to this unseemliness, in refusing our saint a grace so befitting and so necessary to his condition? Our great saint is, then, filled with an admirable wisdom, since God permits him the guidance of wisdom itself, Christum Dei sapientiam [Christ, God’s wisdom] (1 Cor 1:24), and, if He has the custom of giving graces proportioned to the eminence of the employments that He confides to us, what, then, will have been that light, that wisdom, to which Wisdom Himself was submitted? Saint Joseph was, for Jesus Christ, what Moses had once been for the people of God: as that people, figure of the Savior, was drawn out of Egypt by Moses, so Our Lord was likewise drawn out by Saint Joseph; for we see, in that passage of Saint Matthew drawn from Hosea, Ex Ægypto vocavi filium meum [Out of Egypt I called My son] (Hos 11:1, Mt 2:15), that the people of Israel in Egypt is called “son of God,” since it was the figure of Jesus Christ. Saint Joseph is, in effect, the protector of Jesus Christ in His flight into Egypt, protector Salvatoris Christi sui, and holds Him in his safekeeping during the course of His life.
O eternal Wisdom! If Moses had had so intimate a communication with You, that He saw You face to face (Ex 33:11), what, then, would He have with Saint Joseph? The first, who was to guide the figure of Your Son, sees You face to face, and the second, Who will guide Your Son Himself, will it not be full of Your favors? If he who bore the law of death was so much in glory during this life that the children of Israel could not suffer the splendor of his face (Ex 34:29-35), what will it be, adds Saint Paul (2 Cor 3:7-11), for him who will bear the law of life and spirit in his arms? Doubtless, he enjoyed an adorable contemplation and a glorious vision of God.
I report this though, and I draw consequences like these from my spirit, clarified, however, it seems to me, by the light of faith, not feeling here any activity, any labor of my intelligence, in producing these things. I leave it to my director to judge them.
§II: How Much Jesus Christ Honored the Great Saint Joseph
The Son of God having rendered Himself visible in taking a human flesh, He visibly conversed and dealt with God His Father, that is, under the person of Saint Joseph, through whom His Father rendered Himself visible to Him. The most holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, both together, represented one and the same single person, that of God the Father. They were two sensible representations of God, two images under which He adored the fullness of His Father, be it in His eternal fruitfulness, be it in His temporal Providence, be it in His love for this Son Himself and His Church. There, he was like the holy oratory of Jesus Christ and the sensible object of all His devotion. Doubtless, the temple was, for Him, a place of religion, since He saw in that building a dead and material figure of God His Father; but here He saw a living, spiritual, and divine figure, with all His grandeurs and all His perfections: Templo hic major est [Here is something greater than the temple] (Mt 12:6). He saw in him the secrets of His Father; He heard, through the mouth of that great saint, the very word of His Father, whose sensible organ Saint Joseph was.
He was the oracle of Jesus Christ, who made Him know all the wills of His heavenly Father; he was a clock that indicated to Him all the moments marked in the decrees of God; he was before that oratory where, addressing Himself to His Father, He said, Pater noster [Our Father], and where He invoked Him for all the Church. What a lovable object for Jesus Christ! What an object of yielding! What a subject for exercising His loves! What caresses and what feelings of loving tenderness! O great saint, how blest you were to furnish so beautiful a matter for the love of Jesus! O God, what gazes of love, and what yieldings! Goodness of my Jesus! How content You were to have someone before Your eyes to satisfy Your loves! Blest Joseph! Blest Jesus! Blest Joseph, by furnishing to Jesus the most just subject for His delights! Blessed is it, O Jesus, to find in Joseph the object of Your holiest yieldings! The eyes of Your spirit saw in him a sensible image of His beauty, so much that, in him, all alone, You find Your perfect contentment.
It is doubtless an admirable life, that of God the Father in eternity, loving His Son, and the Son, reciprocally, loving the Holy Spirit. It was also an admirable life, that of Joseph and of Mary, image of God the Father for Jesus Christ His Son. How great was their love for Jesus and the love of Jesus for them! Our Lord saw in one and in the other the presence, the life, the substance, the person, and the perfections of God His Father, and, seeing these beauties, what love, what joy, what consolation! The holy Virgin and Saint Joseph, seeing, on their part, the person of God in Jesus, with all that He is, Son of God, Word of the Father, the Splendor of His life and the character1 of His substance (cf. Heb 1:3); what reverence, what respect! What a feast of love! What profound adoration! There, there was a heaven, a paradise on earth; there were delights without end in this place of sorrow, abundance of all goods in the bosom of poverty; there was a glory begun even in the vileness, the abjection, and the littleness of their life.
O Jesus, I am not astonished if You remain thirty whole years in that blest house, without leaving Saint Joseph. I am not astonished if You are inseparable from his person. His house alone is a paradise for You, and his bosom is, for You, the bosom of Your Father from Whom You are inseparable, and in Whom You take Your eternal delights. Outside of this house, You find only baleful objects, sinners, those sad causes of Your death; and, in the house of Joseph, which is also that of Mary, You find the most delightful objects of Your joy, the holy sources of Your life. You never leave that holy place except to go to the temple, and the world mocked Your solitude and this retired life; but it did not know that the temple was a dead figure of the bosom of Your Father, and that Saint Joseph, as His living image, was the place of His delights and of Your repose.
Who, then, could tell the excellence of our saint, the great respect that Our Lord had for him and the strong love that the holy Virgin bore him, Jesus Christ regarding, in him, the eternal Father as His Father, and the most holy Virgin considering, in his person, the same eternal Father as her Spouse.
Chapter II
Saint Joseph Considered Through Relation to the Church
§I: Saint Joseph, Patron of supereminent Souls
Saint Joseph, having been chosen by God to be His image towards His only-begotten Son, was not established for any public function in the Church of God, but only to express His purity and His incomparable holiness, which separate Him from every visible creature; because of this, he is the patron of hidden and unknown souls. The function of Saint Peter for the Church is one thing; the workings of Saint Joseph are another. Saint Peter is outwardly established for policing, for ruling, for doctrine, and he passes this on to the prelates and ministers of the Church. Saint Joseph, on the contrary, who is a hidden saint and one without outward functions, is established to inwardly communicate the supereminent life that he receives from the Father and which he later pours onto us through Jesus Christ. The influence of Saint Joseph is a participation in that of God the Father in His Son, while that of Saint Peter and of the other saints is a participation in the grace of Christ, pouring itself out upon men and distributing itself in its members by measure. That of Saint Joseph is a participation in the source without rule and without measure, which pours out of God the Father into His Son, and God the Father, Who loves us with the same love with which He loves His only-begotten Son, gives us to draw, to taste, to savor, in Saint Joseph, the grace and the love with which He loves His very Son. In the other saints, it is by parcel and by measure that He communicates it to us; here, it is without bounds and without measures, because of who Saint Joseph is, and because of what God the Father places in him as into His universal image. This saint is, in effect, the patron of the supereminent souls raised to the purity and to the holiness of God, to those who are intimately united to Jesus Christ, and to whom he communicates his tenderness for this lovable Savior, as well as to those who are applied to God the Father, Whose figure Saint Joseph is.
This is a hidden saint whom God willed to keep secret during his life, and whose interior occupations He reserved for Himself alone, without sharing them with the outward cares of the Church; a saint whom God revealed at the base of hearts and whose inspiration He Himself inspired in the interior of souls.
And as Saint Joseph applied himself to God alone during his life, God reserved him for Himself, to reveal Him and to imprint His esteem, cult, and veneration upon him. As the image of the eternal Father towards Whom every prayer leads, and Who is the end and conclusion of all our religion, Saint Joseph ought to be the universal tabernacle of the Church; this is why the soul united inwardly to Jesus Christ, and which enters into His ways, His feelings, His inclinations, and His dispositions, this soul, as much as it is upon earth, will be filled with love, with respect, with tenderness for Saint Joseph, in imitation of Jesus Christ living upon earth, for such were the inclinations and the dispositions of Jesus Christ: He loved God the Father in Saint Joseph, with tenderness, and adored Him under His living image, where He really dwelled.
It is for us to follow this guidance and to thus go seek our father in this saint. It is in him that we ought to go see, contemplate, adore all the divine perfections, whose assembly will render us perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:48). We learn, through this saint, how one can resemble God the Father and be perfect upon earth as He is in heaven. And since, in God the Father, Saint Joseph is the source of all good and of all mercy, it is said of this saint that one asks nothing of him without obtaining it.
§II: Saint Joseph, Patron of Priests
It is in priests, above all, in whom God resides in His fullness and in His pure and virginal fruitfulness, to conduct themselves on the model of the great Saint Joseph, with regard to the children whom they engender for God. This great saint guided and directed the Child Jesus in the spirit of His Father, His sweetness, His wisdom, His prudence; so we ought to do for all the members of Jesus Christ, who are confided to us and who are other Christs, in such a way that we ought to treat them with the same reverence as Saint Joseph. Let us be superiors in God, with regard to them, but interiors in our persons, like Saint Joseph, who saw himself infinitely below Jesus Christ, although he was His guide and although he was established over Him, in the name and in the place of the eternal Father. We have also chosen Saint Joseph as one of the patrons of the seminary, as the saint whom the Lord charged, in heaven, with the express care of priests, according to what He made knows to me through His will.
The most holy Virgin also gave me this great saint as a patron, assuring me that he was among the hidden souls, and sharing these words about him: I have nothing dearer in heaven and on earth after my Son. Bringing Our Lord to a sick man one day, I inwardly repeated these words that were placed in me in the spirit: Dux Justi fuisti [You were the leader of the just];2 they made me remember that Saint Joseph had been the guide of the Just One, Who is Our Lord; I had to represent him as bearing the Son of God with the same sentiments with which he often bore Him during his life.
1 “Character” here is a cognate of the Greek word used in Heb 1:3 (χαρακτὴρ); the Greek word refers to a stamp of impression, like the image stamped on a coin.↩
2 This is from one of the traditional antiphons at Lauds for the Feast of St. Andrew (November 30): They who persecuted the just, You sank them, Lord, into hell, and, on the wood of the Cross, You were the leader of the just. In both cases, “just” is singular (justum, justi).↩
Source:
https://blog.undustedtexts.com/2024/05/jean-jacques-olier-feelings-regarding.html