St Joseph
This feast is dear to all of us for many reasons, the first being that St Joseph was the God-given spouse of Mary Immaculate and the Foster-father of God’s only Son in the flesh. Joseph has also been appointed as patron of the universal Church. In the same way that he looked after the frail humanity of the Son of God in His tender years, so he looks after the Mystical Body of Our Lord amidst all the trials inherent in the fact that it is composed of frail men and women, prone to sin and error. St Joseph’s concern for the Church is equal to his concern for Christ. St Joseph is, of course, also invoked as head of the Holy Family, and under this title, Christian fathers rightly look to Him as an outstanding model: he is the perfect husband and the perfect father, never failing in his duties to wife and child.
Today, however, I would like to dwell upon St Joseph as the model and patron of monks. It is not a common theme. Indeed, St Joseph was not a monk, yet his manner of life was monastic. In fact, all three members of the Holy Family lived the evangelical counsels to perfection, as we shall see.
The evangelical counsels are poverty, chastity and obedience. By poverty, a man renounces all ownership and private property. He owns not even the clothes he wears. St Benedict goes so far as to say that he no longer owns his own body. We know from the Gospel that St. Joseph was poor. He had a hard job to provide for the Holy Family and lived in poverty. And yet, as if that were not enough, Divine Providence deprives him even of what he has so that he can be the model of souls devoted to holy poverty. When Mary and Joseph had prepared everything in Nazareth for the birth of Jesus in their home as comfortably as possible, at the last minute, they were sent to Bethlehem at a time when the flow of pilgrims made it impossible to find decent lodgings. The Son of God is born in utter destitution, while St Joseph looks on, painfully helpless yet overjoyed by the arrival of the Messiah. Then, when they would have thought the time had come to go back to their home, the hatred of Herod sends them packing to a foreign land where they will remain for several years as exiles. Joseph’s poverty became even greater, and he had to make a living in a country totally unknown to him. The Holy Family suffered much during those years, but they never complained. They were truly poor but immensely rich with love and grace.
The second of the evangelical counsels is chastity. By this vow, one renounces the love and company of a spouse, along with all the pleasures that accompany marriage. It is one of the novelties of the Gospel that Our Lord performed a miracle – His own conception – so that his most chaste Mother could remain a virgin while conceiving Him and giving Him birth. Jesus, too, would live as a virgin all His life. He never took a wife, even though, with much greater rights than Solomon, He could have had thousands of them. But our point here is that if St Joseph was chosen to be the spouse of the Immaculate Virgin, it meant that he, too, was a virgin. It meant that his chastity must have been in harmony with that of Mary, that is to say, so perfect that, while he lived in her intimacy, his thoughts and his flesh never experienced the slightest taint to the holy virtue. No doubt, like a few other saints in history, such as St Benedict, St Thomas, and St Francis, by a very special grace of God, the sting of lust was wholly extinguished in this chosen Guardian of Mary Immaculate. This is why he is a model for the chastity of the monk who gives up a wife for the love of Christ and who, like David in his dirge to Jonathan can say to Christ: Thy love is exceeding beautiful, and amiable to me above the love of women (2 Sam 1:26).
The third evangelical counsel is obedience. If, through poverty, one renounces material possessions and, through chastity, the goods of the flesh, through obedience, one renounces goods of the spirit, that is to say, one’s own will and capacity to orient oneself in life. Indeed, this most difficult of virtues, which St Thomas studies in the context of the social virtues that make possible life in common when elevated to the level of the counsels and practiced under vow, allows the total gift of the person. St Thomas says that by the vows one gives to God, “totam vitam suam”, one’s entire life becomes a holocaust to the divine majesty. Indeed, personal autonomy is the greatest good of humanity. People will give up much to retain their autonomy, but renouncing the capacity to orient oneself freely in the world is undoubtedly the greatest of the sacrifices and the greatest of the gifts one can offer to God. Because of this, it is also the most meritorious.
In the Holy Family, the head was the least gifted, the one less able to know what was best. Both Jesus and Mary had a much clearer idea about what God’s will was and what the best thing to do was. And yet, when decisions were made, they were made by Joseph, and the others obeyed. When God wanted them to move, he sent an angel to appear to Joseph, and it was through Joseph that the order reached Mary, then Jesus. The line of command was Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. The greatest obeys the least. This is most comforting, for it is not necessarily the smartest who commands. Oftentimes, the smarter must obey. It is an act of faith by which one sees in the superior God Himself, just as Jesus did with regard to Joseph. This is why the monk wants to obey. St Benedict actually teaches that a monk is one who wants to have an abbot over him, precisely so that he can practice this most excellent of the counsels and reach perfection, imitating Our Blessed Lord who was obedient even unto death.
Finally, we can also add a word about the two, specifically monastic vows of stability and conversion of ways. St Joseph remained until death in the small, confined world of the Holy Family. He did not go looking elsewhere for distractions or thrills or anything else. He was content in his home as a monk is content in his cloister. As for the conversion of ways, which is the vow by which the monk seeks to tend toward perfection in all that he does, St Joseph’s life was a continual search for perfection, a constant desire to grow in love for Jesus and Mary.
In these ways, St Joseph, who is one of our very special patrons, is truly the model of all monks. May we be given the grace to imitate him in life and in death.
