Actions speak louder than words

 

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS

Mario D’Couto

            If you love or watch football or soccer, you may be familiar about the eternal debate between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. As a football/soccer fan myself, I tend to gravitate more towards Messi given the kind of personality that I am but that does not take away the achievements of Ronaldo and what he has contributed towards the beautiful game in terms of his work ethic which is admirable and certainly something to emulate. Perhaps one reason why I tend to gravitate more towards Messi is that he does not talk too much. He lets his game do the talking. Yet the focus of this blogpost/reflection is not so much about Messi or football/soccer but rather on another person, someone who through his work behind the scenes changed the course of the entire world and of humankind if I may say so, a man of few words and yet a great man, that man is none other than St. Joseph, whose feast we celebrate today.

            If there are only few instances where Our Lady spoke in the Gospels, it would be even fewer to find any instances where St. Joseph spoke anything at all in the Gospels and yet he holds an important place in the Church. This blogpost/reflection is an attempt to dive deeper into the role of St. Joseph in salvation history and why we need him now more than ever.

            On the very outset, we need to be clear that the holiness and sanctity of St. Joseph does not exceed Our Lady by any means. From the beginning of Christianity, all of Jesus’ followers acknowledged the superlative holiness of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. It was rare, however, for anyone in the early Church to refer to Mary as a saint and why? Well, the early Christians considered Mary to be so holy that they gave Her a unique category of holiness. Her person and privileges are so great that She was given the title “All – Holy Mother of God.” Even today, it is extremely rare for a Catholic to refer to the Virgin Mary as ‘St. Mary’. When that title is used by Catholics, it is generally used for a building or an institution that has been named in honour of the Virgin Mary. For example, many Churches, schools and hospitals are named ‘St. Mary’s’. In everyday conversation, however, it is almost unheard of for a Catholic to refer to the Virgin Mary as ‘St. Mary’. If a Catholic does call Her ‘St. Mary’, it is very likely that the person is a convert to Catholicism from one of the many Protestant denominations.

            This helps us to understand why saints throughout history refer to St. Joseph as the greatest of all saints; namely, the Virgin Mary is in a different category altogether. In the Kingdom of God, Mary is the most elevated of all creatures but St. Joseph outranks all the other saints. At times, it may seem as though saints, popes and those beatified are claiming that St. Joseph is holier than Mary but the fact of the matter is that he isn’t.

 

           St. Lawrence of Brindisi would explain it in the following way, “If Christ sits at the right hand of His Father in the glory of paradise above all the choirs of angels because He is the first of all the predestined and is the holiest of the holiest in this world and if the Blessed Virgin, by reason of Her own holiness, holds the second place after Christ because She is also second by reason of predestination from eternity and grace in time, it seems to me that because Joseph holds the third place after Christ in eternal predestination and grace in time, so by the same reasoning he also holds the third place in the glory of paradise.” To go one step further, here’s a more vivid explanation handed down to us by various theologians over the centuries which can help us understand the reverence due to God and His saints which is seen in the following way,

Ø  Latria (adoration) à God

Ø  Hyperdulia (highest reverence) à Mary

Ø  Protodulia (first revered) à St Joseph

Ø  Dulia (revered) à All other saints

            From the above, we see that in a unique place over all others is God. He alone is worthy of adoration. In Greek, the word for adoration is latria. Only God is worthy of latria (adoration). The Virgin Mary, below God but above everyone else (including the highest choirs of angels) is given a special form of veneration whose Greek name is hyperdulia which translates as ‘highest reverence’. St. Joseph, below Mary but above all the other saints is accorded a form of veneration which in Greek is called protodulia meaning ‘first revered’ among all other saints. Last but not the least are the saints. We acknowledge their holiness and honour them with a type of veneration which in Greek is called dulia and is translated as ‘reverence’.

            The Church has always understood Mary’s spiritual maternity of the Church but it hasn’t always understood St. Joseph’s spiritual fatherhood in relation to the Church. Perhaps this is because in the first few centuries of Christianity, there were people in the Church, including some of the Fathers of the Church who were uncertain if St. Joseph could truly be called the father of Jesus. Regardless of the fact that Scripture clearly calls St. Joseph the father of Jesus (Luke 2:33,48), many early Christians were of the opinion that St. Joseph could not be called the father of Jesus in any way. They were cautious about such a title because they didn’t want people to think that St. Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. Essentially, they didn’t want to taint belief in the virginity of Mary in any way. It wasn’t until St. Augustine’s preaching in the 4^th century that St. Joseph’s fatherhood of Jesus was clearly explained by the Church. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine states that St. Joseph, though not the biological father of Jesus is nonetheless a real father to Jesus because he exercised a fatherhood towards Jesus that was authoritative, affectionate and faithful. After St. Augustine cleared up the matter of St. Joseph’s fatherhood of Jesus, it was never questioned again.

            St. Josemaria Escriva in one of his homilies called, “In Joseph’s Workshop” (as quoted in the book, “St. Joseph and the Third Millenium” by Michael D. Griffin), gives us the following explanation, “There is something I do not quite like in that title of foster father which is something given to Joseph because it might make us think of the relationship between Joseph and Jesus as something cold and external. Certainly our faith tells us that he was not his father according to the flesh but this is not the only kind of fatherhood.” This is not to say that there is anything wrong in calling St. Joseph the foster father of Jesus. After all, ‘foster father’ is one of the official titles used in the Litany of St. Joseph. St. Josemaria knew that and accepted it. Yet. St. Josemaria is also correct in saying biological fatherhood is not the only kind of fatherhood.

            We can therefore with absolute certainty infer that when St. Joseph brought up Our Blessed Lord, He did not address him as ‘foster father’ but rather as ‘father’ or ‘daddy’. Besides the New Testament never refers to St. Joseph as the ‘foster father’ of Jesus. Here’s one concrete example: when Our Blessed Lord was missing in the temple, Our Lady said, “Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety” (Luke 2:48). She did not say, “your foster father and I have been looking for you”. St. Joseph’s fatherhood was more than a legal guardianship. His paternal relationship with Jesus was personal, authoritative, affectionate, moral and loving.

            Perhaps one could ask, “Why did Jesus need the fatherhood of Jospeh at all since God is Jesus’ Father?” To answer that, we need to keep in mind that Our Blessed Lord was fully human and fully divine and so given His human nature, Jesus needed St. Joseph. When the Son of God became incarnate, He placed Himself under the anthropological (human) requirements of needing a human father to love, feed, educate, shelter, clothe and protect Him. Jesus, the Incarnate Word, is not a pure spiritual being. He is the God – Man, having both a divine nature and a human nature.

            In His human nature, Jesus had physical, emotional and psychological needs. God the Father doesn’t have a body, emotions or passions because He never became incarnate like His Son. The Heavenly Father can’t physically touch, walk with or embrace His Incarnate Son. Therefore, God the Father entrusts His Son to the watchful, loving care of a human father. St. Joseph stands in the place of the Heavenly Father. He has been entrusted with taking care of the human nature, growth and development of Jesus. Through the fatherhood of St. Joseph, Jesus grew into the fulness of His manhood.

            Thus we see that it is the human nature and not the divine nature of Our Blessed Lord that needed the fatherhood of St. Joseph. When the Son of God humbled Himself and took on human nature, He placed Himself under the laws of human growth and development. In order to grow into the fulness of His manhood, Jesus required a mother, a father and time, as all children do. Venerable Fulton Sheen provides an interesting explanation in regard to this as he wrote in his book, “The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of God,” “Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to Her as He gave to His Apostles.” This is to say that while the Apostles spent three years with Jesus, Our Lady spent thirty years (and more) with Him which only goes to show that the human nature of Jesus needed to learn certain things from the maternal love and example of His Mother. Our Saviour was not a robot or an angel. In His human nature, He needed a mother to teach Him about human life. But His Mother was not the only one who taught Him. As a male, He needed a father to teach Him what it is to be a man. Jesus needed the father of St. Joseph as a model of masculinity for Him to imitate. Only a father can do this for a son. How did Jesus learn to sacrifice as a man? He witnessed the daily example of His father. Where did Jesus learn to work as a Man? He learned it in His father’s carpentry shop. How did Jesus learn to pray and acquire the manners of a gentleman? Jesus learned all these things from His father, St. Joseph.

            Thus, according to the divine plan, an earthly, human father was absolutely necessary in the life of Jesus. In fact, if we read in the Gospel of St. John, we find Our Blessed Lord saying, “Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also” (John 5:19) where while these words are in reference to the Heavenly Father, they also apply to those aspects of Jesus’ human nature that would be strengthened by the example of St. Joseph.

            So how does this all apply to us? Or to put it in another way, why do we need the fatherhood of St. Joseph if we already have a biological father who shares our nature and is supposed to take care of us? Here are a few counter – questions to answer it,

1.      Is your biological father the Spouse of the Mother of God and father of Jesus Christ?

2.      Does your biological father have the superlative of every virtue?

3.      Is your biological father the head of the Holy Family, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Terror of Demons?

            Our Blessed Lord wants us to have the spiritual fatherhood of St. Joseph because there is no man more capable of modelling true fatherhood for us than St. Joseph. His loving spiritual fatherhood has the power to draw us extremely close to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, increase our virtue, protect us from Satan and help us reach heaven. This is not to despise the role of our biological parents in any way but rather the spiritual parentage of St. Joseph and our Blessed Mother is meant to supplement the witness and love of our earthly parents, helping us grow in the spiritual life, especially in virtue and holiness. Sadly not all of us may have the blessing of having parents who have been exemplary models or who have at least strived to live that way and in as much as we all live in a fallen world, with St. Joseph and Our Lady as our spiritual parents we can be assured that we are blessed with perfect parents and perfect models.

            If this were the case, why is it that Our Blessed Lord did not make us aware of St. Joseph’s spiritual fatherhood two thousand years ago as He did with Our Lady when He died on the Cross (John 19:27)? The simple answer is because it would have led to confusion. When Jesus spoke of the Father to His disciples, it would have been very confusing to them if He also spoke about the spiritual fatherhood of St. Joseph. Jesus wanted His disciples to know about the virtue, wonders and spiritual fatherhood of St. Joseph but for the sake of His mission, He had to leave the revealing of this mystery to the Holy Spirit and the Church.

 

           This is not to say that just because Jesus did not speak about St. Joseph to His disciples that He thought little of His father. On the contrary, the silence of Jesus regarding St. Joseph reveals the extreme holiness of St. Joseph. Jesus understood St. Joseph so well that He knew that His father would be more than willing to step aside so that Jesus could give priority to doing His Heavenly Father’s will. For love of Jesus, St. Joseph was more than willing to step out of the picture and appear to be of no importance. St. Joseph desires only one thing: that Jesus accomplish the mission that he was sent to do by His heavenly Father. It doesn’t mater to St. Joseph if he isn’t centre stage. Jesus loves this about St. Joseph. The humility of St. Joseph is a witness to his greatness!

            To add to this, while it has always been taught for centuries that after Mary’s great dignity, the nine choirs of angles were nearer to God than all other creatures because of their role and mission as servants and ministers of God’s holy will, given Her dignity and closeness to God in Her co-operation with God’s will in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, nonetheless, as the theology of St. Joseph has developed and become prominent in the life of the Church, it has become clear that St. Joseph holds importance over the angels after Our Lady and here’s why.

            Angels are close to God because they are servants of His will; St. Joseph is close to God because he is the father of Jesus! St. Joseph’s co-operative role in the redemption required greater graces than any angel has ever received. Though not the biological father of Jesus (and therefore not someone who co-operated in the same way as Mary did in the Incarnation), St. Joseph nonetheless co-operated morally in the Incarnation by raising the God- Man with perfect paternal love. Mary was not an unwed mother when She conceived the Saviour of the world in Her womb. She was married to St. Joseph. The Incarnation took place within the context of St. Joseph’s marriage to Mary. St. Joseph’s role was planned from all eternity, even before the creation of the angels.

            Furthermore, Jesus never called any angel ‘father’. No angel, no matter how exalted, ever educated the God-Man. God does not obey angels. St. Joseph, on the other hand, not only educated Jesus but was privileged to command the God-Man in his role as father of the Messiah. This fatherly love, dignity and authority is reserved for St. Joseph. It is such a wondrous dignity that God made St. Joseph the spiritual father of all humanity, as well as the Patron of the Universal Church. No angel, regardless of their ranking in the heavenly choirs has such dignity.

            On 8^th December 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX wrote in his decree ‘Quemadmodum Deus’, “As Almighty God appointed Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob, over all the land of Egypt to save grain for the people, so when the fulness of time came and he was about to send on earth His only – begotten Son, the Saviour of the world, He chose another Joseph of whom the first had been a type and He made him the lord and chief of His household and possessions, the guardian of His choicest treasures”, imagine what would have salvation history looked like had St. Joseph not co-operated with God’s plan or paid heed to His instructions? St. Joseph was given the role of maintaining and protecting the Sacred Bread for us.

            Just as we see the patriarch Joseph in the Old Testament who helped in saving countless lives during famine and death by providing grain, so is it with St. Joseph in the New Testament who was the keeper of the Bread from heaven. It was St. Joseph who saved our Bread from Herod; who protected and preserved Him in Egypt and he now desires that we receive the Bread of Life at Holy Mass. Unlike the Joseph of the Old Testament, St. Joseph’s Heavenly Bread is able to feed multitudes and satisfy every soul.

            Without St. Joseph, we would not have the Living Bread of the Eucharist. Our Lady ‘kneaded the dough’ in Her sacred womb; St. Joseph lovingly preserved the Bread while in Egypt and continues to guard and preserve the Bread of Life in every tabernacle in the world. St. Joseph made it possible for all His children to receive the Bread of Everlasting life.

               Given the current circumstances we are living in that is marked by worldwide spiritual and moral famine, souls dying because of a lack of spiritual nourishment, hearts broken, marriages ruined, lives destroyed, children murdered in the womb and truth and common sense are in short supply, the situation only seems to keep getting more deplorable with the passing time where no country seems to be exempted from it, St. Joseph beckons us to return to his Son and he will show us the way if we seek his guidance as Pope Pius XI explains in his Allocution to Married Couples (19^th March 1938), “The intercession of St. Joseph is that of the husband, the putative father, the head of the family of Nazareth which was composed of himself, Mary and Jesus. And as St. Joseph was truly the head or the master of that house, his intercession cannot be but all powerful. For what could Jesus and Mary refuse to St. Joseph, he who was entirely consecrated to them all his life and to whom they truly owed the means of their earthly existence?” may we implore and seek his guidance not only during this season of Lent but each and every day with the wisdom to make the right choice as we continue to journey along the way to our eternal home. God love you! Stay blessed!