Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

CHAPTER VI

S. JOSEPH

Joseph, her husband, being a just man--
S. Matt. I. 19.

O God, our refuge and our strength, look down in mercy upon thy people who cry to thee; and by the intercession of the glorious and immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God, of St. Joseph her spouse, and of thy blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and of all saints, in mercy and goodness hear our prayers for the conversion of sinners, and for the liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. Through.

ROMAN.

hen we read the Gospels, not simply as a record of events but as revelation of the method of God, we are constantly impressed with what we cannot otherwise describe than as the care of God for detail. There is a curious type of mind which finds it possible to think of God as Creator and Ruler of the universe, but impossible to conceive Him as interested in or concerning Himself with the minutiae of human life; who can conceive God as caring for a solar system or a planet, but not as caring for a baby. Surely it is a strange notion of God that thinks of Him as estimating values in terms of weight and measure: surely much more intelligible is the Gospel presentation of Him as concerned with spritual values and exercising that minute care over human life which is best expressed by the word Father. It is very significant that as the volume of revelation unrolls, the earlier notions of God as Ruler, Governor, King, give way to the notion of Father, until in our Lord's presentation of the character of God it is His Fatherhood which stands in the forefront. What our Lord emphasises in the character of God are precisely the qualities of love and care and sympathy which the word Father connotes.

And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world. There was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus' immaturity. There are certain things which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be committed. In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature. The man who should provide for our Lord's infancy must be a man, in the nature of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the will of God. It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son. Only a very choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long nurtured by the richness of His grace.

We know very little of St. Joseph; but God's choice of him for the office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals the nature of the man. He is described to us as "a just man," one whose judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the consideration of any case upon its merits: a man who would not view events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others. Such men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow discipline.

We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were descended from the same ancestor, David. We gather also that S. Joseph was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married and had a family. All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger. We have, I think, a right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was a stranger to him. Indeed, considering the actual development of the situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union, the ultimate design of which was the protection of the virginity of Mary. I find it impossible to think of that virginity as other than of deliberate purpose from the beginning, and prompted by the Spirit of God for the purposes of God for which it served. There is, to be sure, no revelation of this in Holy Scripture, but there are facts which suggest themselves to the devout meditations of saints which we feel that we may safely take on the authority of their spiritual intuitions. Such a fact is this of Mary's purposed virginity which I am content to accept on the basis of its congruity with S. Mary's life and vocation. Of the fact of her perpetual virginity there can be no dispute among Catholic Christians.