Our Lady Saint Mary

by J. G. H. Barry

To S. Joseph thus preparing himself to be the guardian of the blessed Virgin it could only come as a tremendous shock that she should be found with a child. Our character comes out at such times of trial as when something that we had taken quite for granted fails us, and we are left breathless and bewildered in in the face of what would have seemed impossible even had we thought of it. What was S. Joseph's attitude? The beauty and sanity of his character at once shows itself. Grieved and disheartened as he must have been, disappointed as he could not but be, he yet thinks at once of his bethrothed, not of himself. How far could he save her?--that was his first thought. He would at least avoid publicity. "Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, he was minded to put her away privily." It is the quality that we express by the word benevolence--the quality of mature and deliberate wisdom. We feel that such a man could be trusted under any circumstances of life.

We feel, too, that God would not leave S. Joseph in doubt as to the course he was to pursue, or as to the character of Mary herself. There could no shade of suspicion be permitted to rest upon her. Hence "while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."

It is not difficult to imagine the joy of S. Joseph at this angelic message. We all know the sense of relief which comes when, after facing a most trying situation, and being forced to make up our minds to act when action either way is almost equally painful, we find that we are delivered from the necessity of acting at all, that the whole state of things has been utterly misunderstood. It was so with S. Joseph; and in his case there was the added joy which springs from the nature of the coming Child as the angel explains it to him. He who had accepted the charge of Mary was now to add to that charge the charge of her Child: and the Child is the very Saviour whom his soul and the souls of all pious Israelites had longed for. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." We cannot expect that S. Joseph would have taken in the full meaning of this message, but he would have understood that he was called to a wondrous co-operation with God in the work of the redemption of Israel.

As we think of S. Joseph it is this co-operation which is the significant thing in his life. As we study human life in the only way in which it is much worth while to study it, in the light of revelation, it becomes clear to us that there is purpose in all human life. Often we observe a purpose that we are not able to grasp, but in the light of what we know from revelation we do not doubt of its presence. Even lives that seem obscure and insignificant we feel sure must have a divine meaning; and the pathetic thing about most human life is that it never dreams of its own significance. We are consumed with the notion that God's instruments must be great, while it is on the face of revelation that they are commonly humble and of seeming insignificance. It is the work that is important, and the instrument becomes important through its relation to the work. We all at least have the common vocation of the Christian, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the spiritual significance of that. S. Joseph seems to us at once set apart by his vocation to be the guardian of the divine Child, to protect and to nurture the years of His human immaturity. This is no doubt a unique vocation, but is it quite so far separated from ordinary Christian experience as we assume? You and I are also constituted guardians of the divine Presence. This very morning, it may be, we have received within the Tabernacle of our breast the same Presence that S. Joseph guarded--the Presence of Incarnate God. In that Presence of His humanity our Lord abode with us but a few minutes and then the Presence withdrew: but He left behind Him a real gift, the gift of an increase in sacramental grace.

Was that a light thing: Was it indeed so much less than the vocation of S. Joseph? And how have we guarded this Presence? Those few moments after the reception of our Incarnate Lord at the altar--how do we habitually spend them? Do we spend them in guarding the Presence? There is much to be learned about the meaning and the value of guarding the Eucharistic Gift. Our thanksgiving after Communion is fully as important as our preparation for receiving it. I am more and more inclined to think that much of the fruitlessness of communions which is so sad a side of the life of the Church is due to careless reception and inadequate thanksgiving. It is the adoration of our Lord within the Tabernacle of our body and thanksgiving to Him for having come to us that is the appropriation of the Gift of the Sacrament. He comes to us and offers Himself to us with all the benefits of His life and death; and then having offered Himself "He makes as though he would go farther," and he does actually go, unless we are awake to our spiritual opportunity, and constrain Him, saying, "abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent."

We think of S. Joseph then, as with a relieved and rejoicing heart he enters upon his new realised vocation as the head of the Holy Family. The marriage which he had been upon the point of abandoning he now enters that he may give S. Mary and her coming Child his full protection.

So S. Joseph "took unto him his wife; and knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born Son." These words have been so misunderstood as to imply that the marriage of S. Joseph and S. Mary was consummated after the birth of our Lord. Grammatically they convey no such implication; the mode of expression is perfectly simple and well known by which a fact is affirmed to exist up to a certain time without any implication as to what happens after. And the meaning of the passage which is not at all necessitated by its grammatical construction is utterly intolerable in Catholic teaching. The constant teaching of the Church is the perpetual virginity of Mary--that she was a virgin "before and in and after her child-bearing." There was to be sure an heretic named Helvidius who taught otherwise, but he was promptly repudiated by all Catholic teachers and but served to emphasize the depth and clearness of the Catholic tradition. Upon this point there has never been any wavering in the mind of the Church, and to hold otherwise shows a lamentable lack of a Catholic perception of values and but a superficial grasp upon what is involved in the Incarnation.

The impression we get of S. Joseph is that of a man of great simplicity and gentleness of character--that childlikeness which was later praised by his foster Son. Such qualities do not produce much impression on the superficial observer, but they are of great spiritual value. They are the concomitants of a special type of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is a quality much praised and little practiced. But the open-mindedness which is commonly praised is not the open-mindedness which is praiseworthy. What is at present meant by open-mindedness is in reality failure to have any mind at all upon a given subject. It is the attitude of doubt which never proceeds so far as to arrive at a solution. To have an open mind means to the contemporary man to hold all conclusions loosely, to consider all things open to question, to be ready to abandon what now appears to be true in favour of something which to-morrow may appear to be more true. In other words, we are invited to base life on pure scepticism.

Now no life can be so conducted. We live by a faith of some sort, whether it be a faith in God or no. The most sceptical mind has to believe something to act at all. It cannot even doubt without affirming a belief in its own intellectual processes. The open mind that never reaches any certainty to fill it is a very poor possession indeed. And it is not at all what we mean when we say of S. Joseph that he was open-minded. We mean that he was receptive of new spiritual impressions and capable of further spiritual development. There are minds, and they are not unusual among people of a certain degree of spiritual development, which we can best describe as having reached a given stage of growth and then shut up. Or, to vary the figure, they impress one as having a certain capacity, and when that has been reached, being able to contain nothing further. They come to a stop. From that point they try to maintain the position they have acquired. But that is impossible: they inevitably fall away unless they are going forward. When the power of spiritual assimilation is dead, we are spiritually in a dying condition.

What we mean by having an open and childlike mind, then, is that one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination between food offered him,--that he assimilates what is wholesome and rejects the rest. The sceptic is pessimistic as to the existence of any wholesome food at all; he starves his soul for fear that he should believe something that is not true. The saint, with the test of faith, sorts the food proposed to him, and grows in grace, and consequently in the knowledge and the love of God.