Saint Joseph, Protector Of The Universal Church
“Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom; and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, but supposing him to be in the company they went a day‘’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances; and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him ‘Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.’ And he said to them, ‘How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them. And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man.” [Lk. 2:41-52].
Let it first be established beyond any argument that all the ingredients of this at once so truly human and truly divine interlude in the Gospel narrative was not woven into the life of the Son of God here on earth for His own sake or for that of His Holy Mother, but for us. The wonderful facets of this story, all sparkling with their very own fascinating light, are for us, as the Holy Creed says: “... for us men, and for our salvation”. And the particular sparkle, the light of which will illuminate this chapter in the life story of St. Joseph, may best be rendered as
The Mystery of a Vocation ...,
at the centre of which is the boy Jesus:
“... the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it.”
What was it that filled His human heart on this joyous occasion, the journey to His Father’s House? What were His thoughts? What was the source of that internal, mysterious force that especially this year drew Him more and more to the inner sanctuary of the Temple as the whole caravan of Jewish travellers came nearer and nearer to Jerusalem, the city of the Most High of which it had been written:
“What He founded on the holy mountain, Yahweh loves it;
the gates of Zion He prefers to any town in Israel.” [Ps. 87].
And here He was, the Most High, approaching Jerusalem in the humble appearance of an eager little boy twelve years old. According to Jewish law and custom He had come ‘of age’. From this we may gather that, as far as this young Man was concerned, there was this year more to this pilgrimage than being part of a group of excited children on a yearly outing. Something, a new wind, had stirred the usual placid surface of His tranquil composure. Something which had lain dormant up till now had been conceived and been born in the Heart and the Mind of the Word made flesh, a secret force that, as a singular grace, He would, from then on, bestow upon many a little boy who would be privileged enough to share with Him the same mysterious call to serve as Priests in the House of His Father.
Yes truly, this whole Joyful Mystery is for us. First of all for those privileged enough to be called. But then also for those privileged enough to be the parents of future Priests. And finally for all of us privileged enough to be served by those chosen in such a glorious way by the Son of God.
“... and when they did not find Him, they went back to Jerusalem ...”,
which means that the second person around whom this mysterious episode in the life of God’s Son here on earth revolved was Mary, His holy Mother.
What were the thoughts that went through Her mind, the feelings that went through Her Immaculate Heart? She knew Her boy had come ‘of age’, and She had watched the subtle change that the passing of this milestone in the life of a Jewish lad had caused in Her Son. She knew Him intimately, yet, in the deep appreciation She had of Her Son’s intimate relationship with His Father in Heaven, She knew Her place. But in spite of all this, She had not been prepared for the sudden turn of events that the passing of this important date had brought to Her life. She understood that here they were dealing with a deep mystery, but She also knew that the unexpected outcome, Her Son’s withdrawal from parental care, in no way reflected on Her or St. Joseph, but was part of a divine scenario that had been set in motion at the time of Her consent at the Incarnation, not open to any human interference. And in the full realisation of being in the presence of a sacred trust, the parents of Jesus adopted the only response pleasing to God, the response of pure resignation. In its own good time, the Mystery would resolve itself. And being a response based on Faith, Hope, Love and trust in God, the resignation did not leave them idle or paralysed, but they continued to do what under the circumstances was expected of them: they asked, they searched, they knocked until the sacred union had been re-established.
“My Son, why have you done this to us?”
O Blessed Trinity, in allowing this anguished cry to pass the lips of this most pure Virgin, this most glorious of all mothers! How else would we have known the reason for this mystery? How else would we ever have obtained the answer given by the Son of God? Yes truly, this Mystery was for us! We had to learn. It was for our benefit that the Mother of God asked in such a touching way for that which, as God knows, lies at the root of every priestly vocation.
Since no personal upset was at play, the question was objective. She did not expect a rebuke where none was deserved. She did not expect a jogging of Her memory where nothing had been forgotten. Since there was no need to remind the Son of God how much She and St. Joseph loved Him, as God is in no need of being reminded, Her question was pure spontaneity, a cry from the heart expressed on behalf of thousands upon thousands of grateful or worried parents who, confronted with the mystery of a priestly vocation sometimes in dire circumstances, would have loved to implore the Son of Mary for an explanation, but would never be in the position either to question Him or hear His reply. And here they both were, the question as well as the answer!
“Why did you look for Me?
Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s business?”
Here Mary’s question, put to Her Son on behalf of thousands of worried parents down the ages, has been answered by the Son of God to allay whatever forebodings and fears may surround the mystery of a priestly or religious vocation.
First we notice that Mary’s question is being answered by Her Son by means of a counter-question, in fact by two counter-questions in quick succession. It is a well-known repartee to make people think. And since these are the first words of Our Blessed Saviour quoted in the Gospel of St. Luke, they have had the desired effect of making whole generations of Christians think.
Our Lord’s first question is the unequivocal expression of the absolute freedom, the inalienable right of the Son of God to choose and to call whom He pleases. “Why did you look for Me?” No one can come between the calling God and the ones He calls. The Triune God is accountable to no one! Of this mystery, no explanation can be expected as no explanation will ever be given. Even if faced with the irrefutable fact that in our days so many bishops, priests and religious have gone astray, and according to an honest appraisal have given a completely twisted response to their vocation, the Holy Church will never question the call itself that started it off. The right of the God-Man to call whom He pleases into His Father’s business remains a mystery beyond the right of probe and scrutiny as answered by His second question: “Did you not know ...”?
So, what is to be made of this exchange?
In our days that simple question has become even more acute than it was to our forefathers in the English and Continental Reformation. If we read the transcripts of the Acts of Canonisation of the English Martyrs, we are invariable struck by the wisdom and perspicacity by which these Saints could distinguish between the call of the various ‘Protestant’ priests and bishops by whom they were surrounded and the manner in which the call was answered and lived. In those Acts we can read that none of the Saints of the day had ever denied that Archbishop Cranmer had been called and was truly the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yet no matter how great the throngs were of bishops, priests, religious and laypeople of all walks of life who followed him, none of the Saints did. In this they followed the example of the Apostles and early followers of Christ who never queried why the Lord had chosen Judas Iscariot, although not one of them followed Judas in his brief moment of notoriety and subsequent speedy doom. Judas had been truly called and chosen by Christ, yet amongst the true believers in Christ he had no followers.
So, how did the Saints know at the time of the Reformation, and how do the Saints know in our days, when a priest or a bishop or a nun is leading them into legitimate ways of Church development and when, instead, they are leading them astray? When, in wisdom and true perspicacity, to give their consent and when, in the same wisdom and prudence, to withhold it and encourage others to do the same? When to attend Mass, and when to decide that the moment has come that attending Mass, or receiving the Sacraments, has become a mockery contrary to the Will of God?
We may expect that Our Blessed Lord has made the criterion on which these important questions are decided as crystal clear as He has made all other aspects of the Moral Law. That He would make the response to His call just as unique and unassailable as He had made His own freedom to choose whom He wished. We may expect that in the course of the centuries, there would never be the need to question a vocation just because the response to the vocation could no longer be followed with safety for one’s eternal salvation. That there would never come a time that the response to the vocation could not be questioned without questioning the vocation itself. That He would never allow the arrival of a time that deviant priests and bishops could not be loved without also embracing their errors.
So, how was this done ...?
“And He went down to Nazareth with them
and was obedient to them.”
One may truly wonder at this point which is the greater: the incomprehensible glory to which the Mystery of the Church is being elevated here, or the incomprehensible humility of the Word of God ...
No sooner had the Son of God established once and for all that the origin of a vocation lies in the infinite expanse of the Divine Majesty; that the call to the service of God in the Sanctuary of the Temple lies beyond the reach of any created being, away from the prior approval or interference of anyone, that is, beyond any power or institution, and that “no one takes this honour on himself, but each one is called by God, as Aaron was” [Hebr. 5:4], or He places - as it were in the same breath - the flowering of the vocation under the obedience to His Church. As Our Lord had made clear, even the Church does not initiate the original call. That is the sole and the exclusive prerogative of God. No one’s permission is to be asked, to no one is an explanation due. Yet after that, not only does the Church founded by Christ receive from Him the full control over a vocation, but this full control has been handed to Her by the calling God Himself. Here too it must be said: “no one takes that honour upon himself”, with the result that the hierarchical structure of the Priesthood in the Holy Catholic Church is so strong, that, what was said of the physical Body of Christ: “Not one bone of His will be broken” [Jo. 19:36], must now also be extended to cover His Mystical Body. It is for that reason that the Founder of this Church could confidently predict that “the gates of hell will not prevail against Her” [Mt. 16:18]. The structure is unbreakable.
More than any other sentence used by St. Luke in his description of the Fifth Joyful Mystery, the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple, does the sentence “And He went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them” refer to us, and to our human situation. In a most graphic way the Divine Master could not have been more explicit as to what is to be done once a vocation to the Priesthood or the Religious Life in the Catholic Church has been received: it is to come to fruition in obedience to that Church. There was no need for the Son of God to extend His Hidden Life by a further eighteen years after he had clearly established that He had to be “in His Father’s business”. This extension was for us!
This means that we can now concentrate on the central question still to be faced: how does the obedience of the Son of God to His Mother as well as to St. Joseph, indicate to us that Christ placed the flowering and the fruition of any vocation to the Priesthood in the Catholic Church under the obedience to that Church? Was His Church present, then, for Our Lord to be able to give an example and set the precedent for all future generations? Indeed She was.
“In the Liturgy the Church salutes Mary of Nazareth as the Church’s own beginning ... Her fulness designates the hidden beginning of the Church’s journey.”
With these words in the very first section of his celebrated encyclical “Redemptoris Mater”, with which the present Holy Father opened the Marian Year of 1987-88, Pope John Paul II confirms what the Catholic Church has always believed and passed on since Apostolic times: that Our Blessed Lady was the sole beginning of Our Saviour’s Church, the Mystical Body of which He is the Head. The truth of this Mystery revealed by God can be approached in a variety of ways. But whichever way is chosen, each one will lead us back to the same central issue: the depth of understanding of God’s designs Our Lady’s penetrating Faith had given Her at the end of the visit of the Archangel Gabriel.
1. We may start our approach to the mystery of the Church’s beginning
from the safe source of papal teaching.
Two Holy Fathers, Pope Pius IX in 1854, and Pope Pius XII in 1950 have stated in two separate dogmatic definitions concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, that “She was in the same Decree of Predestination as the Son of God”.
Even when two Pontiffs profess that the Holy Church possesses such profound knowledge of Revealed Truth, so intimately related to the assent given by Our Lady at the time of the Annunciation, and even when they are defining a Dogma, we cannot assume that they know more about it than Mary Herself knew. To whom is Revealed Truth made known? If we gladly profess that the correct answer must be: to the Holy Catholic Church, then it would be illogical to maintain that it was not revealed to “the beginning of that Church”, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
What does it mean “to be in the same Decree of Predestination with the Son of God”? According to the Angelic Doctor, the great St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic doctrine on Predestination is
“that God from all eternity prepared the good works for the Just to walk into without forcing them to do so.” [Cf. Sum. Theol. 3, 24, 1, c.]
Thus the Predestination of the Son of God means in part the preparation by the Father of all the good works for His Son to walk into here on earth as the Saviour of mankind, and for His Son to avoid any ‘work’ He had not prepared. Our Lord has given us plenty of testimony to this on many occasions during His public life, especially through His explicit references to Sacred Scripture: “as it is written”.
Thus, for His Holy Mother to find Herself “in the same Decree of Predestination” must mean that She will walk ‘step by step’ with the Son of God only into those good works, which the Father had prepared from all eternity for both His Son and His Mother to walk into, no matter how good all other works might have been, those He had not prepared. We may barely begin to appreciate what precise knowledge this Decree required on the part of Our Blessed Lady ...
2. This Mystery can be further unfolded from St. Paul’s teaching on the
Eternal Decree of the Redemption.
St. Paul tells us that it is the eternal, inscrutable Decree of the Blessed Trinity that the Second Person of that adorable Trinity, the Son of the Eternal Father and the Word of God, should redeem the human race “as the Head of a Body” [Cf. Eph. 1:1-14]. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle knew and expressed this Mystery with such precision, that it now pertains to the deepest understanding the Holy Church has of Herself. And again we cannot assume that the Virgin Mary, who had to decide if this Church ever should come into existence, and even if this Church should take its beginning in Her own person, would not have known about this with even greater precision.
The Decree means that, for its fulfilment, Our Blessed Lord, at the moment of His Incarnation [Hebr. 10:5], had to be “fitted” with two Bodies: a physical one that made Him Human, and a mystical one that made Him Head. No one but Mary could give Her consent to that Decree in the name of that Second Body. That is, according to Catholic teaching, in the name of “all mankind”, as e.g. Pope Paul VI wrote in 1974:
“In this way one perceives how, through the assent of the humble Handmaid of the Lord, mankind begins its return to God and sees in the glory of the all-holy Virgin the goal towards which it is journeying” [Marialis Cultus, # 28].
In order that this assent could be given freely and most worthily, it was necessary that the Virgin was fully aware that She was asked to be that Second Body, that Mystical Body, the one that would make Our Lord “the Head of all mankind”. And furthermore, that She Herself, as the beginning of that Mystical Body, His Church, would have to unite Herself with Christ ‘as the Body to the Head’, walking with Him, in obedience to Her place in the same Decree of Predestination, into all the good works and sufferings the Father had prepared for both of them to walk into. That way Our Blessed Lord never went anywhere in His work of Redemption as a ‘head’ in isolation from His Body the Church, but always united with it!
3. Is it possible that this whole Mystery can be viewed from yet another
angle to shed even further Light on it?
Indeed it is.
The Truth revealed by God that the core of the Redemption consists of the same intimate union between Our Saviour and His Marian Church as the one that exists between the Head and
its Body points to the very root of the need for this Redemption: the Fall of mankind in its first unique pair, Adam and Eve, a union on Our Lord’s own teaching just as inseparable as head and body. It is for that reason that since Apostolic times, Our Blessed Lady has been graced with the title “The New Eve” next to St. Paul’s appellation of Our Lord as “The New Adam”. From the manner in which Our Lady gave Her consent to God, “in the name of all mankind” [Pope Paul VI) at the moment of the Annunciation, we see how it parallels the way in which Adam and Eve gave their consent to the devil at the moment of the Fall which, according to a Dogma of our holy Catholic Faith, also truly affected “all mankind” (Rom. 5:17-20). And we can rest assured that the deep significance of this parallel did not escape Our Lady once it became clear to Her that She, as the Woman selected by God to the dignity of becoming the Mother of God, also became elevated to the dignity of being “the Woman of Genesis”, the one predestined “to crush the serpent’s head” as the result of the “Everlasting Enmity” established by God in Paradise between ‘the Woman’ and Satan.
4. A Grammatical Approach.
It is not hard to read what was in the Mind of Christ at the time of this profound Mystery from the grammatical construction of the Greek sentence used by St. Luke. The Greek word “kai”, next to the obvious and most readily used meaning of the English word “and” nevertheless possesses the equally authentic meaning in classical Greek of “even”. Thus the Greek used by St. Luke sustains perfectly the rendering “And He went down with them to Nazareth even in obedience to them”. This translation of the Greek sentence would then also include His return to Nazareth in Our Lord’s obedience, the principal aspect under which He wished the next phase of His life on earth to be viewed.
We can neither direct nor anticipate what breath-taking insights can be gained by souls from meditations on this Fifth Joyful Mystery under the unction of the Holy Spirit. But there must inevitably come a point in which those meditations show that Our Lady understood that “His hour” had not yet come, and that it was part of the Father’s predestination that, after the revelation of the uniqueness of a vocation to the Catholic Priesthood, “the good work for both the Mother and the Son to walk into” was not for them to stay in Jerusalem, but to return to Nazareth. Viewed under that wonderful illumination, two things came to light. Not only did the return to Nazareth become included in the obedience of the Son of God to His Father’s Will as expressed by the insistence of His Holy Mother that He come home with them, but by the same genius of simplicity did the submission of every vocation to the Catholic Priesthood become placed under obedience to the authority of the Holy Catholic Church.
With this we have reached the point in the life of St. Joseph in which it becomes easy to explain why Catholic instinct as expressed by the Magisterium, has from earliest times venerated this great Saint as the Protector of the Universal Church over and above his already formidable titles of Fosterfather of the Child Jesus, Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and Protector of the Holy Family. For now in the little village of Nazareth things are no longer the same. A new and subtle dimension has been added to the relationships in which the members of this exclusive family live their lives from now on.
Before He stayed behind in the temple of Jerusalem, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in His infinite love for His creatures showed all of us how it is not only pleasing to our heavenly Father that children practise the Fourth Commandment, but that it is His expressed Will that they are obedient to their parents. But by staying behind in Jerusalem at the age of manhood, Christ - as we saw - made it known in no uncertain terms that no human interference can come between Himself and the great mystery of a vocation to the Priesthood, His priesthood. Such a calling falls outside obedience to parents, but not outside obedience to the Church. And when St. Luke stresses that, by going back with His parents to Nazareth, “He was under their authority”, he was no longer referring to the natural relationship of child to parents, but stressing the altogether new relationship of a boy called placing his vocation under the authority of the Church. Our Lady had been the beginning of that Church, the sole human being who in Her own person could give, and consequently had given, to Christ the Head His Mystical Body. And the least member of that Body, St. Joseph, had not been relieved from his position of authority as the Holy Church lived itself out in Nazareth. But from this moment onward it was no longer only the Holy Family that had been placed under that authority and under that protection, but the Universal Church, both the Body and the Head.
This mystery is deep and can only help Catholics to be obedient to the Pope of the day who in his human and visible appearance has divine authority over the Mystical Body of Christ, which authority, as did St. Joseph’s, derives directly from a Divine Institution that issues forth from the sole Head of that Body, Christ the Lord.