St Joseph, the silent one, was a righteous man who longed for the purity of God. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love can be given by God as gifts to humanity, but purity, which is of God alone, is a transformation of being more than lived virtue.
Through the purity of God in Jesus and Mary, Joseph was elevated into a living manifestation of the Beatitudes. Simple, poor, and meek, Joseph experienced a progression from “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” through “Blessed are the merciful” and came to that sublime state of purity: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). When he learned that his betrothed wife was with a child not his own, Joseph responded with mercy, not public exposure. At the angel’s prompting, Joseph chose Mercy in his resolve to protect and help his beloved Mary, herself sinless and pure, who would otherwise be alone to face exile or death. Thus, mercy transformed righteousness, and purity was born as the savior, bringing a new way of worship, transformed by love.
The word of God, sinless and pure, entered the harshness of this world with so few people and such little protection against the uncertain darkness, in Bethlehem, in a stable, in piercing cold. Who beside Joseph was there for the delivery of the newborn infant Jesus? If St Joseph received the baby (perhaps even born on Joseph’s knees), then the promise of the future Beatitudes was already fulfilled. Joseph would have been the first mortal to look upon the human face of God Incarnate in the infant Jesus: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God”, who was pleased to dwell with human beings.
The traditional Temple worship was superseded in that moment by purity of heart: O blessed Joseph, happy man whose privilege it was, not only to see and to hear that God whom many a king has longed to see, yet saw not, longed to hear, yet heard not; but also to carry him in your arms and to kiss him, to clothe him and to watch over him!
In those hidden years in Nazareth, Joseph suffered and worked to protect the growing Incarnate Word and his beloved Mary, the new Ark of the Covenant. Did the boy Jesus suffer too, as he considered the well-being of his mother and foster father? Amidst such awe and wondrous love, there would have been acute awareness of one another’s vulnerability before the mighty political powers, corruption, and the cruelty of sin. The Holy Family was so small and insignificant.
Nevertheless, trusting with Mary in God’s invisible providence amid the suffering, both Joseph and the young Jesus continued. Purity of heart kept all three in peace and attuned to the same spiritual note of mutual loving support with thanksgiving to God.
Can we imagine that Joseph’s dying words might have prefigured those of the good thief, St Dismas, who later shared the extreme of suffering with the crucified Jesus: “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom” (Lk 23:42).
Ruth D. Lasserter
Friend of the SDC
Indiana, US
