Concupiscence Subdued in the First Sanctification of Joseph by the Superabundance of Grace, Which Was Greater in Him than in Any Other Saint except Mary

One of the penalties of original sin is that rebellion of the flesh against the spirit which, according to the Council of Trent, proceeds from sin and inclines to sin.¹ Hence the Apostle said: “I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members”.²

If it was fitting that Joseph should be speedily cleansed from the original stain, it was also fitting that he should by a special privilege be freed from this rebellion of the flesh which is its consequence. All in him was to be pure and holy; that conflict between the flesh and the spirit, that propensity to evil and difficulty respecting good could find no place in him, but there must be perfect subjection of the inferior powers to reason, perfect tranquility and order in all his affections and in all the movements of his heart; which is equivalent to saying that the incentive to sin—fomes, as it is called by theologians³—was to be, as it were, extinguished in Joseph or, at any rate, vanquished and bound in such wise that it could not revolt against reason. Since Joseph was to be a pure virgin, in order to make him the worthy companion of the purest among all virgins, so also was it needful that he should be exempt from any movement of concupiscence which might cast a shadow on the white lily of his purity. God, certainly, did not fail to anticipate and protect with this singular grace the heart of Joseph, so that the very slightest thought which was not perfectly chaste should never arise to trouble the serenity of his stainless soul.

Gerson, after having asserted Joseph’s liberation from original sin, goes on to claim this privilege for him also. If, he says, the Lord would not confide His Mother, then a matron in age, to any but His virgin disciple, the Evangelist St. John, how much more when that Mother was in her tender youth! In like manner, since Jesus would not be born save of perfect virginal purity, that is, of Mary, so also He would not be nurtured save by one whose purity was spotless, that is, by Joseph.⁴

Echius, that eminent and learned doctor, follows and confirms this statement of Gerson in two Sermons which he composed in praise of St. Joseph, and which he dedicated to Pope Clement VII. “Christ,” he says, “when hanging on the Cross and about to die, commended His Mother to the Apostle John. Doctors, inquiring why He did not rather commend her to St. Peter, or to some other of His disciples, give this reason: that He, a Virgin, commended His Virgin Mother to a virgin. It is also,” he says, “to be considered, not only that Joseph was a virgin, but that God by a special grace had extinguished in him all the carnal fire of concupiscence, so that, free from all temptation, he could dwell with the most holy and most beautiful Virgin Mary.” Whence it is just to infer that he was sanctified in his mother’s womb, and that the rebellion of concupiscence was either extinguished or repressed in him. Nor should this surprise us, since, next to Mary, he was destined by God for the sublimest ministry, a ministry superior to that of all the angels and saints; and the holy Doctors are unanimous in concluding that there was no grace, gift, or privilege conferred on angel or saint which was not conceded in a much higher degree to Joseph; otherwise he would, doubtless, appear to be in some respect inferior to one or other among them.

Giovanni di Cartagena, who for his doctrine and piety was so dear to Paul V., devoted thirteen of his beautiful Homilies on the mysteries of Christ and of Mary to the praises of our saint. Having set himself to prove that, with the exception of the Blessed Mother of God, Joseph was superior to all the saints, he proceeds to demonstrate the same with respect to the angels. “The office of the angels,” he says, “is the guardianship of men; but to Joseph was committed a far higher and more excellent office, since he was chosen to be the guardian, not of a simple man, but of Christ the Lord, God and Man, and to be the most faithful spouse of His Mother.”⁵ St. Francis de Sales, the new doctor of the Church, enlarging on the praises of St. Joseph in his Spiritual Conferences, exclaims, “Oh, what a saint is the glorious St. Joseph! Not only is he a patriarch, but he is the corypheus of all the patriarchs; not only is he a confessor, but he is more than a confessor, because in his confession is contained the dignity of bishop, the generosity of martyrs and of all other saints;” and, later on, he says that the Patriarch St. Joseph surpassed all the saints and angels, and the very cherubim themselves, in the eminent virtue of virginity.⁶ The great doctor, Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori, pondering those words of the holy Evangelist: “And He was subject to them,”⁷ says: “This humility of Jesus in obeying causes us to know that the dignity of St. Joseph is superior to that of all the saints, saving only that of the Virgin Mother”.⁸

If, then, it be now the common opinion of doctors that Joseph in his dignity, in his ministry, and in holiness surpassed all the angels and saints, we are led to the legitimate conclusion that from his conception he was immediately enriched with gifts superior to theirs, in order that he might be a fitting spouse for Mary, and worthy to be the reputed father of Jesus. Therefore, if of the angels St. Augustine writes, that “God, in creating the angelic nature, infused grace into it,”⁹ so likewise it must be true to say the same of St. Joseph; otherwise the angels would be his superiors, not only in their nature, but in the priority and abundance of their grace. And what it is true to say of St. Joseph, as compared to the angels, with still more reason may be affirmed in respect to all the saints. If St. Joseph had not been sanctified more speedily and with a fuller amount of grace, in what respect would he have been more highly favored than Jeremias or John the Baptist,¹⁰ both of whom were sanctified previous to their birth: of the Baptist it being declared that he was “filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb”? If, therefore, Joseph was superior to the other saints, he must, not only have enjoyed like privileges, but have had them in a much higher degree. We have reason, then, to conclude that not only was he freed without delay from original sin, but that his beautiful soul was also delivered from concupiscence, filled with the Holy Spirit and with the plenitude of His gifts; nay, that he was even confirmed in grace, and endued with the use of reason while yet in his mother’s womb, as we believe was the case with Mary from the first moment of her conception.¹¹

P. Paolo Segneri, a prince among sacred orators and a profound theologian, in a splendid panegyric which he pronounced on St. Joseph, after having demonstrated how distinguished doctors have agreed in affirming that this privilege of sanctification before birth had been granted to our saint, goes on to say how St. Thomas teaches that the nearer anything approaches to its principle the greater and more perfect is its participation in the prerogatives or singular properties of that principle. Thus the brightness of the sun is more resplendent in its vicinity, and heat in proximity of the fire is more fervent; so also, if you draw water from a spring, you will find that it is clearer, more limpid, and more pure in proportion to its nearness to the source. “But, if this be so,” he says, “how can any one suspect that Joseph, who by affinity and by office was so closely united to the universal source of all sanctity, was made participant thereof in a lower degree and in less perfection than those who were much further removed from it? For this reason, then, we may well conclude, with very solid grounds of probability, that he was, not only sanctified in his mother’s womb, but also confirmed in grace and exempted from all malice, so that no man on earth—let us boldly affirm it—was ever holier than was Joseph.” And further on he says: “Have I erred in saying that no one ever exceeded Joseph in sanctity, always, of course, excepting, as she ever must be excepted, his Spouse? If such an assertion is to be esteemed temerity, then call Gerson, the famous Parisian Chancellor, temerarious, temerarious a Bernardine de Bustis, a Giovanni di Cartagena, an Isidoro surnamed Isolano, and, finally, a Suarez, whose judgment is equivalent to that of an entire university. And is it in ambiguous or obscure terms that Suarez expresses himself? Listen to his words: ‘I do not see how it is a temerarious or improbable but, rather, a pious and probable opinion should any hold that St. Joseph in grace and glory surpassed all the other saints, for there is nothing in Holy Scripture repugnant to such a belief’.”¹² If the venerable P. Segneri could thus speak in praise of St. Joseph two hundred years ago, and that eminent doctor and great theologian, Suarez, a hundred years before him, what would they not have said, what would they not have written, in this our time, when the glories of Joseph are more and more manifesting themselves in the whole world, and when from the sublime throne of the Vatican he has been declared the Patron of the Universal Church!

But Suarez goes further still. After having enumerated the various ministries in the order of grace, and said that the Apostolic ministry occupies the first rank, he adds, “There are other ministries which belong to the order of the Hypostatic Union, which in its kind is more perfect, as is apparent from the divine maternity of Mary; and in this order is the ministry of St. Joseph, which, therefore, surpasses the former, that of the Apostles”.¹³ If, then, according to Suarez, the ministry of St. Joseph belongs to the order of the Hypostatic Union, and this order is superior to the Apostolic, which is the first of all the rest, clearly Joseph, although he holds the third rank in the order of the Hypostatic Union, is superior even to Peter, who is first in the Apostolic hierarchy. Between the ministry of the Apostles and that of Joseph there exists this difference: the former is immediately for men, to conduct them to Christ; that of Joseph is immediately directed to Christ Himself, in order to preserve Him for men, and is therefore so much the more noble and sublime. “The ministry of Joseph,” says Giovanni di Cartagena, “both as spouse of the Blessed Virgin and as adopted father of Jesus, was closely conjoined with the very Person of Jesus Christ, in such wise that its dignity appears, more than any other whatsoever, to approach the most sublime dignity of the Mother of God.”¹⁴ Benedict XIV. himself thus concludes: “These graces, these spiritual prerogatives, of Joseph are great, are eminent, are most certain, and are so exclusively his that they have not been given to any other saint”.¹⁵

Upon the authority, then, of such celebrated doctors, we may safely hold that Joseph, being, next to Mary, superior in dignity and holiness to all the other saints, must therefore have received from God privileges proportionately greater, and was consequently speedily cleansed from original sin, filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and even confirmed in grace, with concupiscence subdued, if not extinguished, from the first moments of his existence, that thus he might be worthy of being associated with Jesus and Mary, and form with them that august Triad upon earth which is the joy of the whole universe.

Some, however, would allege as an objection the declaration of Christ, who said, “There hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist”;¹⁶ whence they infer that Joseph might, indeed, be equal to the Baptist, but could not surpass him. Nevertheless, we have the sure authority of Benedict XIV. for considering that this praise of John detracts nothing from the preeminent glories of Joseph, since Jesus, in asserting that none had arisen greater than John the Baptist, was not speaking absolutely, but comparatively. He was speaking of him as compared to the saints and prophets of the Old Testament, and, moreover, was excluding from His general assertion those who ought to be excluded, and excepting those who ought to be excepted, as is the case in all general assertions. Thus from this declaration Jesus naturally excluded Himself and excluded Mary; and so also He excluded Joseph, as belonging to an order much superior to that of the Baptist. Hence Maldonatus, a very learned commentator, speaking of this declaration of Christ, wrote, “I answer briefly and easily that here the Baptist, as St. Jerome affirms, is compared by Jesus, not to all the saints, but only to those of the Old Testament”.¹⁷ Now, Joseph certainly belongs to the New Testament, and is the first after Mary. Therefore he is excluded. Moreover, St. Jerome, commenting on the words of Christ, observes that Jesus did not in this declaration prefer John to all the prophets and patriarchs, but only made him equal to them.

Others, indeed, and with much reason, maintain that John is not here compared by Jesus with all the saints, but only with the prophets, he being, in fact, the Precursor Prophet; and that it is clearly in this sense that He must be understood would appear from the context in St. Matthew’s Gospel, where, speaking of John to the multitude, Jesus asked, “What went you out into the desert to see? A prophet? Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet;” adding afterwards, “And if you will receive it, he is Elias that is to come”.¹⁸ The meaning, therefore, of what Jesus proceeded to say was that among those who were born of women there had not risen a greater prophet than John the Baptist; and he was greater in this respect, that the other prophets beheld the Messias in spirit and announced Him long before, but John saw Him and announced Him as present. The words of our Lord, as given in St. Luke’s Gospel, confirm this view: “Amongst those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist”.¹⁹ Zachary had foretold that his child should be called “the prophet of the Highest”;²⁰ and Holy Church herself styles him the greatest of the prophets, and in her hymns declares the reason, namely, that the prophets who preceded him prophesied of Jesus from afar, but John pointed Him out with his finger as present, and as the Lamb of God come to take away the sins of the world.²¹ Besides, in the very declaration which Jesus made He expresses a limitation of John’s superiority, adding, “Yet he that is the lesser in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he”; by which we may understand he that is most profoundly humble; Jesus in these words alluding in a special sense to Himself, next to Mary, and then to St. Joseph, who for the greatness of his humility was, with the exception of the Blessed Virgin, unsurpassed by any saint. So, too, when His disciples asked our Lord who was the greater in the Kingdom of Heaven He called unto Him a little child and, setting him in the midst of them, He said, “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the Kingdom of Heaven”.²² Therefore, since Joseph next to Mary excels in humility, it follows that he is greater than all the other saints, including the Baptist. Thus the superiority of St. Joseph is confirmed also by these words of Christ.²³

Nothing in what has been said can be viewed as any derogation of the high titles and sublime sanctity of John the Baptist, who attained even to meriting the praises of a God; the sole object being to remove all doubt of the preeminence of Joseph, and to prove that in his greatness and glory he must be reckoned, after Jesus and Mary, as excelling all the saints and angels.