Joseph's Singular Faith and Supernatural Wisdom

There are two perfections which we are called upon specially to admire in Joseph: his most singular faith and his eminent supernatural wisdom. These were two rays, as it were, of the Divine understanding descending into the mind of Joseph.

God endowed him with the most lively faith which any saint ever received—always excepting the great Mother of God—and this alone merited for him the title of “just,” as a great Cardinal has observed.¹ Again, what light must he have possessed to believe, simply on hearing the few words which the angel spoke, more mysteries than had been proposed in the course of many centuries to all the ancient Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Testament! We are so accustomed to the Gospel narrative that, perhaps, we have never sufficiently realized St. Joseph’s merit in this matter. Yet, as we have observed, what the Evangelists do not say is as full of meaning as what they do say. St. Matthew tells us how the angel said to Joseph, “Joseph, 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”;² but what he does not tell us is that Joseph uttered a word in reply or asked a single question. Yet in this sleep of his there were revealed to our saint the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Redemption, and Reconciliation of man to God. He was called to believe that a Virgin should become a mother, and that the son she had conceived was God Himself; that this child was to deliver His people, not, as His countrymen all expected, from the dominion of the Romans, but from the slavery of sin and the tyranny of the devil; in fine, he was required to believe all these mysteries as contained in the angel’s message to him, and on his testimony alone, without any miraculous guarantee that he spoke on the part of God. Oh, the sublime faith of Joseph! “O holy and just Joseph,” exclaims an illustrious Cardinal,³ “who believed at once, and most firmly, so many, so new, and so unheard-of things!” You despoiled yourself of your own lights, to submit your spirit to the word of an angel, penetrating, in an instant, and at their first announcement to you, so many and such deep truths. You did not need the stimulus of miracles, which have been so necessary in order to lead other men to humble their souls and take upon them the yoke of the faith; neither were you won thereto by the knowledge which we now possess, that for ages since the coming of the Messias so many nations and countless souls have embraced it. All this weight of evidence you lacked, but for the assurance of your faith you asked no greater pledge or proof than Heaven was pleased to grant you.

We have in Holy Scripture no instance of faith equal to that of Joseph. Compare Gedeon’s behavior when an angel came to tell him, in the name of the Lord, that he should deliver Israel out of the hand of Madian. That “most valiant of men” required more than one miraculous sign,⁴ and those of his own selection, both to ascertain who it was that spoke to him, and also to encourage him to lead the people forth to battle. And this defect of perfect faith we meet with, not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New. Some great saints who lived in the times of Jesus and of His Apostles exhibited weakness of this character. Zachary has the testimony of the Evangelist that he “walked in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without blame,”⁵ still he required something more than an angel’s word to believe that his wife should bear a son in her old age. Yet he might have called to mind that such a miracle was not without precedent, since God had vouchsafed a similar boon to Abraham, the father of the faithful, and to his wife, Sara. What comparison, therefore, could there be between the demand made upon Zachary’s faith and that which was required of Joseph? Moreover, the angel spoke to Joseph only in his sleep, while to Zachary he solemnly appeared while engaged in the holy functions of his office, standing on the right side of the altar of incense.⁶ Yet he doubted, and said, “Whereby shall I know this?”⁷ Ananias was bidden, not by an angel, but by the Lord Himself, in a vision, to go and restore his sight to Saul of Tarsus; yet so alarmed was he at the very sound of the fierce persecutor’s name that he ventured on a remonstrance, telling the Lord,—almost, one might say, as if He who knoweth all things was not fully acquainted with the circumstances or hardly appreciated the danger of the commission He was giving him,—how much evil this man had done to His saints at Jerusalem, and how he had received authority at Damascus to bind all who should invoke His Name; and it was necessary for the Lord to reiterate His command and assure His faltering servant how Saul was a vessel of election before he did His bidding.⁸

Scripture, often sparing of details, is always particular in giving us word for word the objections and difficulties made by servants of God to divine intimations and commands, whether through slowness of faith or lack of courage. The absence, therefore, in the case of Joseph, upon every such occasion, of all reply or even request for explanation is full of significance; a significance which we are bound to notice, because it is meant that we should do so. Joseph always believed without hesitation; and this, not because what was proposed to his belief was easy, or that this great saint did not possess a mind capable of perceiving the profundity and the difficulties of the mysteries declared to him; far from it. Joseph was gifted with a mind of large capacities, which he had cultivated and fortified during his whole life by meditation on heavenly things. He also obeyed without remonstrance or delay; and this, not because the commands laid upon him involved nothing arduous in their execution: witness his rising in the middle of the night to flee into Egypt, and asking none of those questions which human prudence would have suggested before encountering the many privations, sufferings, and dangers of such a journey, not for himself alone, but for the two persons whom he loved incomparably more than he loved himself. And how are we to account for all this? How is it that on the angel proposing to him things so hard to believe and difficult to execute, and Joseph being fully competent to perceive all that was apparently incredible in the promises of Heaven and startling in the orders conveyed to him, nevertheless he behaved as if the fullest demonstration had convinced his understanding, and the most complete experience or acquired knowledge had smoothed all the seeming obstacles which stood in the way of obedience? It is because this admirable saint had received from God the most excellent gift of faith, and because his mind was penetrated with the rays of that supernatural light which causes us to adhere to all that God has revealed to us. It was because he lived a life of light on earth, so that in him faith, in itself obscure, was associated with an illumination so brilliant that it resembled that light of glory which fills the understandings of the Blessed in Heaven. The Fathers of the Church are frequent in their admiration of Joseph’s undoubting faith. St. Irenæus,⁹ St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, as well as others, might all be quoted to this effect. St. Anselm (or the author who goes by his name) has a pleasing and ingenious remark as to why, when the angel bade Joseph return into the land of Israel, he did not give him fuller directions. It was, he says, because he desired to have to return to speak to him again.¹⁰ It was a pleasure to this exalted spirit to witness the greatness of Joseph’s faith and the submission of his spirit to all the revelations of Heaven. St. Augustine, perhaps above all, gives the highest commendation to the faith of Joseph when he compares it to that of our Lady herself,¹¹ whom her cousin, St. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Ghost, addressed as “blessed art thou who hast believed”.¹²

The supernatural light which Joseph received along with this eminent faith endowed his soul with the most singular prudence and wisdom, gifts which in the natural order he had already possessed in a remarkable degree; for this exalted prudence and wisdom was, indeed, requisite in one to whom was entrusted a higher office than was ever confided to the very angels themselves. Sufficient proof is afforded to us of the eminent supernatural wisdom possessed by Joseph, in our Lady’s behavior when he communicated to her the orders he had received from Heaven to flee into Egypt. Did not Mary know that this journey must be full of hardships and perils, and was not the safety and preservation of her Divine Son the dearest object of her heart? Was she ignorant of the additional danger involved in this sudden departure in the darkness and cold of a winter’s night, unprepared and unprovided as they were? Yet she asked not a question to assure herself of the certainty of Joseph’s vision in slumber. She, so enlightened in heavenly mysteries, must have known how difficult and delicate a thing it is to pronounce upon the truth of a revelation, since bad angels as well as good not only can manifest themselves to our exterior senses, but may have access to our imaginations. Nay, even in the case of purely intellectual visions, of which God alone can be the author, since He alone can penetrate into the spirit of man, it is very difficult and needs a high gift of discernment to distinguish them with certainty from those which are formed by the ideas residing in the imagination. All this, as being deeply conversant with the secrets of the inner and mystical life, Mary well knew. Was it not natural, then,—would it not seem to have been her duty,—under the supposition of any, the slightest, doubt, to ask her spouse to explain the circumstances of this vision in sleep, in order to be sure that it was a supernatural operation, not an illusion? St. Epiphanius¹³ asks where is the caution and the prudence which Mary had evinced when heretofore she addressed that question to the angel: “How shall this be done?”¹⁴ And yet it seemed as incredible that a God should be forced to take refuge amongst idolaters to save His life, as that a maiden should become a mother without losing her virginity. No one could have blamed Mary if she had asked for some explanation, nor would our saint, we may rest assured, have made the least difficulty in satisfying her anxiety, had she expressed any on the subject. But the Holy Virgin, without replying a word or spending a moment on examining the revelation with which he acquainted her, arose without delay; in which she not only gave a proof of perfect submission, but observed the rules of a prudence altogether divine; for she was so entirely convinced of the wisdom of Joseph and of his supernatural penetration, enabling him to comprehend the most exalted mysteries, that she venerated his words as oracles, knowing that one to whom God had accorded so much light could never hold what was false to be true.

This testimony which the Blessed Virgin gave on this occasion to the wisdom of Joseph is the highest conceivable, when we consider the surpassing light which illuminated her own spirit. Her unquestioning obedience to his directions in a matter of such inappreciable importance, and the estimation in which she clearly held his guidance, are more glorious to him than if all living creatures, the angels included, had united in praising him. God had, in fact, bestowed on Joseph so excellent a gift of wisdom that it enabled him at once to distinguish mysterious from natural slumbers, the voice of angels from that of bad spirits in their disguise, and the revelations of God from the workings of the imagination. And Mary knew it.