The Offices of Joseph

Why did not Joseph accept the offer of Aphrodisius? In his house Mary and Jesus would have found safety, comfort, ease, and repose. Joseph, however, as we have said, declined, though, no doubt, gratefully and graciously, the proffered hospitality, and preferred the seclusion of a poor cottage in an obscure village. And, in doing so, there can be no question that he was obeying the light from Heaven which guided his steps; but at the same time we may believe that he was illuminated in his understanding to realize the fitness of the command, grounded on the nature of the offices entrusted to him; and those offices were themselves the inseparable consequences of the state which our Divine Lord had assumed when He was born into the world.

First, then, He was pleased to appear in a state of poverty; secondly, He came as a child; thirdly, as an orphan, that is, without an earthly father. Now, these three states imposed on Joseph three corresponding obligations: first, that of laboring in order to supply His needs; secondly, that of rearing and instructing Him as He grew; thirdly, that of acting as His parent and guardian.

There is no denying that the Incarnate Word, His Blessed Mother, and her incomparable spouse professed through life the strictest poverty, yet we never hear, as the learned Cardinal of Cambrai observes, of the Son of God having to beg His bread, either as a child or during His hidden life. Who fed Him all that time? Joseph, replies St. Jerome; for the Savior chose to share the poverty of His parents,¹ and contented Himself with the sustenance provided for Him in the house of a poor carpenter. The Eternal Father did not will that His Son should be fed in a miraculous manner, as many great saints of both the old and new covenants have been; neither did He deem it fitting to preserve His temporal life by His own immediate influx and action, as He communicates to Him His Eternal Life in His own Bosom, where He is begotten from all eternity. But He desired that Joseph should have the glory of providing for Him who provides for the necessities of all creatures. As the Eternal Father engenders the Son of His own substance, it was meet that Joseph, whom He had called to a participation of His Paternity, should maintain the life of Jesus through himself personally, not instrumentally through others, and that he should employ all his diligence, devote all his labors, and consume his whole strength in supplying the Savior’s needs. The Mother of the Incarnate Word was exempted from the pains of childbirth in bringing her Son into the world, but Joseph was to suffer much by his continual toil in preserving the Divine Infant’s life. The milk with which the Virgin fed Him while a babe, she received, as the Church sings, from Heaven;² it cost this sovereign maiden nothing; but Joseph was subjected to great fatigues for many years in order to relieve the extreme poverty of his Foster-Son. To increase His strength he weakened his own; so that he might have said, like the holy Precursor, “He must increase, but I must decrease”. Marvel of marvels! this great saint received into his arms a poor and necessitous God, who deigned to be dependent on him for His corporeal food. Joseph shared with his august spouse the glory of nourishing Him; she, of her own substance, and he of his substantial strength. Thus they combined in feeding and sustaining this Lamb of God against the day of sacrifice, that He might be able to bear that tremendous weight of suffering to which the Eternal Father had sentenced Him for the love of us. Your laborious steps, O great saint, your painful journeyings, will—so God has decreed—be the means of enabling this Divine Victim to walk, and, before long, to tread the hills and valleys of Juda and the streets of Jerusalem, there to publish the glad tidings of salvation. See this Adorable Infant stretching forth His little Hands, the Hands that made and fashioned the universe, to ask bread of Joseph! All creatures raise their eyes to Heaven for sustenance: “All expect of Thee that Thou give them food in season”.³ But this Sovereign Provider wills, O great saint, to seek from your hands His own aliment. When God, of old, desired to manifest His supreme and majestic independence, He said, “If I should be hungry, I would not tell thee”;⁴ but, O glorious Joseph, when the self-existent God declared this, He made an exception in regard to you; for the eyes of the Incarnate Word were to look to you one day, and during many days, with confidence for His daily bread. The royal prophet confessed that God needed not his goods,⁵ and for this very reason acknowledged Him as his God; but you, O incomparable Joseph, will know the Incarnate God by the need He vouchsafes to have of you, you will in this sign behold and acknowledge His incomprehensible goodness, His unfathomable love, His infinite perfections.

The second office which the Doctors of the Church recognize in Joseph is that of the preceptor and teacher of the Infant God.⁶ The Savior of the world, from an excess of His infinite humility, willed in the first years of His temporal life to manifest Himself with all the feebleness and infirmities of childhood; for which reason, albeit He was the Eternal Word, He delayed speaking articulately, for, as the prophet Isaias, referring to the future Messias, typically represented by the child whom the prophetess bore, gives us to understand, there would be a time in which the Divine Child should not be able to pronounce the name of father or mother.⁷ It was needful, therefore, that Joseph should act as instructor to Him who knew everything. “Oh! with what sweet delight did Joseph hear the stammerings of the Infant,” says St. Bernard.⁸ Preceptors and doctors explain the truth to their disciples, but our saint was to teach the very Truth to explain Itself. The Divine Savior humbled Himself to ask light when deliberating on any question, as if this had been necessary to the Increated Wisdom, and He was pleased to think it no disgrace to His Adorable Person to assume the appearance of ignorance, seeing that He had taken upon Himself the very likeness of a sinner. This humility moved Him, as many learned writers have held, to ask counsel of Joseph, follow his advice, and receive instructions from him which to others would have been useful, but which He could not need, and this with so much docility that He was hereafter to be regarded as the apprentice of a poor artificer.⁹ Only once did Jesus do the scribes and doctors of the Law the honor of appearing before them in the character of a disciple, but on Joseph He habitually bestowed it when He willed that he should teach Him, as children are taught by frequent repetitions, and should give Him His first lessons in comportment and in virtue. Only once in His life did the Savior humble Himself to receive consolation from an angel,¹⁰ but never did He receive instruction from any of these blessed spirits. To Joseph alone, in conjunction with His Blessed Mother, was this marvelous honor reserved. All the parental rights which she possessed were shared in their entirety by Joseph, and he had besides, as we have seen, those which specially belong to the father and head of the family; and the father is by right the teacher and instructor of his child.

Most true it is that our saint could teach the God-Man nothing which He did not already know, since He was full of knowledge from the first instant of His conception, but this Sun of Justice, infinitely luminous in Himself, did not choose to shine before men save in proportion as He grew in age and acquired knowledge in an experimental and practical manner like other children. It is a deeply mysterious subject which we can never fathom, but we must remember that St. Luke expressly says (2:52) that Jesus “advanced in wisdom and age,” using the same word to denote both growths, the former of which was certainly a real growth. He does not say He advanced in age, and assumed the semblance of advance in wisdom, but He advanced in wisdom and age. Thus we have Scriptural authority for believing that our Lord willed to learn from father and mother like other children in a true, though inscrutable sense.¹¹ Oh, the incomparable humility of the God-Man! Oh, the adorable love by which He sought in all things possible to assimilate Himself to us, His brethren! But what an honor was awarded to Joseph to be the master and teacher of God manifest in the flesh! And, if this be true, how high a right to the title of father of Jesus did our saint thus acquire! Those who instruct others are held to acquire over them thereby paternal rights, because the communication of light and knowledge to a spirit is similar, in its order, to the communication of natural life to a body. A created spirit never created another spirit, but it can introduce its own thoughts and sentiments into one less highly gifted by an infusion of light and knowledge, which is a species of spiritual generation. The Angel of the Schools notes that St. Paul takes the name of father with regard to those Christians whom he has instructed.¹² God, says the Apostle, is the origin of all paternity in heaven as well as in earth.¹³ Hence St. Thomas concludes that some of the angels are entitled to the appellation of father with respect to other angels, because they communicate their superior light to those who have less,¹⁴ as a master may be called the father of his disciples. Jeremias was called the father of the people of Israel¹⁵ because he taught them the law of God; and Moses calls Jubal “the father of them that play upon the harp and the organs,”¹⁶ because he was the first musician who taught men that art. We must acknowledge, then, that, since Joseph was externally the instructor of the Savior, as if He had needed all the lessons which he imparted to Him, it would be unjust to deny to him the dignity of father of Jesus.

The third office which had been committed to Joseph was that of tutor or guardian of the Incarnate Word, who was always an orphan upon earth, and much more so than any ever were; for other orphans possessed, at least for a brief space, those of whom they were the natural offspring; not so Jesus, He was an orphan, not by accident, or against His will, as are those whom death has robbed of their fathers, but He was so by choice, having willed to be born on earth of a mother, with no father according to the flesh, even as He had eternally been begotten in Heaven from all eternity by a Father without mother. None the less this Divine Pupil, who to show His love for us deprived Himself of a father, was pleased to provide Himself with a tutor or guardian, and clearly made known this His will to the object of His choice. Every word of Scripture is, so to say, redolent of meaning, often of many meanings. We might almost have presumed that so it would be, but the quotations made by the Evangelists from the Books of the Old Testament, and the applications of them which in many instances we should scarcely have ventured on without their authority, place this beyond a doubt. We may, therefore, believe that St. Matthew intimates this truth when recording the angel’s words: “Take the Child,” and may attribute a special meaning to them with reference to the charge laid upon Joseph. And as the Eternal Father confided to him the Incarnate Word, He gave him at the same time, along with the position of tutor or guardian, all the rights which appertained thereto. Joseph respectfully and lovingly accepted the office, and we find him always perfectly fulfilling its obligations. He speaks for Jesus, he negotiates all affairs in the name of the Savior, and promotes all His interests with unflagging zeal. The appellation of tutor, guardian, or director of Jesus is constantly given by the Doctors of the Church and by other ecclesiastical writers of eminence to Joseph; and they see, moreover, in the peculiar connection thus divinely established between him and the God-Man one of the strongest grounds for awarding to him the title of father of Jesus. St. Cyril, for instance, says that our saint was called the father of Jesus because he was His guardian and director;¹⁷ and the glorious Albert the Great does not express himself less clearly when he says Joseph is the father of Jesus because he is His curator, that is, His guardian;¹⁸ and we might quote many other high authorities who have seen reason to opine that the care and the labors of this charitable guardian elevated him to the dignity of a father. The Son of Sirach has declared that tutors take the place of fathers to those of whom they have the charge;¹⁹ and the law even awards to guardians a portion of the rights of natural parents. St. Augustine said that Joseph merited the title of father of Jesus more than do other fathers in the natural order.²⁰ His line of reasoning deserves notice. It is well known that a man to whom God gives a son born of a Christian marriage is esteemed to be more worthy of the title of father than those whose children have been the fruit of a union unsanctified by wedlock. Chastity, then, he argues, contributes to the honor of paternity and confirms the justice of its claims. Consequently (he continues), if any one should have a son of his legitimate spouse, preserving at the same time inviolable virginity, as Joseph did in his union with the Mother of God, there would be a higher reason for calling such a one a father than any who have ever lived in the bonds of matrimony. Such is the opinion of the great Bishop of Hippo. And, in effect, as God is the idea and model of all that is great and the very origin of all paternity, it is evident that any one who should possess the quality and rights of a father in a manner which should most nearly assimilate him to the Eternal Father would in proportion have the highest claim to be himself called a father; and such was Joseph’s case, he was the virgin-father of Mary’s Son.

Joseph, then, was a supernatural father, and this consideration at once leads us to the solution of the question which heads this chapter, and enables us to perceive why it was impossible for him in any degree or form to share with another the obligation laid upon him in this character. A father, in the order of nature, is, it is true, bound to feed, instruct, and take care of his son; that is, he is bound, so far as in him lies, to provide for the support and education of his child, but he is not always or by any means bound to do this personally. He is not bound to toil for that purpose if in any other mode sufficient provision can be secured; and, as regards the education of his son, one of the strictest obligations of a parent, he may often prudently commit his instruction to substitutes, either because he has not the necessary time to bestow on it or because he is himself not capable of fulfilling this duty as well as it may be performed by others. But with Joseph all this was different. The charge laid upon him in virtue of his supernatural paternity was entirely personal. It was such a charge as never was laid on any other parent; and our saint knew this well, and estimated his duties accordingly. Jesus was to be fed by the labor of his hands, He was to be taught and trained by him exclusively. He and His Blessed Mother were to be cared for, protected, and guarded by Joseph alone. “Take the Child and His Mother:” this was his commission, and he could not have satisfied its obligations under the hospitable roof of Aphrodisius. Jesus would there have been supported without his labor, He would have necessarily come in the way of other influences than those of His foster-father, and have learned in a measure through the medium of others. He would also have been independent, so to say, of the protecting arm of Joseph, to whose loving embrace and care He had been consigned.