| St. Joseph: Model and Patron for Those Who Love the Sacred Heart |
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| Friday, 19 March 2010 11:57 |
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The popularity of St. Joseph seems to be increasing in the media. There is a modern icon of St. Joseph with the child Jesus in front of St. Joseph’s heart. Jesus is blessing with his right hand while holding a dove with his left hand. A recent Nativity scene depicts St. Joseph as an important figure in the birth of Jesus. St. Joseph is holding Jesus in his arms gently as Mary is at rest. There are also modern movies, which highlight St. Joseph’s important role as father of Jesus and guardian of the Holy Family. We Missionaries of the Sacred Heart invoke St. Joseph daily as “model and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart.” However, it seems little has been written on his role in Sacred Heart spirituality. Scripture describes St. Joseph a just and righteous man. The Jerusalem Bible1 describes him as a “man of honor.” As a just person, St. Joseph was a follower of the Mosaic Law. As a “man of honor,”2 St. Joseph was a man of integrity and compassion. He had the opportunity to expose Mary on the grounds of committing adultery. Instead “unwilling to expose her to shame, [he] decided to divorce her quietly.”3With this in mind, St. Joseph must have had a deep love for Mary. His love and compassion transcended the law. He could have had Mary brought to shame and even death. Jules Chevalier and St. Joseph While there have been many theological reflections in recent decades—and rightly so—on Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and her closeness to the Heart of her Son, this does not mean that St. Joseph is to be excluded from our charism and spirituality. Jules Chevalier (our founder) saw him as a “Friend of the Sacred Heart.”4 (In 1860, the Founder purchased a stained-glass image of St. Joseph, which expressed this title. It was to be placed in the chapel dedicated to St. Joseph.) The founder wanted the feast of St. Joseph to be celebrated as a patron saint of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.5 When the side wall collapsed at St. Joseph’s altar in 1857,6 the Founder and Emile Maugenest, prayed for assistance to the “glorious Spouse of Mary, to that friend so faithful to the heart of Jesus”7 to obtain funds for the chapel’s repair. St. Joseph heard their prayers: “a charitable friend, without expecting it gave the amount sufficient to repair the disaster.”8 Indeed, they prayed to their “powerful Protector” and “St. Joseph procured it.”9 In later years, the Founder changed the title to the present one—Model and Patron of Those who love the Sacred Heart--“in accord with the dignity of the Glorious Patriarch:”10 While writing his book on Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, our Founder might have realized that St. Joseph also needed to be recognized. He seems to interrupt his writing with the following interjection: Joseph, I do not wish to detract in any way from the honor due to you nor from the greatness of your prerogatives. I know that the angel said to you also, of the child to be born, that you would call him Jesus. You were present at the circumcision, giving assistance to Mary, and as representative of God the Father, you joined with her in conferring the name of Jesus on the savior of the world. Besides, the glories of the Virgin of Israel are, in a sense your glories—to praise her is to praise you.11 It is interesting how Jules Chevalier also identifies St. Joseph who “distributes the treasures of the Heart of Jesus and wishes to enrich us with them.”12 Additionally, the Founder honors St. Joseph as one to whom we “too should have full confidence.13 St. Joseph is “willing and able to protect us . . . he regards us as his own children. He surrounds us with the ineffable tenderness of a real father.” 14 It seems our Founder had no doubt of St. Joseph’s intercessory prayer for the Chevalier Family (the Chevalier Family is made up of three religious congregations: Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Missionary Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart).
Union with the Heart of Christ There is no doubt that St. Joseph was close and held a deep love for and devotion to his son Jesus. Like Mary, there is no doubt that St. Joseph was united with the Heart of Jesus. In the Holy Family, there was a “union of souls” and “a union of hearts with consent.” 15 It would also be fair to say that St. Joseph held many things in his heart, as did Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Close to Jesus, he must have gone through a formation process to understand better the will of the Father. St. Joseph was “involved in the same salvific event: he was guardian of the same love, through the power of which the eternal Father ‘destined us to be his sons through Jesus Christ.”16 From the depth of his soul, in love to do the will of God, St. Joseph freely entered the Marriage Covenant, giving of himself to Mary and to the Heart of Christ. The Holy Family was marked by the free giving of self to one another in love. As a truly human family formed in Covenantal Love, it is certain that Jesus, Mary and Joseph shared among themselves, joys, wonder and awe before God and others. We can be assured that St. Joseph lived a “Spirituality of the Sacred Heart.” As one who listened to God’s will and desired to act upon it, St. Joseph was profoundly touched by the Heart of God. From the depths of his heart and soul, St. Joseph “cooperated in the fullness of time in the great mystery of salvation and is truly a minister of salvation.” 17 His desire was to please God and those with whom God has entrusted to his loving care. He experienced and believed in God’s unconditional love. Pilgrimage of Faith Like Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph made a pilgrimage of faith. From the beginning, Joseph must have spent time in prayer and reflection over the wonderful events, which he was experiencing. As was noted earlier, he must have been like Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, pondering things in the depths of his own heart. He must have also talked to Mary about these events. He must have been saddened when he heard the words to Mary at the Presentation in the Temple, and wondered about how this prophecy would be fulfilled: “Behold this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.)”18 Additionally, Joseph surely must have had some fear of harm from Herod to Jesus and to Mary, and so took extra precautions to protect them. Jules Chevalier (the founder of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) wrote, “I am in his hands; he will do with me what he judges fit; I will drink of the chalice he gives me; and I will submit always to his most holy and adorable will.”19 We can surely apply these words to the sentiments of Joseph. He was not discouraged by events in his life. His desire to do God’s will and the mutual love of Jesus and Mary sustained him in hope. Mission St. Joseph was called to a profound and unique mission. He was called to participate in the mystery of redemption. It was he whom God had chosen to take Mary as his wife and to be a father to the human Jesus. His mission was one of fatherhood in the fullest meaning of the word. This relationship places him very close the Heart of Christ and to his Blessed Mother. As son, Jesus gained knowledge and grew in grace from his parents. As father and mother, St. Joseph and Mary received knowledge and grace from their son.20 In the depths of their hearts and souls, there was a formation of an interior life based on the mysteries of the Incarnation, the mystery of Divine Love and the mysteries of what it means to be fully human. Indeed, “inserted directly in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Family of Nazareth has its own special mystery. And in this mystery as in the Incarnation, one finds true fatherhood: the human form of the family of the Son of God, a true human family, formed by the divine mystery.”21 Obedience and Charity Our founder wrote, “Those who enter our Society may perhaps suffer others to surpass them in learning, in mortification, in poverty, however they will not allow themselves to be outdone by anybody in obedience and mutual charity. In that way they will show themselves to be genuine sons of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.”22 St. Joseph is a model of consecrating “our will and intellect entirely to God.”23 St. Joseph accepted as truth coming from God the very thing [Mary] had already accepted at the Annunciation. By this obedience of faith man [woman] freely commits himself entirely to God, making the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals and willing assenting to revelation given by him. This statement, which touches the very essence of faith, is perfectly applicable to Joseph of Nazareth.24 The temperament and sentiments of St. Joseph were indeed, “To do your will is my delight; my God, your law is in my heart.”25 The interior life of St. Joseph was one of readiness and openness to serve his Master. St. Joseph most likely put aside his personal dreams and aspirations as husband and father. God chose him and called him to a new and unique relationship as husband and father. God called him to be a shepherd and guardian of Mary and her son. He was called to be guardian of the mystery of God. You find no argument or protest against the angel’s message: “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.”26 What St. Joseph did was the “clearest obedience of faith.”27 Fidelity Bishop Cuskelly, MSC notes that true fidelity “consists in being ready to follow in whichever ways God may lead. It does not rule out fidelity to the past, or observance in the present, but it puts the accent on the personal gift of oneself—a personal surrender—in trust to a personal God.”28 Does not St. Joseph reflect these words as a model example of one who is the faithful servant of the Father and the faithful servant of the Son? Saint Joseph did not forget his heritage as a son of Abraham. St. Joseph brings his child for circumcision and confers on him the name Jesus. With his spouse, he presents Jesus in the temple to fulfill the law, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord.”29 Each day, St. Joseph was ready at every moment to surrender his will to the will of God’s plan of salvation. In St. Joseph, we see what Bishop Cuskelly describes as a “readiness to take risks to follow the loving God wherever he leads.”30 First, we go to St. Joseph with prayer. We place ourselves under his guidance and protection. Second, we go to St. Joseph and with him place ourselves in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, those suffering from illness and oppression, the homeless, the unemployed and those displaced persons who are forced to abandon their homes and move to foreign soil because of conflict, persecution, or natural disasters. St. Joseph is very much aware of these things. He and his family were not part of the rich class of his time. He had to live under a regime that forced him to travel to Bethlehem for the census. Later, he, Mary and Jesus became a displaced family. They left their home to escape Herod’s rage. They migrated from Judea to Egypt, a foreign land, until the death of Herod. In these difficult times today, St. Joseph offers us hope and presents to us the compassionate and liberating Heart of Jesus whose Spirit empowers us to seek and to work for the cause of justice and peace in the world. But St. Joseph’s example also reminds us that commitment to the work of justice in the world must always be for the love of God and for the love of God’s people. We go to St. Joseph to be faithful to our vocation. Saint Joseph offers to us the gift of perseverance. Saint Joseph is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household.31 Daily, St. Joseph as a faithful disciple “embraced his vocation day after day, in the tough spots and in the continued demands of self-forgetfulness that his vocation entailed.”32 Indeed, we are each called to embrace our vocation this way. We go to St. Joseph that we might have the inner dispositions to desire to do God’s will. True obedience to God’s will “consists in allowing the grace of God to have full play in us.”33 St. Joseph testifies to this as he answers the call to take Mary as his wife, to be the earthly father of Jesus, to go Bethlehem, to go to Egypt and to Nazareth. At all times he was open to God’s design for participating in the work of God’s redemption through God’s Son. Bishop Cuskelly notes that obedience involves mission (service), listening and sacrificing.34 We can see this in the life of St. Joseph. He listens to God’s voice in his dreams and obeys God’s voice. He serves his Divine Master by taking on the responsibilities of fatherhood, and he sacrifices and renounces his own will to the will of God. The Heart of God was always kept before his eyes. As we follow the Way of the Heart, we each must do likewise, keeping ourselves open to God’s plan for us and always looking to the Heart of God. Our Founder wrote in 1897, “In the Society no one is a stranger, no one a foreigner, but all are brothers in the Heart of Christ.” In this vein, St. Joseph invites us to his household. He welcomes us into a family united in love as one heart. But the focus is not on St. Joseph, nor Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Both he and she offer us their son, Jesus who loves us with a human heart. It is in his love that we have our vocation, and it is in his love that we are called to reach out to the human community. Both St. Joseph and Mary invite us to reproduce the sentiments of the Heart of Christ who is the “whole of perfection. It is unity, stability and peace.”35 In His heart, in His peace and in His love, we find peace and love in the depths of our own hearts and in the hearts of others. I am sure when St. Joseph met his Divine Master in heaven, he was greeted with a hearty, warm embrace and he heard the words, “Well done good and faithful servant.” May the Sacred Heart of Jesus Be Loved Everywhere! Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Pray for Us. St. Joseph, Model and Patron of those who love the Sacred Heart, Pray for us.
Brother Warren Perrotto, MSC Notes:
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In Watertown, NY, there is a statue of St. Joseph holding the Sacred Heart. The heart is clearly visible on the child Jesus. I always considered this the proper image of St. Joseph for his title, “model and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart.”
In some churches, one can still see the message, “Go to Joseph,” on the cloth, that covers his altar. St. Joseph, Model and Patron of Those who Love the Sacred Heart, invites us to come to him and like Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, he will lead us to the Heart of Christ. Like our founder, we can approach St. Joseph in confidence, love and hope.Sunday Reflection Email
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