Two Doctors of the Church on the Espousal of St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary

February 14, 2022 • 1 min

From The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, page 123
By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A.

CHAPTER XIX.

BETROTHAL OF MARY AND JOSEPH.

St. Epiphanius describes St. Joseph, not only as great among men and faithful in all his ways, but as reflecting the beauty of his interior holiness in his countenance and exterior.

This striking sanctity, revealed in his person, might alone have served to give a sufficient explanation of the preference awarded him over all the competitors.

Albert the Great, indeed, is of opinion that the Synagogue judged that it contributed to the glory of the most holy Virgin by choosing Joseph for her spouse, for that his virtue was so consummate and admirable that he might have conferred honour on the holiest alliance ever contracted, or to be contracted.

Could there be a greater panegyric of our saint, could his rare qualities have received a higher encomium, than in the fact that the priests of the Temple and the doctors of the Law, in a body, after applying themselves with mature deliberation to make their election, as St. Gregory Nazianzen tells us they did, should have turned their eyes to Joseph, albeit a poor man, because the wealth of his virtues and the treasure of his merits raised him to an equality with the greatest and noblest man upon earth?

Yes, one higher testimony he might have, and we have every reason to believe that it was awarded to him—the testimony of God Himself.