The many blessings and consequences of Joseph being the most blessed spouse of Mary
3 min • Digitized on March 18, 2022
From The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, in file "The Life and Glories of St. Joseph", page 161
By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A.
We should overload our pages were we to cite all that Saints and Doctors have said touching the holy conversation of Mary and Joseph. We must be content with giving an extract from that Conference of St. Francis de Sales to which frequent reference has been made. [Entretien, xix.] Speaking of the virginal nuptials of Joseph and Mary, he says:
Oh, how divine was the union between our Lady and the glorious St. Joseph, a union which caused the Supreme Good, the Good of all goods, our Lord Himself, to belong to Joseph—even as He belonged to our Lady—not by nature but by grace; which made him a sharer in all the possessions of his dear spouse, and made him continually increase in perfection by his continual communications with her who possessed all virtues in so exalted a degree that no other creature, however pure and spotless, can attain to them! Nevertheless, St. Joseph was the one who made the nearest approach; and, as a mirror, when set before the rays of the sun, reflects them perfectly, and another set before the first so vividly repeats them that it is scarcely possible to see which of the two immediately receives them, even so our Lady, like a most pure mirror, received the rays of the Sun of Justice, which conveyed into her soul all virtues and perfections, and St. Joseph, like a second mirror, reflected them so perfectly that he appeared to possess them in as sublime a degree as did the glorious Virgin herself.
Amidst the abundance of goods so many and so priceless, must not Joseph have deemed himself supremely blessed, and must not the holy house of Nazareth have appeared to him an earthly Paradise? The very knowledge that he was so ardently loved by Mary, the virgin spouse of the Eternal, the delight of angels and of saints, a miracle of beauty, the sweetest charm of heaven and earth—was not this enough to transport him with unutterable joy? And to think that of so sublime a lady, visited by angels, blessed by God, he was the happy spouse, the protector, the guardian, the head, having, as Gerson says, authority, principality, dominion, and empire over her—this thought alone rendered him valiant to launch himself on any undertaking, however arduous, strong in sustaining every labour, patient under all adversities; this it was which made him insensible to all fatigues, rendered poverty itself still dearer to him than it had ever been; and, if anything grieved him, it was only that he could not provide for so great a lady all the honour due to her exalted rank and merits.