Advice from St Joseph

 

 

 

I was thinking about St Joseph and how much he suffered quietly.  A just and righteous Israelite.  How easily we gloss over his role in the holy family.  How that in accepting Mary as his wife he in a sense abandoned his ideal of remaining just in the eyes of men and opened himself up to gossips and snickers.  How much he suffered in feeling like he was unable to provide properly for Mary in dragging her off for a census in her late stage of pregnancy, having made a crib for the baby and prepared so many things for Mary in Nazareth.  He must have felt like a failure so many times having to abandon everything he proposed to follow the course disposed by God through the path of life.  And in his homeland where he believed he would be welcomed he met only closed doors.  A stable the best accommodations he could find for his wife and Messiah in his own homeland.  How hard he tried to make that stable comfortable, cleaning it up as much as possible, trying to keep the drafts out hanging his own cloak over the entrance.  But a cloak over a cave entrance only goes so far to warm it and sweeping and moving hay around doesn't cover up the smell of animal waste and odors.  And then in raising Jesus and providing for his little family, the poverty and not being able to provide all the materiel things a father would want to give to his family and never showing his disappointment to his family but always placing them first.  There is so much in the quiet just man to be pondered over  and emulated even in how readily he takes the back seat to Mary and Jesus in the storyline.

 

But Joseph was the true just and righteous Israelite.  He, beside Mary who was Immaculate,  was the ideal Israelite in resigning his will to the Will of God.  He was willing to cast his own ideals aside to accommodate God's plans and ideals.  He never brooded over what he could have considered his own failings, which never were failings in the eyes of God, or the way he would be mistreated by those who took advantage of him in his labors.  He always focused on God and placed his family's needs first.  In The Gospel as revealed to Me I found a passage where Jesus is advising Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in regards to how they should act in letting go of their false notions of what the Messiah should be, using St Joseph as his model. 

 

 

 

Be just.  Just like him who was My guardian for so many years and who was capable of every renovation to serve the Lord his God.  If he were here, among us, oh!  how he would teach you to serve the Lord perfectly, to be just, just, just.  But it is right that he should already be in Abraham's bosom!...  A new Abraham, with a broken heart, but with perfect will, he would not have advised Me to be cowardly, but he would have spoke the words that he used to utter when anything painful weighed heavily on us:  "Let us raise our spirits.  We shall meet the yes of God and we shall forget that it is men who grieve us.  And let us do whatever is burdensome, as if the Most High presented it to us.  In this way we shall sanctify also the least things, and God will love us."  Oh!  He would have said so also to comfort Me to suffer the deepest sorrows...  He would have comforted us...  Oh!  My Mother!...

 

The Gospel as Revealed to Me, Vol. 9, pg 56.

 

 

Joseph the model man and father, laborer and Israelite.  He, in his silence and resignation, teaches so much.  Truly the Just Man who always placed God and others first and himself last.



And Jesus wept

I was thinking about Jesus being in the cold manger and crying and weeping more from the lack of love and correspondence from creatures than from the cold.  The manger and stable the true symbol of how far the creature had fallen.  Originally created to be the sumptuous abode of the living God, now a hovel little better than for beasts of burden.  And Jesus wept on his first day into the world for the state of fallen man.  And on that first Christmas day, Mary relates:

I wrapped Him in poor but clean little clothes, and I placed Him in the manger.  This was His Will, and I could not do without executing It.  But before doing this, I shared Him with dear Saint Joseph, placing Him in his arms; and – oh! how he rejoiced.  He pressed Him to his heart, and the sweet little Baby poured torrents of grace into his soul.  Then, together with Saint Joseph, we arranged a little hay in the manger, and detaching Him from my maternal arms, I laid Him in it.  And your Mama, enraptured by the beauty of the Divine Infant, remained kneeling before Him most of the time.  I put all my seas of love into motion, which the Divine Will had formed in Me, to love Him, adore Him, and thank Him. 

And what did the Celestial little Child do in the manger?  A continuous act of the Will of our Celestial Father, which was also His; and emitting moans and sighs, He wailed, cried and called to everyone, saying in His loving moans:  “Come all of you, children of mine; for love of you I am born to sorrow and to tears.  Come all of you, to know the excess of my love.  Give Me shelter in your hearts.”  And there was a coming and going of shepherds, who came to visit Him, and to all He gave His sweet gaze and His smile of love, amid His very tears.

Day Twenty-two
The Queen of Heaven in the Kingdom of the Divine Will.



But there is another famous moment where Jesus wept.  Before the tomb of his friend Lazarus.  So long I thought these were simple tears of sorrow, over death in general, the death of his friend in particular and the sorrow that Mary and Martha had been going through.  But like everything done by Jesus there is always a much deeper meaning beyond the surface and often layers.  And here Jesus relates:




"I wept before Lazarus' tomb.  And many names have been given to My tears.  In the meantime you must bear in mind that graces are obtained through grief mixed with unfaltering faith in the Eternal Father.  I wept not so much because of the loss of My friend and because of the sorrow of the sisters, as because three thoughts that had always pierced My heart like three sharp nails surfaced then, more lively than ever, like depths stirred up.

The ascertainment of the ruin that Satan had brought to man by seducing him to Evil.  A ruin the human punishment of which was sorrow and death.  Physical death, the symbol and living metaphor of spiritual death that sin causes to the soul, hurling it into infernal darkness, whereas it was destined, like a queen, to live in the kingdom of Light.

The persuasion that not even this miracle, worked almost as a sublime corollary to three years of evangelization, would convince the Judaic world of the Truth of which I was the Bearer.  And that no miracle would in future convert the world to Christ.  Oh!  How grievous it was to be so close to death for so few!

The mental vision of My imminent death.  I was God.  But I was also Man.  And to be the Redeemer I was to feel the weight of expiation.  Therefore the horror of death and of such a death.  I was a living healthy being who was saying to himself:  "I shall soon be dead, I shall be in a sepulcher like Lazarus.  Soon the most dreadful agony will be my companion.  I must die."  God's kindness spares you the knowledge of he future.  But I was not spared it."

Pgs. 447-448 Vol. 8, The Gospel as Revealed to Me (The Poem of the Man God), by Maria Valtorta




As with the first tears of the newborn Jesus so here.  Jesus wept over the lot of his beloved creature fallen into a death of the spirit which only can be glimpsed in the physical death of man.  He wept over how even with his coming to the earth to save and redeem everyone, so many souls would choose the death of their spirits over life in Him.  He wept over the price and the horror of the sacrifice he had to make, which was always before him even from the moment of his birth.  A sorrowful life and an agonizing death which would not even benefit everyone.  But grief and sorrow are the way to graces as Jesus himself says:  "...bear in mind that graces are obtained through grief mixed with unfaltering faith in the Eternal Father."  It is through grief and sorrow tempered by faith that God makes his way into the world and can make his way into our hearts.  Can anyone truly be hard enough to refuse a shivering crying child?  And in the moments of our sorrow and grief may we bring to mind and unite ourselves to Jesus' sorrow and grief and tears for us even from the first moment of his birth.