A Prayerful Meditation on St. Joseph

From a Homiletic & Pastoral Review article by Dr. Edouard Belaga:

If anyone had a special insight into the parable of the hidden treasure, it was unquestionably St. Joseph: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then, in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it" (Mt 13:44-46).  Is that great pearl a "what" or a "who"?  According to Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM, Cap., the preacher of the papal household, "the hidden treasure, and the precious pearl, are nothing other than Jesus himself" (Gospel Commentary for 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 2008).  What is it about Joseph, in this month of March, his month, that would have given him special insight into the hidden ways our Lord lived and worked?

Our Church extols Joseph's treasures of holiness and beauty, his heroic and silently paternal vocation, hidden for centuries.  St. Joseph was, for too long, either forgotten or worse, neglected and ridiculed: "Very early, indeed (from the second century), the apocryphal gospels—the more or less, golden legends—transformed St. Joseph into a feeble old man, sometimes silly and ridiculous, as in some mysteries of the Middle Ages. And, suddenly, all the admiration, all the tenderness, all the praises of the faithful went to Mary and Jesus by neglecting this shadow, this caricature of a man who accompanies them. … How, then, to marvel at this mismatched couple of a very young woman and an old man? How not think about it as a pseudo-marriage, a social facade without inner truth?" (Abbé Henri Caffarel, the founder of Équipes Notre-Dame, 1983.)

Read the entire essay at www.HPRweb.com.