Joseph the Silent

by Michel Gasnier

Before God, work is not only a necessity; it calls for pride, nobility, a spirit of reparation. There is nothing slavish about it. On the contrary it is a kind of prayer, a way of finding God, a means of salvation.

Joseph was thus the first beneficiary of Jesus’ birth. It would seem, too, that by this gesture of giving her child to him first of all, Mary points out Joseph as the one who should merit above all other saints our deepest veneration.

Repeated too often and too carelessly is the declaration that God came into this world, became a manual labourer, in order to choose what was lowest. That statement is inexact and much to be regretted. On the contrary, he came to teach us how great a thing it is to use our arms, our physical powers in the accomplishing of lowly tasks, tasks in his eyes so sacred that he did not consider it beneath his dignity as God to take them upon himself. By becoming members of the working class, Jesus and Joseph canonized work.

Over and over he says to himself the words of the Spirit on the days of creation: “God saw that all he had made was very good” (Gen 1:31). And Jesus saw that Joseph was God’s masterpiece.

The Evangelical law laid down that he who would be first should be last, and the last should take the first place. God thereby teaches the lesson that power is less a privilege than a means of service.

Joseph was the representative of divine authority. He knew himself to be far removed from his wife and son in dignity, and at the thought of the distance that separated him from God and from the most elevated of his creatures, his soul trembled. However when time and circumstance demanded the exercise of his authority, he neither hesitated nor wavered.

While the only ideal, the absorbing preoccupation of many men is to seek to appear, to shine, to make their mark in the world, Joseph had but one ambition: to fulfil his mission, to carry out his appointed task in perfect dependence on the Father in heaven.

A day of the week is consecrated to him, Wednesday; a month, March.

Finally, it is not necessary in order to extol St Joseph’s greatness to pile up titles of an exceptional order. It is enough, remembering the self-effacement in which he took pleasure, to recall the words of Jesus himself. “Whoever, therefore, humbles himself as this little child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

He never dreamed of carving out a niche for himself in the great mystery of the Incarnation which dominates the history of all ages.

What a mistake they make! It is, on the contrary, really Joseph who teaches our century–not exactly noted for its modesty and submissiveness–the most urgent, most needed lessons.

And his final word is that the essential thing is not to appear, but to be; not to bear a title, but to serve; to pass days in doing the will of God and seeking his glory.