San Giuseppe - Obedient Heart

Today is 1 of those very rare days when the Feast of San Giuseppe is moved because it falls during Holy Week. By Church regulations, since it is a solmenity it has to be moved to the nearest free date, in this case 15 March. (It gets even more complicated in Ireland. Since San Patrizio's feast is also a solemnity there it gets moved to today & San Giuseppe was moved to Friday, 14 March. The rest of us don't celebrate San Patrizio's feast this year, officially that is.)

That aside, I would like to reflect on the Obedient Heart of St. Joseph. The other day while I was at prayer before Mass, I was saying a prayer to St. Joseph from TAN's Favorite Prayers to St. Joseph. I read the following line: "Next to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, of which thou art a faithful copy, we acknowledge that there is no heart more tender, more compassionate, than thine." As I read that I began to reflect on the fact that we talk about the Sacred Heart of Jesus & the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but that we hear almost nothing about the Heart of San Giuseppe.

I began to ask the question "How would you describe the heart of San Giuseppe?" As I reflected on the question & prayed about it the thought came to me, the best way to describe his heart is "Obedient". & as I continued to reflect, I realized that that was the perfect description of his heart. (Over the next few days I got several confirmations I was on the right path, the 1st being that very night in the homily when Father talked about obedience, quoting from St. Faustina's Diary.)

The prime evidence of San Giuseppe's Obedient Heart is found in Scripture. There is very little said about him, but what is said speaks volumes.

In Matthew 1:18-24 we 1st meet him. San Giuseppe is described as an upright man. Clearly he was a man of prayer. He spent time seeking God's will & doing it. This Scripture talks about his betrothal to Mary. & while it doesn't say how the betrothal came about we can look to what tradtion for an answer to what happened there. (I'll deal with that in detail later.) At this point we see San Giuseppe finding out that Mary was pregnant & he knew he wasn't the father. So, he struggles with what to do. He saw only 1 solution, a private divorce. But, like his namesake, the OT patriarch Joseph, God spoke to San Giuseppe in a dream & told him exactly what to do: "Take Mary as his wife." His response is found in verse 24: "When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home." His heart was so submissive & obedient to God's will that he didn't delay. He didn't put it off, he did it immediately.

We see this "Obedient Heart" in action again in the 25th verse. He gave Jesus the name God told him to. In giving the child his name, Joseph not only acknowledged that God had given him authority & responsibility to care for His Son, he showed that he would faithfully fulfill God's call to be Jesus' foster father. He did his job so well that we read later how the resident's of Nazareth described Jesus as "The Carpenter's Son."

In Chapter 2 of Matthew we see another prime example of Joseph's "obedient Heart" in action. God again speaks to him in a dream. This time San Giuseppe is called on to leave Bethlehem immediately. His response (verse 14) "So Joseph got up and, taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt." He didn't wait til morning, he got up, woke Mary up, they quickly packed & headed immediately for Egypt.

After Herod's death Joseph again is told in a dream what to do (verses 19-23). Again, when told to get up & go, he was so completely obedient that once again he did so immediately. Once more he didn't wait until morning. He was so obedient that he even let God guide him exactly where to go, back to Nazareth.

We see more of San Giuseppe's complete obedience to God's will in Luke. In Chapter 2 we see how he saw to it that every requirement of the OT Law was fulfilled in relation to Jesus' birth. & later on we see how they obeyed all of the requirements to regularly go to Jesualem for certain feasts as required by the Law. Every line in these passages from Matthew & Luke shows San Giuseppe's "Obedient Heart" in action.

In a homily on St. Joseph, St. Bernardine of Siena said the following; "He (Joseph) was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: “Good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your Lord”." Note the words used by St. Bernardine to describe St. Joseph, trustworthy, complete fidelity. these are words that testify to San Giuseppe's "Obedient Heart".

Fr. Benedict Groeschel says it this way: "He did what he was told."

St. Bernardine, Suarez & several others held that San Giuseppe made a vow of virginity & that Mary & his betrothal was at the inspiration of God. True or not, it again reflects the view held from early on that San Giuseppe was completely obedient to whatever God asked of him.

In his book The Divine Favors Granted To St. Joseph (also available from TAN), Père Binet says the following about San Giuseppe's obedience: "It was carried to such perfection by our glorious Saint, that St. John Chrysostom cannot sufficiently admire him for it. Never did he expostulate, when receiving a command from God; never did he excuse himself; never did he delay for one moment the execution. . . . . How many objections would have presented themselves to a less submissive spirit! but either none of them presented themselves to the mind of Joseph, or he rejected them all; for the truly obedient man had hands for the work, and feet for the motion: but he has no tongue wherewith to oppose the decrees of God and of obedience."

In his encyclical Quamquam Pluries (15 August 1889) Pope Leo XIII talks about San Giuseppe's role as head of the Holy Family. He praises Joseph for his perfectly fullfilling his role to which he was called by God. " Joseph shines among all mankind by the most august dignity, since by divine will, he was the guardian of the Son of God and reputed as His father among men." Why? "From this two-fold dignity flowed the obligation which nature lays upon the head of families, so that Joseph became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine house whose chief he was. And during the whole course of his life he fulfilled those charges and those duties."

In his apostolic exhortation Redemptoris Custos (15 August 1989) celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Pope Leo's encyclical, Pope John Paul the Great starts out quoting Matthew 1:24. Thus he begins by laying the groundwork to show what was at the center of San Giuseppe's heart, obedience. Later he describes Joseph's actions as found in the Gospels like this: "What he did is the clearest "obedience of faith"."

Refering to Vatican II's Dei Verbum he goes on to say: "One can say that what Joseph did united him in an altogether special way to the faith of Mary. He accepted as truth coming from God the very thing that she had already accepted at the Annunciation. The Council teaches: "'The obedience of faith' must be given to God as he reveals himself. By this obedience of faith man freely commits himself entirely to God, making 'the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals,' and willingly assenting to the revelation given by him." This statement, which touches the very essence of faith, is perfectly applicable to Joseph of Nazareth."

Pope Leo called on us to grow in our devotion to San Giuseppe. Pope John Paul echoed that call. In this day & age where we see a spirit of rebellion rampant both in the world as well as in portions of the Church I feel God is calling us to learn from San Giuseppe's "Obedient Heart". I suspect that God wants us to develop a deep, strong devotion to that "Obedient Heart". God has much to teach us through that "Obedient Heart". Are we willing to be obedient enough to learn?

I conclude with the following line from the Litany of St. Joseph:

Joseph most obedient, Pray for us!