The Church has a plethora of canonized saints, but St. Joseph never stood out to me from among the crowd. He seemed like good and all (as all saints do of course), but for many years I had no particular attachment to him. No particular love or admiration for him.
But to my surprise, an unexplained admiration for St. Joseph began growing rather steadily within me starting this winter. As God has often done with the saints dear to my heart, this admiration had no definitive quality; there was no specific part of his life or person that sparked my admiration, let alone caused my admiration to continue growing. And yet, I knew undeniably that I was encountering something new, something celestial, in fact. With every glance I caught of his face — be it in a holy icon, stained glass, or painting — his countenance simply radiated with divine light. I could not but stand and behold him with an inner warmth.
And after months of this, I finally see it. I see the reason for the beauty of his radiant countenance, and this unexplained admiration has finally grown up into the fullness of love: all thanks to a quote and an icon. (See below.)
(For those who can’t make out the text, it is a quote from 20th century Catholic, G.K. Chesterton, which states, “God chooses ordinary men for fatherhood to accomplish his extraordinary plan.”)
One look at it, and it struck a chord deep within, likely because this word (ordinary) is to me among the most sacred, most beautiful, most eternal of words. Of the things I aspire to most — as a Christian, husband, and father — to be beautifully ordinary is the crown jewel. (This is in imitation of the monastic witness which reminds the God-forgetting world what that human life is meant to look like daily, lowly, ordinary worship of God through self-denying labor and prayer.)
It’s a wonder I hadn’t noticed for months. That the radiant splendor I beheld in the face of St. Joseph was the bright light of a beautifully ordinary life.
What serenity, what peace; behold with what quiet yet immortal bliss the man St. Joseph gazes at the divine gift of fatherhood.
He was a father and husband — THE husband and father of all husbands and fathers, for he is (adoptive) father to God himself and husband to the Blessed Virgin — so near the bright light of salvation but who was content to live his life in its shadows (or at least at the fringes of its divine radiance). He sought not equality with the King of Glory nor with the Queen of Heaven, knowing himself to be but a lowly man, the least among his household. Rather, he chose the greater glory of service, preferring to store up for himself an eternal legacy in the heavenly glory of his wife and son: of Madonna and Child.
In his manner of life is revealed the glory of the quotidian man and the glory of fathers and husbands. For while it is the glory of children (the least-of-these) to be our salvation — the Bread of Life — and it is the glory of mothers to be bearers of salvation — the Chalice — it is the glory of fathers and husbands to be but mere, lowly servants in this microcosmic liturgy. We are the unworthy Priest, crying out to the Lord,
Look down upon me, Your sinful and unprofitable servant, and cleanse my soul and heart of a wicked conscience; and enable me, by the power of Your Holy Spirit, clothed with the grace of fatherhood, to stand before Your holy presence and fulfill the Mystery of Holy Matrimony. I come before You with my head bowed, and I implore You: Turn not Your face away from me, nor reject me from among Your children, but make me, Your sinful and unworthy servant, worthy to offer this service to You.1
The utterly, blissfully, beautifully ordinary husband and father, St. Joseph, offered this most holy sacrifice to God, and by his self-forgetful exaltation of Mother and Child, God accomplished the extraordinary plan of his salvation for mankind. This is why his countenance radiates with the halo of sainthood. This is why my soul loves him and wants to be like him.
Pray for me, St. Joseph.
Modified version of the priestly “Prayer of the Cherubic Hymn” from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.