14 minute read
St Joseph – Spouse of the Blessed Virgin, Patron of the Universal Church, Terror of Demons
ST JOSEPH
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin, Patron of the Universal Church, Terror of Demons
Advertisement
BY MARIA MADISE
“Some Saints are privileged to extend to us their patronage with particular efficacy in certain needs, but not in others; but our holy patron St Joseph has the power to assist us in all cases, in every necessity, in every undertaking.” – St Thomas Aquinas
The power and grandeur of St Joseph exceed all human imagination. And even so, his humble life with the Word Incarnate provides us with an example to follow in every aspect of human life that we can imagine. Everything we know about his life and his person is in relation to the Divine Child and His Blessed Mother. That is, all we know about St Joseph is his reaction to the Divine mystery unfolded beneath his eyes. There is nothing known about St Joseph that is separate from Jesus and Mary. What better model could we desire to imitate at this time of Lent in order to lose our own interests and transform everything in our lives to the service of God and His Blessed Mother, generously and totally, without reserve. Carmelite author Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen urges us to surrender ourselves to that service “with a heart filled with God, with a heart that lives with Him” and which is nourished by ceaseless prayer.1
SPOUSE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN Saint Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) invites us to consider the noble birth of St Joseph, the bridegroom: “He was born of Patriarchal, Royal and Princely stock in a direct line as has been said. For St Matthew in his first chapter established a direct line with all the aforementioned fathers from Abraham to the spouse of the Virgin, clearly demonstrating that all patriarchal, royal and princely dignity come together in him…”2
The nobility of birth must be complemented with the nobility of nature. Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira notes: “To even begin to comprehend the nature of St Joseph… we must bear in mind two awe-inspiring facts. St Joseph is the virgin-husband of Our Lady and the guardian-father of Our Lord.”3
Dr de Oliveira explains the incredibility of these two facts:
“The husband must be proportional to the wife. St Joseph’s spouse is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the most perfect of all creatures, and masterpiece of the Creator’s handiwork. In her incomparable person, we find the sum of all the virtues of all the angels, and saints, indeed all creation until the end of time… From among all men, God chose one man worthy to love and honour the Mother of His Only-Begotten Son as her husband. He was a husband proportional to his wife in love of God, purity, wisdom, justice – in every virtue. St Joseph was that man.”4
“However,” he continues,
“there remains something even more incomprehensible. The father must be proportional to his son, and, as we have noted, the Son for Whom God sought an earthly father was none other than His Own. There could be but one man fit for such an awesome responsibility, the man God created for precisely this vocation and whose soul He crowned with every virtue. That man, too, was St Joseph.”5
Even considering the royal line which St Joseph belonged to by birth, Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira concludes: “It is beyond our power to imagine the grandeur of St Joseph’s exaltation.”6
PROTECTOR OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX, following appeals received from bishops worldwide, had declared St Joseph to be Patron of the Universal Church, “in this most sorrowful time” when “the Church herself is beset by enemies on every side and oppressed by heavy calamities, so that impious men imagine that the
gates of Hell are at length prevailing against her.”7
Pope Leo XIII, to whom it was revealed in 1884 that Satan would be given, for a time, increased power to work for the destruction of the Church, instituted a new devotion to St Joseph in his encyclical letter Quamquam pluries (1889). Pope Leo XIII wrote:
“During periods of stress and trial – chiefly when every lawlessness of act seems permitted to the powers of darkness – it has been the custom in the Church to plead with special fervour and perseverance to God, her author and protector, by recourse to the intercession of the saints – and chiefly of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God – whose patronage has ever been the most efficacious.”
He further explained:
“We see faith, the root of all the Christian virtues, lessening in many souls; we see charity growing cold; the young generation daily growing in depravity of morals and views; the Church of Jesus Christ attacked on every side by open force or by craft; a relentless war waged against the Sovereign Pontiff; and the very foundations of religion undermined with a boldness which waxes daily in intensity… In circumstances so unhappy and troublous, human remedies are insufficient, and it becomes necessary, as a sole resource, to beg for assistance from the Divine power.”
Today the evils identified by Pope Leo XIII have intensified to a degree that would have been inconceivable to most people in 1889. Thousands of innocent children are slaughtered every day with the approval of the governments that ought to be defending them, the sanctity of marriage is defiled by divorce, adultery and contraception, and the bonds between parents and their children are being deliberately targeted for destruction by the most powerful states and institutions in the world. Worst of all, the Pope himself is responsible for the spread of errors which are leading the flock away from Christ and towards eternal damnation.
However much greater the depths to which society has sunk today be, we must not look for new remedies. Pope Leo XIII urged the faithful to combat these evils through the prayer of the Holy Rosary, but he also directed the faithful towards St Joseph:
“But We entertain another object, which, according to your wont, Venerable Brethren, you will advance with fervour. That God may be more favourable to Our prayers, and that He may come with bounty and promptitude to the aid of His Church, We judge it of deep utility for the Christian people, continually to invoke with great piety and trust, together with the Virgin-Mother of God, her chaste Spouse, the Blessed Joseph; and We regard it as most certain that this will be most pleasing to the Virgin herself.”
He further explained:
“the divine house which Joseph ruled with the authority of a father, contained within its limits the scarce-born Church. From the same fact that the most holy Virgin is the mother of Jesus Christ is she the mother of all Christians whom she bore on Mount Calvary amid the supreme throes of the Redemption; Jesus Christ is, in a manner, the first-born of Christians, who by the adoption and Redemption are his brothers. And for such reasons the Blessed Patriarch looks upon the multitude of Christians who make up the Church as confided specially to his trust – this limitless family spread over the earth, over which, because he is the spouse of Mary and the Father of Jesus Christ he holds, as it were, a paternal authority. It is, then, natural and worthy that as the Blessed Joseph ministered to all the needs of the family at Nazareth and girt it about with his protection, he should now cover with the cloak of his heavenly patronage and defend the Church of Jesus Christ.”
On 19 March the Church presents St Joseph, the great Patriarch, to whose care God willed to entrust the most precious portion of His flock, Mary and Jesus. Because Joseph was the protector and guardian of them on earth, the Church recognises him as the guardian and protector of all Christendom.8
TERROR OF DEMONS God chose St Joseph to be the spouse of His Mother. God placed the universal Church under his care. But why precisely are the demons terrified of him?
St Joseph is the terror of demons, because he is a pure man: pure in thought, pure in heart, body and soul. He was destined to be the most chaste spouse of Mary Most Holy conceived without sin. In the face of complete purity and holiness, the ugly, filthy infernal spirits must dread and flee. St Joseph is the terror of demons, because he is a humble man, who bore the trials of poverty, exile and rejection by unfaithful men with unwavering trust in God. The proud demons are unable to bear godly humility. St Joseph is the terror of demons because he has unshakable faith. Joseph knew by faith that Jesus was his God. However, as Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen reminds us, he needed deep faith to deal with the perplexity aroused in his mind by Mary’s maternity, the anxieties in Bethlehem, the privations during the flight to Egypt. These and many other trials afflicted his sensitive soul to such an extent that on several occasions an intervention of an angel was needed to sustain him and explain the depths of the divine mystery that he was part of. St Joseph allowed himself to be guided with the docility and confidence of a child, as testified in the Gospel on four occasions: 1) when the angel told him not to leave Mary, because of her mysterious maternity (Mt 1:20-24); 2) when the angel told him to flee to Egypt (Mt 2:13); 3) when the angel informed him about the death of King Herod (Mt 2:19); and 4) when the angel warned him to withdraw to Galilee (Mt 2:22). Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira has also pointed out that at all these very troubling times, when angelic intervention was needed, St Joseph slept: “Overwhelmed by an enormous suffering, he slept nevertheless. The angel appeared to him explaining the situation. He went on sleeping. At dawn, he awoke and life went on normally. This was the height of normality, the height of coherence, the height of logic!”9 St Joseph neither hesitated nor reasoned; he made no objection; for he had complete trust in God. He believed in Him fully – in His Word and in His Divine Providence. No wonder that the demons have no power over him! Let us imitate at this holy season of Lent, the purity, humility and spirit of prayer of St Joseph. Let us ask for strong faith from our heavenly patron in every need. Let us beg his continuous and powerful protection for the Church, Our Mother, who is being so badly afflicted on earth by demons of impurity, pride and infidelity. Having been the faithful guardian of the Holy Family on earth, we can have no doubt about St Joseph’s heavenly protection of the great Christian family, the universal Church.
St Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us!
ENDNOTES:
1. Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, Baronius Press 2008, p. 1095. 2. Sancti Bernardini Senensis Sermones Eximii, (Venice: in Aedibus Andreae Poletti, 1745), Vol. 4, p. 232. in Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American
Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Documents IV, pp. 471-472. 3. Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Saint Joseph, Martyr of
Grandeur, http://www.tfp.org/saint-joseph-martyr-ofgrandeur/ 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Decree of Pius IX declaring St Joseph Patron of the Universal Church 8. See Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., Divine Intimacy, Baronius Press 2008, p. 1093. 9. Dr Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, In Praise of St Joseph’s Logic, The American Society in Defense of Tradition, Family and Property; http://www.tfp.org/in-praise-of-st-josephs-logic/
Litany of St Joseph
Lord, have mercy Lord, have mercy Christ, have mercy Christ, have mercy Lord, have mercy Lord, have mercy Christ, hear us Christ, graciously hear us God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us. God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. Holy Mary, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Renowned offspring of David, pray for us. Light of patriarchs, pray for us. Spouse of the Mother of God, pray for us. Chaste guardian of the Virgin, pray for us. Foster-father of the Son of God, pray for us. Diligent protector of Christ, pray for us. Head of the holy family, pray for us. Joseph most just, pray for us. Joseph most chaste, pray for us. Joseph most prudent, pray for us. Joseph most brave, pray for us. Joseph most obedient, pray for us. Joseph most faithful, pray for us. Mirror of patience, pray for us. Lover of poverty, pray for us. Model of artisans, pray for us. Glory of home life, pray for us. Guardian of virgins, pray for us. Pillar of families, pray for us. Solace of the wretched, pray for us. Hope of the sick, pray for us. Patron of the dying, pray for us. Terror of demons, pray for us. Protector of the holy Church, pray for us.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
V. He made him lord of His House R. And ruler of all His possessions
Let us pray O God, Who, in Thine ineffable Providence didst vouchsafe to choose blessed Joseph to be the Spouse of Thy most holy Mother; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may be worthy to have him for our intercessor in Heaven whom, on earth, we venerate as our protector. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
“It is my pleasure to welcome Voice of the Family’s magazine, Calx Mariae. Its title, with its allusion to the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), should remind us that the Holy Virgin’s victory over our ancient enemy is already assured. I hope that its presentation of the beauty of Catholic teaching will contribute to the rebuilding of Christian civilisation. I pray that its content will help all those who read it to draw ever closer to our Blessed Mother at this time of trial for the Church - like St John, those who remain close to her will not abandon the Lord.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C.
Dear reader of Calx Mariae, Donation form SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
Thank you for your interest in our magazine. Here is your opportunity to help us share the truth of Christ and love for our Catholic Faith.
Calx Mariae is a quarterly magazine with the next issue being available in June 2019. If you are interested in receiving Calx Mariae in the future or in supporting our work, please fill in the form below. Please write in BLOCK CAPITALS.
Title: ______________________________________
First name: _________________________________
Surname: __________________________________
Address: ___________________________________ Postcode: __________________________________
Email: _____________________________________
Telephone: _________________________________
PLEASE CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS:
I wish to make a ONE-OFF donation of £................. for this copy and to help Voice of the Family spread and defend the Catholic Faith and the truth about human life and the family.
I wish to order ...................... [number] copies of this issue of Calx Mariae with a donation of £................ I wish to receive A COPY OF THE NEXT FOUR EDITIONS of Calx Mariae with a donation of £................
SUGGESTED DONATION : £4.50/COPY OR £18.00/FOUR EDITIONS
VISIT voiceofthefamily.com/calxmariae TO SUBSCRIBE ONLINE!
WAYS TO DONATE:
1. To make a donation ONLINE, please visit: www.voiceofthefamily.com/donate 2. To make a donation by CHEQUE, please make it payable to “Voice of the Family”, and return it to us using the pre-paid envelope enclosed. 3. To make a ONE-OFF donation using your CREDIT/DEBIT card, please provide your card details below.
Card number : ____ ____ ____ ____ /____ ____ ____ ____/ ____ ____ ____ ____ /____ ____ ____ ____
Expiry date: ____ /____ Name on card: _____________________________________________________________________________
From the UK: Please return this form in the pre-paid envelope provided, or send to FREEPOST SPUC From overseas: SPUC, UNIT B, 3 WHITACRE MEWS, STANNARY STREET, SE11 4AB, UK
Voice of the Family is a coalition of pro-life and pro-family organisations whose work is undertaken through the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC Pro-Life Ltd), a company registered in England and Wales. Payments are managed by SPUC and used to support the work of Voice of the Family.
SPUC will add your name, address and telephone number to our database so that we can contact you by post or telephone about campaigns and opportunities to donate. We will keep your details safe and will not sell, swap or give them away. You can change your preferences anytime by email: dataprotect@spuc.org.uk or call: 020 7091 7091. You can view our privacy policy at spuc.org.uk/privacy-policy.
YOUR COMMENTS:
Thank you for reading Calx Mariae! If you liked our magazine, please consider sharing it with your friends and family.
This project is entirely funded by voluntary donations. If you would like to help us publish future editions of Calx Mariae please consider making a donation using the form on page 59. May God bless you for your support!
