CHAPTER XXVI. JOSEPH'S TRIAL.
HAVING regained their home, Mary and Joseph resumed their former tenour of life—their occupations, their labours, their exercises of piety, with even increased fervour. The poor and the sick rejoiced at their return, for in them they beheld their constant benefactors. All superfluities, the fruit of Joseph's toil —that is, all that was not strictly needed for the maintenance of Mary and himself—were regarded as their patrimony. His hands laboured for it, and her hands dispensed it. Like her mystical figure in the Proverbs, "she opened her hand to the needy and stretched out her hands to the poor; and the law of clemency was on her tongue,"267 that kindness which adds such sweetness to a gift, and is itself an alms more prized by the suffering than even the material relief. Neighbours and friends, too, rejoiced to see them again, for their goodness, gentleness, and courtesy had endeared them to all. The nearer the time approached for Mary's divine delivery, the more exalted were the graces of which she was the privileged recipient. Not only was she continually favoured by familiar visits of angels, who came to adore and serve the Incarnate Word within her, but we have reason to regard as most true what saints have asserted, that she was admitted at times, so far as is possible for a human creature still abiding on earth, to behold God in His Divine Essence. That great authority, Suarez, says, "I affirm that it may be piously and with probability believed that the Blessed Virgin was in this life sometimes elevated for a short space to the clear vision of the Divine Essence".268 Nor need this surprise us when we consider that, with the exception of 267
Chap. xxxi. 20, 26.
268
In p. iii. disp. xix. sect. iv. 147