THE LIFE AND GLORIES OF ST. JOSEPH
possessed the Beatific Vision while He was leading a life of suffering on earth, and even during His Passion, though He did not permit His inferior nature to derive any consolation therefrom. In this state He stands alone, since it resulted from the union in Him of two natures—the divine and the human— in virtue of which His human soul enjoyed the vision of God. Still, saints, in their degree, and after His pattern, have been enabled to rejoice and sorrow at the same time, and even to exult in the midst of the keenest anguish, through the grace communicated to the superior region of their souls. Scripture teaches us that there are two principal ways in which God communicates supernatural light to His dearest friends on earth. The first is through prayer; and the second is by a ray of divine wisdom, with which He graciously enlightens the understanding. Joseph, then, during his whole life had his soul raised in God, "the Father of Lights,"527 by the highest contemplation; and, in the next place, this great God united him to Himself by infusing into his understanding the purest rays of His infinite wisdom. Hence his soul was full of light. If little, comparatively, is said by the Evangelists respecting Joseph, we may be sure that that little has always a special meaning, which we should do well to study and examine. We are often surprised by what saints and doctors of the Church have extracted out of certain passages of Scripture which to our denser spiritual senses would not have been discernible. When St. Luke mentions Joseph and Mary wondering at what they beheld and heard on finding Jesus in the Temple, many holy writers have believed that this was no ordinary wonder. The Evangelist, so parsimonious of his words, would scarcely have recorded so particularly what might have been readily supposed of any ordinary parents. It has, then, been believed by saints and doctors that the two holy spouses were rapt in a species of ecstasy, that highest form of ecstasy of which the most perfect souls are alone capable, and which leaves the mind in the full exercise of its faculties. For the suspension of the senses is no measure of the sublimity of the rapture, as all who have the slightest acquaintance with mystical theology are aware. Far from this, it is a well-known fact that a soul new to such divine favours, and but moderately advanced in the spiritual life, will swoon away or become outwardly insensible at the slightest supernatural communication, although graces of a much higher order would fail so to affect one who was more familiar with these divine operations, and who had made greater progress in the life of perfection. That our Lady's life was one of almost abiding ecstasy we may well believe, an ecstasy indefinitely heightened by every fresh manifestation of the glory of her Divine Son; and her ecstatic state must have surpassed all to which saints have been raised. Nevertheless, we cannot imagine that she was ever deprived of the use of her external 527
St. James i. 17. 275