EDWARD HEALY THOMPSON
that, while Joseph guided Jesus on His journeys, his own soul was rapt into the empyrean by profound contemplation, to which the Divine Infant drew him. How much we should love to know the nature of this high contemplation of our saint while he held Jesus in his arms! He does not tell us; he speaks not, either because his tongue is unable to describe the greatness of those things which God manifests to him, or because words must cease in the mouth of one whose spirit no longer discourses, since it has found its joy and perfect repose in one idea which occupies and fills it. If fervour of heart should unloose the tongue in contemplation, it will only be, says St. John Climacus, to form one word. "Master!" exclaimed Magdalen, in the ecstasy which the sight of the risen Saviour caused her.536 "My Lord and my God!" were the sole words which the Apostle Thomas could utter when called to touch the wounds of Jesus.537 "O Goodness!" was St. Bruno's ejaculation when in prayer. "My God and my all! "were the sole words which the tongue of the great St. Francis of Assisi could pronounce during his long and delicious contemplations. St. Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, spent his time of prayer in saying these three words: "God suffices me". It needed only the exclamation, "O Charity!" to send St. Francis of Paula into an ecstasy; scarcely had he uttered it when his spirit was raised above all created things into closest union with God. Thus we may believe that during his continual prayer Joseph could only say, "O Jesus, my Son!" and that in pronouncing these words his spirit would enter into the profoundest contemplation of the infinite perfections of the God-made-Man. If the prayer of the contemplative is, as we may say, only one word addressed to God, so also it is but one word that God on His part causes the contemplative soul to hear. Witness what the Evangelist relates of Jesus, who said only "Mary" when making Himself known to her who in her rapture could say only "Master". In the same way we may imagine the Infant Saviour saying only to our contemplative saint, "Joseph, My father," but in these words, accompanied with tender embraces, He says all things to him. As we know that the Eternal Father and His Only Son have for the everlasting ages uttered but one single word, Each to Other, a word which exceeds all discourse, for it comprehends all things, and will continue to utter it for ever, a word which never ceases, but is repeated through eternity;538 so also the earthly father of Jesus and this beloved Son536
St. John xx. 16.
537
Ibid, verse 28.
538
"God hath spoken once" (Psalm lxi. 12). St. Augustine thus expounds this passage. 278