“To give life to someone is the greatest of all gifts. To save a life is the next. Who gave life to Jesus? It was Mary. Who saved his life? It was Joseph. Ask St. Paul who persecuted him. Ask St. Peter who denied him. Ask all the saints who put him to death. But if we ask, ‘Who saved his life?’ Be silent patriarchs, be silent prophets, be silent apostles, confessors, and martyrs. Let St. Joseph speak, for this honor is his alone; he alone is the savior of his Savior (Catholic Women in Business 2020).”
—Blessed William Joseph Chaminade
Such are the eloquent words one witness to St. Joseph, the tree of Jesse on which the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets laid His head to rest. Around each saint circles a litany of names. It is a verbal extravagance by which love is exchanged between Celestial realms and the earth, a ladder by which angels ascend and descend in endless procession. We delight in adding ever more to their honors of our brothers and sisters of Heaven. Above all we love to chant every name of Mary. But Joseph, the silent member of the Holy Family, has gained his share of a discourse of praise that makes him known and enables those who use it. One title stands out from the centuries accumulated list of titles: Savior of the Savior. To say it almost seems blasphemous in its audacity. But let us reflect on the presentation of Joseph in the Gospels. For Joseph did save Christ in threefold ways – from public shame by his courtesy, from the vulnerability of childhood, and from the oppression of earthly power. And in this manner he points to how we can participate in this act of salvation.
Joseph saved Christ through his matchless discretion. He did not disown Jesus as a bastard product of adultery. He prefered to divorce Mary quietly so as to minimize the scandal. But, realizing that a mystery greater than himself was taking place, he took the Virgin Mother to be his spouse. In both the attempted refusal and the willing deed, Joseph sought to protect the reputation of Mary and by extension of her child. And by doing this, in the eyes of the world, he was a cuckold fool. This was a role that he played for the rest of his life. The insinuations of dishonor never deterred him. Joseph gave the protection of his name to the Immaculate Conception and the Incarnate Word. A seemingly small thing in comparison to such persons, but of immense value in the economy of salvation.
Joseph guarded Jesus in his infant and childlike helplessness. He walked with Him from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He was present for the Christ child at His entrance to the world as Mary’s child. When Christ was presented at the Temple where His first blood was shed, Joseph stood by. No doubt he was there when Christ uttered his first words and took his first steps. He guided him as he learned the plane and the lathe of a carpenter, as well as the Law, the Prophets, and the prayers of the Jewish people. He guided Jesus and rescued Him from the oppression of the evil that dwells in the high places. The flight into Egypt, the prophetic paradox that Christ’s mission was spared from being snuffed out in its infancy by going out of the land of Israel into the alien peoples of the Gentiles, was made dependent on the action of Joseph. Even leaving aside Matthew’s account of the escape from King Herod, we can infer Joseph helped Jrsus survive a world full of injustice and oppression in a more subtle way. We know that “Christ went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to [his parents]” and that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Thus we know that he was prepared in wisdom for His public ministry through His submission to His father and mother. And from this we can conceive that Christ gained His own later displayed inner emancipation from the powers of both the Jews and the Gentiles from the man who was publicly acknowledged as His progenitor. The little house at Nazareth prepared the mind of the man who would not suffer the impostions of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisses, and who would not deign to speak like a slave in front of Pilate
The Josephite title of “Savior of the Savior ” brings to the foreground how we,in our humble way, are instrumental in the rescue of the world from itself. Part of the scandal of the Incarnation is that God has made His plan dependent on the frailty of ordinary men and women. We, by our sense of decorum and decency, can prevent those who are vulnerable whether by their own sins or by the hasty judgment of others from being swept aside into the outer darkness of social death and invisibility. And when we do that, we are caring for Christ Himself, who chose to be born with something of the taint of scandal. When we use our strength and voice to care for those who weak and silent in our own little circle, when we act like careful mothers and fathers to the stumbling in our midst, we honor the the One who chose to come into a definite place, to a definite time, to a definite household, and to a definite suffering. Finally, when we work to thwart the evils of exploitation, tyranny, and persecution, even in little and humble ways, we make possible the abiding of God in creation. We act like a parent to the Christ that elected to be crucified by the allied kings of this world for the redemption of all.
The modern age thinks it is clever in finding the sacred in the mundane and not in mighty miracles. Yet the partial truth of this aversion to locating faith in wonders is already contained in the now ancient devotion to Joseph, a man for whom all the acts of his life were of the natural kind. He lived among living testaments of the living God. Yet he is adored and loved by all in the universal Church above hosts of saints that went about their duties with more supernatural signs and fanfare. By being an ordinary but just man, he saved the Logos so that the Logos could save all. Heaven was rescued from being merely Heavenly by a man who knew how to listen and act with love.
What was said in a spirit of atheistical aesthetic brazen by Wagner can be said by the faithful in a truer sense of Joseph and all those who follow after him:
Höchsten Heiles Wunder!
Erlösung dem Erlöser!
Supreme miracle of salvation!
Redemption to the Redeemer!
(© Derrick Everett 1996-2021)
Bibliography
Lenon, Marissa Marguerite (March 19, 2021)
St. Joseph’s Way of the Cross — Catholic Women in Business Catholic Women in Bussiness https://www.catholicwomeninbusiness.org/articles/2021/3/9/st-josephs-way-of-the-cross
Everett, Derrick (November 29,2021) Parsifal: Libretto with Translation — Act 3 | monsalvat Monsalvat Parsifal home site. https://www.monsalvat.no/parsifal-libretto-act3.htm