Today, March 19th, is the Super Solemnity of Saint Joseph, the Most Chaste Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary (phew, long title!), aka: a well-deserved break from Lent! That’s right boys and girls, today is a solemnity, which means it’s a little oasis from your Lenten penances. It’s also my patronal feast day, so I thought I’d write a post for this occasion and share some art from Daniel Mitsui:
[Feel free to click the artwork to see more about it at the artist’s site.]
The artwork above depicts St. Joseph’s second dream from the Archangel Gabriel, telling him to take Mary and Baby Jesus into exile… into Egypt to escape the murderous Herod (Matthew 2: 13-23). St. Joseph had three such dreams in all, and I’d invite you to check your copy of the Gospel of Matthew to see what I mean.
Which then brings me to why St. Joseph is not your average Joe. Instead, St. Joseph was an intense man of love, made even more intense because his beloved was the stunning and gorgeous Virgin Mary. In fact, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said:
“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”
In other words, the woman inspires the man on how to love her and others. In many ways, the woman’s beauty shows her man a glimpse of how ravishing her Creator is. The woman’s wisdom, intuition, faith, dignity, reverence and steadfastness hints at the level of wisdom, intuition, faith, dignity and steadfastness that the man needs to have in order to impress her. She sets the standards, and if he loves her, then he will rise.
And Mary’s standards were sky high. She was good enough for God to want her to be His mother, and her goodness inspired Joseph’s goodness. So here we see a chain: God inspired Mary, and Mary inspired Joseph. And if this logic led to the holiest of families, then we can conclude:
–Ladies, get close to Jesus! Be inspired by God, be filled with the Holy Spirit, inspire the gentlemen in your lives to rise to higher standards. Don’t settle for wimps or pimps, don’t settle for idiots or cowards. Don’t settle for an average Joe. Be truly beloved.
–Gentlemen, get out there and meet women who have high standards! Ask the Lord to give you the strength to rise to those heights… to the heights of being lifted on a cross and willing to die for your bride. Don’t live a wimpy or pimpy lifestyle, don’t be an idiot or a coward. Don’t be an average Joe. Be a true lover.
Now, since Mary was unaffected by Original Sin [by the Lord’s gift of immaculate conception], and since sin causes all ugliness, then we can say that Mary was truly and totally beautiful, through and through. In our fallen world, we’re always tempted to lust after the beautiful, to take it and possess it. This is a selfish thing to do, because beauty is meant to inspire us to be beautiful, and to praise the Creator of that beauty!
So for St. Joseph, I imagine devils constantly tried to tempt him to lust after his super beautiful bride, tried to make him use Mary, abuse her beauty and take advantage of her. But it never happened. He was her most chaste spouse, and for that he is known as the Terror of Demons. Joseph terrified and terrorizes demons because he never fell for their greatest temptations to lust, and so he was above their power. And whoever is above their power is close to Christ.
That brings me to my last point: what do I do with beautiful women? Do I fall for temptation and lust? Well, I used to. For a long time, and for most of my life, that’s all I did. But five years ago I started seeing beautiful women differently. Now, a woman’s beauty prompts me to pray for her. The beauty of women who demons wanted me to lust after now actually inspires me to pray — beauty turned my weakness into strength: beauty saved the beast. In fact, the more captivating a woman is, the more I thank and praise God for her beauty! I ask God to protect her from lust, especially from mine, and I beg God to crown her a saint in Heaven! I ask Mary to keep her safe and beautiful, I ask any saint I can think of to watch over her, and on and on and on I pray and praise.
And in this small way I try to imitate St. Joseph. I want to be a terror of demons, a most chaste spouse.
Because I don’t ever want to be an average Joe.
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BONUS: There’s been a bit of debate about whether St. Joseph was a young man or old and grandpa-like. Well, here’s the theory I stand by (best expressed by Fulton Sheen on page 96 of his “The World’s First Love“):
But when one searches for the reasons why Christian art should have pictured Joseph as aged, we discover that it was in order to better safeguard the virginity of Mary. Somehow, the assumption had crept in that senility was a better protector of virginity than adolescence. Art thus unconsciously made Joseph a spouse chaste and pure by age rather than virtue…To make Joseph appear pure only because his flesh had aged is like glorifying a mountain stream that has dried. The Church will not a ordain a man to the priesthood who has not his vital powers. She wants men who have something to tame, rather than those who are tame because they have no energy to be wild. It should be no different with God…Joseph was probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined; the kind of man one sees sometimes shepherding sheep, or piloting a plane, or working at a carpenter’s bench. Instead of being a man incapable of love, he must have been on fire with love….Instead, then, of being dried fruit to be served on the table of the king, he was rather a blossom filled with promise and power. He was not in the evening of life, but in its morning, bubbling over with energy, strength, and controlled passion.
And for more about St. Joseph’s age, his possible assumption, and other amazing things, check Dr. Taylor Marshall’s article here.
—Evan: It actually came a bit from personal experience. I remember being on my feet all day, heels aching, toes all stiff, and then stepping into soft cool earth. It was amazing how good it felt, especially since it was summer and everything was so superheated. It was like a massage just standing in the soil… similar to digging your foot deep into a beach volleyball court, deep where the sand is cool.
Yet again, she just ran all that way home from wherever she was before, some sort of laboratory or hospital. And the setting she’s in now, rice paddies and dirt roads, tells me she’s nowhere near the city.
—Evan: Not to mention I just realized that “nettle” sounds awfully like “needle” too… wow.
The phone is just a medium, a conduit, a fancy pair of cups tied together with string. Now that we have smartphones and video chat, the analogy gets even better: we’re human persons. Humans have ears and eyes, skin, nose and tongue – we can sense: hear, see, touch, smell and taste. And we need to. As Christians, we believe God made us and that He knows what He’s doing, that He made the physical body a good thing, and that humans need their body to be human!
So when we pray, we not only use our mind, voice and hearing, we want to use our sight and touch. We want to have beautiful eyes to gaze into, patient ears to whisper to, and open hands to hold. A statue serves that purpose. Of course, we would much rather have the person physically there with us, but it’s not always possible. Think of the times a mother remembers and thinks of her child when she folds their clothes, or when a father thinks of his child when he looks at an old photograph – that’s exactly what Catholic statues, icons and relics help us do. We don’t worship or love the object, but we use the object to remind us, to connect us with the beloved. The objects help engage more of us, not just engage our mind but also involve our bodies. As fallen humans, we need all the help we can get when we pray.
—You: Wow, that makes sense… it reminds me of the phrase “smells and bells” when people think of the Catholic Mass. The priest uses incense and there are bells being rung at important moments. So, even our sense of smell is brought into use in prayer!
—Evan: Ah… that’s one of the titles (like a nickname) for Saint Joseph: also known as San Jose in Spanish! That’s right… the city in California is named after him. We call him Mary’s Most Chaste Spouse because he loved his wife (Mary) with a superhuman and chaste love, a love that was lustless and self-sacrificing. I understood this nickname of his even better when I heard one of his other titles: St. Joseph, the Terror of Demons. Yep… he terrorizes demons. They loathe him, avoid him, and fear his holiness. Because he refused to lust after Mary, the devil couldn’t bait him. Most of us, men especially, fall into lust because we don’t have the strength or know what true love is. True love is always chaste: honest, sincere, unselfish and faithful. Think about this… 
Holy Smack 