Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
On the Feast of Saint Joseph in the Year of St. Joseph it would be apt to discuss Consecration to the eponymous saint and to expand on what others have written.
The Consecrated Knight
Consecration to St. Joseph, as outlined by Fr. Donald H. Calloway, MIC involves reading his book of the same name and praying the Litany of St. Joseph after each reading. This takes place over thirty-three days to finish on a suitable feast day – the 19th March, the Feast of St. Joseph, being ideal. You might ask, “what is the point of this?” Well, getting to know St. Joseph is one way of understanding what it means to be a Just Man.[1] We read in Proverbs, “For a just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again: but the wicked shall fall down into evil.”[2] Did not St. Joseph fall seven times and rise again seven times?[3] For Fr. Calloway this means our goal should be to imitate St. Joseph in all his ways; spending thirty plus years in perpetual adoration of Christ and taking Mary into his home and heart.
Fr. Calloway does a good job of explaining the exoteric teaching on St. joseph as can be seen from his book, yet he leaves the esoteric teaching out. What does this mean? He rightly asserts, St. Joseph is a model of virtue and points out Church teaching through the Saints, Doctors and Fathers to this effect. For example, after the Resurrection of Christ when, on the first Easter Sunday, the Saints and the Just who Christ has freed from the Limbo of the Fathers enter Jerusalem – an allegory for the Heavenly City and the ascent of the I, St. Joseph was among them.[4] Exoterically this is a great honour to St. Joseph and only possible for one who was not denied any gift from God. Esoterically this means St. Joseph achieved the Primordial State, “In that state, there is no childhood, old age, disease, or infirmity. The body is incorruptible and is finer and lighter.” In other words, this is the restoration of our nature to its original state.
How did St. Joseph do this? Saint Jerome writes:
“Saint Joseph possessed all the virtues in a perfect degree.”
To possess all the virtues in this way, St. Joseph’s will must have been completely unified, and for the will to be unified it must be pure. A pure and thus unified will is a free will detached from external influences. The Church teaches, one must be detached from sin in order to gain a plenary indulgence otherwise it will only be partial. Another way of putting it is, demonic forces that are always around us are trying to drag us down to a lower level of being. Saint Gregory of Nyssa explains:
“The soulless or irrational beings are led by an external will. If a rational and thinking nature discards freedom [choosing freely the object desired], it also loses the right for thinking.”
It is interesting to note that one of St. Joseph’s titles is the Terror of Demons. Let us pray he protects us from the diabolic which is to say negative or disintegrating thoughts.
The Grail Quest
Likewise, Fr. Calloway misses the connection between St. Joseph and the Grail Quest. He contends that there was no need for the Knights of Arthur and those who emulated them to seek after the Grail, which he justly sees as the Chalice of Salvation, as it was available to that at Holy Mass. This is of course true in the sense that exoterically the chalice at Mass contains the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord. However, he misses the esoteric teaching contained within this allegorical legend: The Quest for the Grail is an Ascent to God as shown by the trials of the knights Lancelot, Percival, and most of all Galahad. The latter, like St. Joseph, died for the love of God and was assumed into Heaven. Similarly, like St. Joseph, Galahad was pure of heart, which means he had perfect knowledge of himself.[5] Moreover, like St. Joseph but unlike Lancelot, he was chaste – not consummating himself with a woman. So, in fact St. Joseph is very much akin to a Knight of the Grail, one who guarded the Bread from Heaven, the source of life, and was justly rewarded.[6]
Prayer to Saint Joseph
To thee, O Blessed Joseph, we have recourse in our tribulations, and while imploring the aid of thy most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke thy patronage also.
By that love which united thee to the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of God, and by the fatherly affection with which thou didst embrace the Infant Jesus, we humbly beseech thee graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ purchased with His Blood and to help us in our necessities, by thy powerful intercession.
Protect, O most provident Guardian of the Holy Family, the chosen children of Jesus Christ; ward off from us, O most loving Father, all taint of error and corruption; graciously assist us from Heaven, O most power protector, in our struggle with the powers of darkness; and as thou didst once rescue the Child Jesus from imminent peril to His life, so now defend the Holy Church of God from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity.
Shield each one of us with thy unceasing patronage that, imitating thy example and sported by thy aid, we may be enabled to live a good life, die a holy death, and secure everlasting happiness in Heaven.
Amen.
[1] See https://www.english.op.org/godzdogz/joseph-the-just-man.
[2] 24:16.
[3] See https://yearofstjoseph.org/devotions/.
[4] Among the Fathers of the Church it is held, no gift bestowed on any of the other saints, except of course Our Lady, was denied to St. Joseph. Ergo, Our Blessed Lord would not have forgotten to leave St. Joseph in Limbo, where he would have gone on his death, as we have seen, no gift bestowed on any of the other saints was denied him.
[5] As we have shown elsewhere this is eminently necessary.
[6] We could say he had ascended through the spheres to the Heavenly Fatherland and beheld the Beatific Vison as Dante did.