QUAMQUAM PLURIES
Encyclical
Letter of Pope Leo XIII promulgated on August 15, 1889
On the Devotion to Saint Joseph
The
special motives for which St.
Joseph has been proclaimed Patron of
the Church, and from which the Church looks for singular benefit from his
patronage and protection, are that Joseph
was the spouse of Mary
and that he was reputed the Father of Jesus
Christ. From these sources have sprung
his dignity, his holiness, his glory. In truth, the dignity of the Mother
of God is so lofty that naught created
can rank above it. But as Joseph
has been united to the Blessed
Virgin by the ties of marriage, it
may not be doubted that he approached nearer than any to the eminent dignity
by which the Mother of God
surpasses so nobly all created natures.
For marriage is the most intimate of all unions
which from its essence imparts a community of gifts between those that
by it are joined together. Thus in giving Joseph
the Blessed Virgin
as spouse, God appointed him to be not only her life's companion, the witness
of her maidenhood, the protector of her honor, but also, by virtue of the
conjugal tie, a participator in her sublime dignity. And Joseph
shines among all mankind by the most august dignity, since by divine
will, he was the guardian of the Son
of God and reputed as His father among
men.
Hence it came about that the Word
of God was humbly subject to
Joseph, that He obeyed him, and that
He rendered to him all those offices that children are bound to render
to their parents. From this two-fold dignity flowed the obligation
which nature lays upon the head of families, so that Joseph
became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine
house whose chief he was. And during the whole course of his life
he fulfilled those charges and those duties. He set himself to protect
with a mighty love and a daily solicitude his spouse and the Divine
Infant.
Regularly by his work he earned what was necessary
for the one and the other for nourishment and clothing; he guarded from
death the Child
threatened by a monarch's jealousy, and found for Him a refuge; in the
miseries of the journey and in the bitternesses of exile he was ever the
companion, the assistance, and the upholder of the Virgin
and of Jesus.
Now the divine house which Joseph
ruled with the authority of a father, contained within its limits the scarce-born
Church. From the same fact that the most holy Virgin is the mother
of Jesus Christ
is she the mother of all Christians whom she bore on Mount Calvary amid
the supreme throes of the Redemption;
Jesus Christ is, in a manner, the first-
born of Christians, who by the adoption and Redemption are his brothers.
And for such reasons the Blessed Patriarch looks upon the multitude of
Christians who make up the Church as confided specially to his trust--this
limitless family spread over the earth, over which, because he is
the spouse of Mary
and the Father of Jesus Christ
he holds, as it were, a paternal authority.
For Joseph,
of royal blood, united by marriage to the greatest and holiest of
women, reputed the father of the Son
of God, passed his life in labor,
and won by the toil of the artisan the needful support of his family. It
is, then, true that the condition of the lowly has nothing shameful in
it, and the work of the laborer is not only not dishonoring, but can, if
virtue be joined to it, be singularly ennobled. Joseph,
content with his slight possessions, bore the trials consequent on a fortune
so slender, with greatness of soul, in imitation of his Son,
who having put on the form of a slave, being the Lord of life, subjected
himself of his own free-will to the spoliation and loss of everything.
Sacred Family of Nazareth
|
"The
participation in the Eucharist
and in the Holy Communion
transforms the soul into a living stone
of the divine city and each soul in a temple of GOD."
