The Heart of Joseph

A just man.

Victorious Justice

The Heart Revealed in Motives

Know a man’s motives and you know his heart. The motive is the heart’s deliberate choice; it is the reason, fully and freely accepted, of the man’s desires and actions. Aspirations and hopes may foreshadow what the heart will be; regrets will tell what the heart would like to have been; desires, consciously and deliberately embraced, are revelations of what the heart is. Such desires are characteristic of a man, because they are completely his and the outcome of his free will. The motive is the beginning and end, starting-point and final goal of the heart’s desires. The motive is the heart’s treasure, and if you know the heart’s treasures, you need search no more. The heart is laid bare before you and you can look into its innermost recesses.

The Motives of Many Hearts

Herod’s weak heart is revealed in the motive which led him to murder the Baptist. He would not revoke a rash promise, “because of them that were with him at table.” We know the heart of Judas in the motive of his objections to the anointing of Christ, “not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief.” The rich young man seemed at first to have a generous, courageous heart, but when he turned away sorrowful from Christ’s call, “for he had great possessions,” then it was clear that his heart was not heroic. The reason, the motive, revealed the hearts of the weak and wicked; it reveals, too, the heart of the strong and saintly. The heart of Saint Joseph is introduced to us in the first chapter of the New Testament where he would not publicly expose his spouse “because he was a just man.”

Justice in Art

Joseph was the just man with the just heart. But, you will object, has justice a heart? Justice is stern and severe. Justice is sculptured and painted as majestic but rigid and relentless, with scales and sword and blindfolded eyes. Does a heart beat beneath all that coldness and rigor? Justice, you will say, is a determination to give everyone his due; it demands a will to pay what is due, but what need or place has justice for a heart? Mercy, which is as gentle and refreshing as heaven’s dew, feels ever the pulsing of a tender heart, but justice whets its knife and wants its full weight and measure, no more, no less. Shall we then insist on the fact that Joseph had a just heart and regulated his life by the motive of justice? Do we not make him forbidding, if we say he acted or refrained from acting “because he was a just man”?

Justice in Heart

The answer to this objection is easy, and we need not fear to speak of Saint Joseph as the just man with the just heart. Justice, we should know, is larger and better than art and artists commonly make it out to be. Justice takes care of crimes and looks to it that the punishment fits them. Justice takes care of debts and sees to it that they are paid. These are such common and unceasing duties of justice that we forget that this virtue has a wider range than crime and credit. Justice pays all debts wherever and however due, debts of honor, debts of loyalty, debts of kindness. Justice declares that you should get the pleasure due to you as well as the punishment, and be paid with all consideration and fidelity and trust and goodness and tender love just as fully as with all the cash that is to your credit. Justice indeed weighs hell in its scales, but it also weighs Heaven, and it is much happier doing the latter than the former. Justice widens out until it embraces every virtue and measures every good and includes every person. Justice will not allow even mercy to be a defaulter. Surely justice has a heart, and there can be no doubt that the justice of Joseph had a large, tender heart.

Justice of Joseph Tested

When Saint Joseph appears before us in the Gospel, he is exposed to the most trying ordeal which can rack and torture a human soul. He does not, he cannot, doubt of the sanctity and spotless innocence of his virgin spouse, but he was to be tried and God did not see fit at once to reveal to him all the mystery of the Incarnation. Just as some years afterward he was left in sorrow and did not understand when Jesus left him and His mother, so at first he did not know all the facts of Christ’s Incarnation. He would not judge wrongly, because he was just. He would not be wanting in the least consideration or in any shade of thoughtful kindness, because he was just. It was a sad search through the night and among strangers when Joseph sought for the lost Jesus. In his heart before that time he had already made another sad search for his loved one, for his peerless bride, who was enshrouded in the gloom of mystery. That Joseph could not or did not for a moment waver in his love and loyalty is absolutely certain, and the reason is because he was a just man. He would measure out to Mary every particle of love and trustful confidence and unswerving loyalty. He paid her every service and accorded to her the chivalrous fidelity of every thought and surmise. Despite every temptation, he would not admit the faintest breath of the slightest suspicion, because he was a just man, and his heart was the paymaster of his justice. Yet, with all that, we know he must have sorrowed; we know his virtue was tested and tested in the most delicate and most piercing way that a human heart could be tested. Because he was victorious is no sign that the battle was not a bloody one. God permitted the clouds to gather. Joseph could not see the light, did not know when the darkness would lift, but in his gloomiest moment his heart was just and true. He did not abate in the least from the fullness of any virtue. He had faith that the sun would shine and all would be well. He had confidence in Mary. No one else will ever have his justice subjected to so severe a test because never but once in the world’s history has the miracle of the virgin motherhood come to pass, never but once has occurred or could occur a set of circumstances involving a severer trial of virtue than Joseph had to meet. We know then that his justice was supreme, because it rose superior to the most exacting test. Truly he was a just man.

Justice of Joseph Triumphant

After this the heart of Joseph found it easy to be just. The sorrows and dangers were great, but his justice was securely enthroned and met all difficulties fearlessly and triumphantly. His heart was happiest in giving his full measure of love and protection and reverence to her whom he took to himself as wife and knew from Heaven to be God’s Virgin Mother. His heart was prompt in giving to his earthly superiors all obedience due to them. With just obedience he went up to Bethlehem. With just patience and charity he sought for a suitable shelter for Mary. With just conformity to God’s will he accepted the wretchedness of the stable, when all his endeavors for a better abode were fruitless. Fortitude amidst the toils and perils of exile, patience and conformity again, as before at Bethlehem, in the search at Jerusalem for Jesus lost, fidelity and unceasing kindness and watchful love for many years at Nazareth, the fulfillment of all his offices as husband of Mary, as foster-father of Jesus, as guardian and head of the Holy Family, all these virtues reached their full growth in Joseph. He was just, and his justice had a heart to it. He gave himself in full measure to all obligations and gave himself willingly and gladly. No virtue was dwarfed or stunted; no good desire failed to flower; no act stopped short of its perfect fruitage, because Joseph was a just man.

Merciful Justice

Justice Wedded to Mercy

It is an old question: What will happen when a force which nothing can stop meets a force which nothing can move? It is a similar and equally puzzling question how infinite justice can be allied with infinite mercy. Every work indeed of God’s hands is endowed with justice and mercy. It is just because it comes up to the measure of God’s wisdom and goodness and to the measure of its own nature and requirements. Every work of God is merciful because it confers good and relieves wretchedness. All His works befit Him; all His works bring a blessing. The Incarnation, however, is the work of God’s hands which displays most justice and most mercy. In the Incarnation the infinite malice of sin was compensated for by an infinitely perfect atonement and nothing could be more just than that. In the Incarnation God gave His only Son to be our redemption and nothing could be more merciful than that. The coming of God to earth fulfilled the prophecy of the Psalmist: “Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed. Truth is sprung out of the earth and justice hath looked down from Heaven.” Love alone could bring about so wonderful a union. Where else then could these espousals be consummated, where else could God’s justice and God’s mercy become one except in the Heart of the Man-God, in the Heart of Jesus? The justice of God did not merely have a heart; it became a heart. His Heart was all justice and all mercy. The merciful Heart was infinitely just and the just Heart was infinitely merciful. The blood of the Man-God was to be the just and abundant ransom for our sins. His love was to shed that blood fully in sacrifice. The union of all these elements of love and sacrifice and the complete shedding of blood is found in the Heart of Christ.

Justice Loved by Christ

Justice is a precious virtue in the Heart of Christ, His desire, His eternal motive, was to effect the redemption of man by satisfying the justice of God. “So it becomes us to fulfil all justice,” Christ cries to the Baptist at his baptism. The same thought must have filled His Heart when He was circumcised by Saint Joseph. Because justice was to play so prominent a part in His life may be one reason why He wished to have justice so perfectly exemplified in His foster-father. Joseph helped Jesus in His early years to practise justice. All the trials of His birth and early youth, which He endured under Joseph’s guardianship, were imposed upon Christ by the justice of His heavenly Father and were accepted in that spirit. The justice with which Jesus entered His public life in His baptism characterized all His days, and over His dead body as He went out of public life, the centurion cried, “Indeed this was a just Man.” Joseph then was a man after Christ’s own Heart. Joseph possessed justice and guided the earliest steps of Christ along the ways of justice, and that virtue excited in the Heart of Christ a still warmer and deeper affection for Joseph.

Justice Transfigured by Mercy

The justice of Christ’s Heart was colored and transfigured with mercy. It was all justice and yet all mercy. Every drop of His physical Heart is tinged with red and at the same time every drop is throbbing with life. In the same way every drop of His heart-blood is both just and merciful; it is the price of our redemption and passes as coin in the kingdom of God’s justice, and is likewise the precious treasure which relieves our misery and is warm with merciful love. His Heart was the Good Samaritan to a stricken world, bearing the soothing oil of mercy and the sharp wine of justice for all its wounds. His Heart is the Good Shepherd, whose just concern will not rest till the lost sheep is home and whose loving mercy makes a happy holiday for the lost one. The Heart of Christ is the heart of the Prodigal’s father, not content merely to restore the wanderer to his home and so satisfy the claims of justice, but glad and eager under the promptings of mercy to vest the home-comer in a new robe and to grace his hand with a ring and to start his new life with banquet and music and mirth.

Justice Overpaid by Mercy

Should a creditor have a man owing him a hundred pieces of silver, justice will be satisfied if the debtor pays the hundred pieces, but the creditor will have both justice and mercy, and debtor and creditor alike will be satisfied if the creditor gives his debtor two hundred pieces of silver with which the debt can be paid and the debtor still be rich. This is the example Saint Thomas gives us in his Summa to show how justice and mercy can be reconciled. Apply the example to the Passion of our Lord. We are debtors with an infinite debt, and the just and merciful Heart of Christ pays our infinite debt in His own blood and bestows upon us in addition the wealth of an infinite reward. His blood is the wonderful treasure by which we can satisfy justice and remove the debt which else had brought us to eternal ruin and is too the selfsame treasure which can gain for us eternal happiness. His justice closed hell; His mercy opened Heaven.

Eternal Justice and Mercy

The mercy of His justice is evident from the fact that His Heart gave lavishly of its treasures. A single drop of blood, a single ache, one only sigh had been enough for a God-Man to redeem a thousand worlds, but His Heart’s mercy was not content with what was enough. He opened the fountain of His love and all its contents gushed forth. Nor have they yet ceased to flow. The shedding of His blood still continues; His sacrifice still is offered up, and His Heart every day is pierced and every day gives of Its treasures and every day flows forth upon a guilty world. Nay His mercy endures forever! The Heart which made and loved the just heart of Joseph, which made and will make all hearts just, will continue Its merciful kindness for all ages. The just who attain unto life everlasting, who look upon God face to face forevermore, shall always feel and know that their unsurpassed bliss comes to them through the just and merciful Heart of Him to whom Joseph, the just man, was foster-father.