The Seven Illuminations of St. Joseph
An excerpt from the book “Giuseppe siamo noi” by Johnny Dotti and Mario Aldegani, published by Edizioni San Paolo
On the day when spazio + spadoni celebrates and honors its patron saint, we listen to the reflections of the author
“Blessed are you, the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you, and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.”
(Luke 6:20-21)
“Patience: the tireless and persevering waiting
for the fulfillment of invisible realities,
contemplated with the inner eye as already present.”
(Diadocus, Bishop of Photice)
We feel that at the end of this book, we must gather, like in a kind of “breviary of daily life,” everything we believe we have learned from Youssef of Nazareth.
In traditional devotion to Him, there are the seven sorrows and the seven joys.
Here, we will speak of the seven illuminations we have received from His human existence and spiritual journey.
Numbers have meaning: seven is the number in the Bible that signifies completeness: “On the seventh day God completed the work He had done…” (Gen 2:2).
Crossing life with blessing
The time in which we live needs people who bless and allow themselves to be blessed.
Those who bless are the ones who speak well of life, who speak well of their present; they are the people who don’t just play the “game of the past” or the “how wonderful it would be” game, but who know that in this time and in this space, their whole life is at play.
This is the most beautiful time that the good God has imagined for us.
With this awareness, we can be within our time with a deep sense of gratitude.
This is the consciousness of time not as kronos that passes and devours us, but as kairos, that is, as Grace.
This does not take away pain from our lives, it doesn’t take away labor, sometimes it doesn’t take away discouragement, but it makes us feel within our story with meaning. Otherwise, we float like corks on the sea.
To bless the present is not to be superficially optimistic, it is knowing that this is the time given to you, and it is the time in which you can give all of yourself.
We are in the world to bless and to bless ourselves.
Blessing means recognizing the gift, knowing how to appreciate it, and wanting to share it.
Blessing means having a large and generous heart, that sees light even when it is a thin blade in the darkness, or a quick flash in the grayness of the days.
Allowing oneself to be blessed means having a humble heart, recognizing that one needs help and grace, and cannot do everything alone.
It is about becoming more and more capable of blessing, recognizing as a gift every moment, every encounter, every event; of letting ourselves be blessed in an embrace of trust and hope that puts us in a positive relationship with each other and with God, the giver of every blessing.
Overcoming the arrogance of the ego and understanding oneself as primarily a “you”
Joseph appears to us as a nearly anonymous figure because today we have the myth of the individual; therefore, one doesn’t exist unless there’s his illusory story, the tale of himself.
The gospel account of Youssef’s story, however, is all contained within his relationship of love, care, and responsibility toward Mary and Jesus and in fulfilling the mission he accepted, a project completely beyond his desires.
Joseph’s actions are not life plans or expansions of his “self,” they are all actions with and for others, a pure response to a vocation.
It is striking in this sense to read in succession in the Gospel the “verbs” of Joseph, all reflected upon others or on God: “he married,” “he did what was right,” “he woke up,” “he took her with him,” “he gave Jesus His name,” “he got up,” “he took refuge,” “he returned,” “he went”…
Joseph’s actions are not related to what he “must be,” but to purity, to the nobility of being; that is precisely being faithful to existence and to the life that flows in existence, which exceeds our thoughts, destabilizes us, constantly asks us to go beyond ourselves and does not separate us from the rest and from the other.
Life challenges us, and for this reason, it asks for a response.
Each of us experiences being both unique and fragile, but this uniqueness is not fulfilled in affirming our individuality by separating ourselves from others, and this fragility is not repaired by things or merit, but only by encountering others.
Because to live is to become alive in the encounter; we are alive not because of the things we do but because we are within life, welcomed, loved, contemplated.
The deception of modernity is that we have placed this thirst for being and for life in the thirst of our ego, but this thirst is quenched by making our life, not our ego, meet life.
Only Christ, and none of us, can say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
We can only say that we are within life, with life, with others.
The life that seems anonymous is the true salvation of life.
In this sense, Youssef’s life is a full, completed life: the fullness of his being is entirely identified with being the “you” of the one who loves.
Fragility as a resource
The fragility that we often want to deny to ourselves and hide from others, which we don’t want to admit as an ineliminable part of our human condition, God assumed in Himself in His Son Jesus, He chose it as a meaning and symbol by coming to us in a child, with His weakness, with His poverty.
Youssef’s faith, along with Mary’s, turns to the fragility of this child, from the announcement of His birth.
It is also for us to make peace with fragility, to welcome it not as a weakness but as a possibility, a resource, perhaps even as a wealth. Not to reject it, not to deny it, not to be ashamed of it.
And to bless it.
In the God made child, fragility is welcomed and blessed as the “mark” of our human condition that makes sense. “When I am weak,” wrote Saint Paul, “that is when I am strong.”
Welcoming and honoring our limits is the path that opens us to encountering others in the sign of kindness and mercy.
Only with the consciousness of fragility that aligns with another is it possible to have a true encounter between people, one that unites, enriches, and strengthens.
Between Darkness and Light
Most of what we know about Youssef happens during the night and in the darkness.
Perhaps this is true for everyone’s life.
We must not fear the night.
You will never know anything about the light if you haven’t crossed the night, if you haven’t made it your own, if you haven’t embraced it as the place of your truth and also as a moment of revelation, the nourishment for your journey.
It is the night that pushes us to light a fire, and it is around that fire that life gathers, hearts are warmed, and paths are illuminated.
In the end, the night is also a time for intimacy, for trust, for letting go, in the rest of life.
We live in a society that is sick with fear, anxiety, and distress.
The point is not to be afraid, not even of our own fear.
And you will not fear fear if you can trust someone and something.
And finally, it is only the night that makes you lift your head to look at the stars: perhaps only in the night can there be a content of truth that even full light, blinding us, does not blind us but helps us see.
This is a somewhat more complex (Eastern?) way of interpreting life, which embraces its complexity and contradictions: not all beauty is in the light, not all ugliness is in the night; not all strength lies in reason, there are also the reasons of the heart.
The Importance of the Donkey
With a donkey, Joseph took Mary to find a place of refuge where she could give birth, or later even farther, to Egypt, when they had to flee from Herod.
A donkey carried Jesus to Jerusalem, on the brief day of his human triumph.
Paradoxical: perhaps at certain moments this donkey… was the only companion that Youssef had: this silent companion of every journey, Youssef must have caressed, cared for, fed… maybe sometimes even spoken to?
We live in a time that is excessively technological and rational.
Today, perhaps we talk to a computer, we make virtual friendships at the expense of real ones… but who would accept the existential company of a donkey?
Yet among our needs is also the desire for a healthier and more harmonious relationship with nature, animals, and things, which all speak to us and accompany us through life.
Creation is not only for humans: it is for all created beings.
After all, the salvation that Jesus brought is a salvation for the whole cosmos, not just for humankind.
All creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth.
Within this conviction, we participate in the generation of a new concept of salvation, which does not concern just humans, but opens a truly cosmic and harmonious vision of who we are and who we will be.
We need a spirituality that embraces the whole of life, that accesses a broader consciousness of self, which is not that of being individuals, but of being in relationship with everyone and everything.
Going beyond, transcending oneself, is not about forcing or accelerating without limits our power, always in the direction of expanding or asserting ourselves, but about gathering within ourselves the cosmic universe, having a consciousness of relationship with everything, which is the greatness and beauty of our vocation as humans, suspended between earth and sky.
Honoring Tradition by Transforming It
This is the task that Youssef, perhaps unknowingly, found himself living.
Joseph does not deny his Jewish tradition, but he radically transforms it by embracing Jesus Christ into his life.
He does not stop at the faith he had learned, practiced, and honored.
He does not stop at what he had learned from the Scriptures up to that point.
Nor does he stop at the amount of love he had lived up to that moment.
Neither does he stop at justice as the fulfillment of the law.
Youssef goes beyond all of this and thus opens a new story for the people.
The long journey of Youssef ends in Nazareth, in the everyday life where it began. But, after the journey and through the journey, Nazareth is something else.
Because even tradition is a pilgrim: living traditions are on a pilgrimage, dead traditions enclose a space and suffocate.
This is our task as transmillennial believers today.
A commitment for the church, for political institutions, for the family, for the apparent hierarchies that would like to dominate the world: to transform themselves in order to continue to be true, useful, human.
How do we live this transformation?
Through an experience of body, mind, spirit, blood, and risk, of courage and freedom.
Honoring the deep principles of tradition and embedding them in actions that, seemingly, but only seemingly, betray it, but in fact allow it to continue and remain true over time, to grow, to express things never before seen.
The words and gestures of Pope Francis are a shining sign in this regard, and it is no coincidence that his devotion to Youssef of Nazareth, under whose protection he placed his pontificate, which began on March 19, 2013.
However, this transformation is not the responsibility of someone above us, or someone who has more possibilities than us, nor is it in the hands of those who hold power or think they hold it, but it is in our hands.
History teaches that true transformations, which are something more and different from revolutions or reforms, those that leave a mark in history, require all of us and everything about us.
These possible transformations are the fruit of our freedom and responsibility.
Transformations are simultaneously inner and outer, indeed, they are outer because they are inner.
They are the result of the sacrifice of those who embrace life, resist, fight, build, invent, get indignant and exhilarated, sing, cry, smile…
In this power of the people, which Pope Francis calls “the holy people of God,” lies the possibility, perhaps the only one, to renew institutions or give life to new institutions.
All of this does not pass through an abstraction or rationalization of reality, but through courage, patience, doubt, trust, passion, nostalgia, and wonder.
We feel Pope Francis’ words in Evangelii Gaudium (EG) as true and our own: “Today, when the networks and tools of communication have reached unheard-of developments, we feel the challenge of discovering and transmitting the ‘mysticism’ of living together, of mixing with each other, of meeting, of taking each other in our arms, of participating in this somewhat chaotic tide that can transform into a true experience of fraternity, into a solidarity caravan, into a holy pilgrimage… (…) If we could follow this path, it would be such a good thing, so healing, so liberating, so generative of hope! Coming out of oneself to join others does good. Closing in on oneself means tasting the bitter poison of immanence, and humanity will suffer in every selfish choice we make” (EG 242).
Justice and Beyond Justice
Youssef in the Gospel is defined as “just.” “Just” is the only adjective that describes him, and therefore we could say that it defines him.
Justice in our time is a highly relevant issue because injustices are increasing, not decreasing, because justice is closely tied to truth.
It is as if there is a need to find in justice a deeper sense of truth, which is not just a scientific matter.
Truth is just not only because it is scientifically appropriate, but because it is deeply anchored in what is good and right for humanity.
In Youssef’s life, this intertwining is expressed in a unique and very modern way. A true inspiration for our struggle to synthesize justice and truth, and not to cage justice within the framework of laws or interests.
Justice needs to breathe the truth. Youssef finds his way in an excess of love and faithfulness: “He wanted to do what was right, but he did not want to expose her to public disgrace” (Luke 1:19).
The two fundamental characteristics on which human communal life rests, writes Buber, are benevolence and faithfulness.
Benevolence is the willingness to fulfill the other’s expectations from me, according to the relationship between us. Youssef truly loved that girl he found pregnant, and she expected this from him, in a difficult moment: to be loved.
Faithfulness is the indispensable alignment between my actions and the feelings I express. The just Joseph, in his choice to respect his beloved, fully expresses his feeling toward her.
On these two tracks runs the train of Joseph’s life, “the just one”: his benevolence and faithfulness are fulfilled by the voice of the angel, which removes doubt and fear from his heart: “Do not be afraid.”
But in the story of Youssef, we can see the symbol of the inner journey and the action of a people, the people of Israel, called by Jesus to fulfill the law by going beyond the law; the symbol of our journey toward a justice that goes beyond itself, that exists within time and within eternity.
Martin Buber writes: “The truth is only of God, but there is a human truth, and it consists in this: in being faithful to the truth.”
Seven illuminations, seven rays of powerful light, come to us from the story of Youssef, and as they pass through our soul, they can illuminate our life and brighten its path.
There is a beautiful prayer by C. De Foucault in which Youssef of Nazareth seems to be gathered and interpreted, as we have heard him, as a companion in our pilgrimage.
My Father
I surrender myself to You,
do with me whatever You please,
whatever You do with me,
I thank You.
I am ready for anything, I accept everything,
so that Your will may be fulfilled in me
and in all Your creatures;
I desire nothing else, my God.
I place my soul in Your hands,
I give it to You, my God,
with all the love of my heart,
because I love You.
And it is for me a necessity of love
To give myself, to entrust myself
Into Your hands without measure,
With infinite trust,
because You are my Father.
(Charles de Foucault)
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- St. Paul’s Publishing Group