St. Joseph and the Stations of the Cross
As promised, here is our Sister Angelique's composition of St Joseph inspired meditations for the Stations of the Cross. Just in time for Holy Week!
The First Station:
Jesus is Condemned to Death
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
Christ embraced the Father’s Will. He embraced it as a good—and not only as a good, but as the Greatest Good, even when it was presented to Him under the guise of injustice, human weakness, and even malice.
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In every situation, Joseph declared his own “fiat”, like
those of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in the
(“Patris Corde,”
Apostolic Letter of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, # 3)
One can say that what Joseph did united him in an altogether special way to the faith of Mary. He accepted as truth coming from God the very thing that she had already accepted at the Annunciation. The Council teaches: "'The obedience of faith' must be given to God as he reveals himself. By this obedience of faith man freely commits himself entirely to God, making 'the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals,' and willingly assenting to the revelation given by him." This statement, which touches the very essence of faith, is perfectly applicable to Joseph of Nazareth. (“Redemptoris Custos,” Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Saint John Paul II, # 4)
Just as God told Joseph: “Son of David, do not be afraid!” (Mt 1:20), so he seems to tell us: “Do not be afraid!” We need to set aside all anger and disappointment, and to embrace the way things are, even when they do not turn out as we wish. Not with mere resignation but with hope and courage. In this way, we become open to a deeper meaning… The spiritual path that Joseph traces for us is not one that explains, but accepts. (“Patris Corde,” # 4)
The Second Station:
Jesus Takes Up His Cross
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
The Father did not will the acts of violence committed against His Son. What He did will is that Christ should surrender Himself into the hands of men as a gift of love and expiation. Christ, for His part, did not resist the burden laid upon Him. As soon as the Father’s Will was manifest to Him, He hastened to carry it out.
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Joseph is certainly not passively resigned, but courageously and firmly proactive.
(“Patris Corde,” # 4)
At the moment of Joseph's own "annunciation" he said nothing; instead he simply "did as the angel of the Lord commanded him" (Mt 1:24). And this first "doing" became the beginning of "Joseph's way." (“Redemptoris Custos,” # 17)
He responded positively to the word of God when it was communicated to him at the decisive moment…In this way he showed a readiness of will like Mary’s with regard to what God asked of him through the angel. (“Redemptoris Custos,” # 4, 3)
The Third Station:
Jesus Falls the First Time
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
The symbolism of the Three Falls of Christ can be interpreted in various ways. One of the first conditions of human weakness is limited perspective, the inability to see and understand the full significance of what we are experiencing, and the subsequent feeling of confusion and futility. At such times it is necessary to have faith and confidence in the Father’s Will. Christ’s strength seems to be diminishing, He stumbles, but He rises again for the sake of carrying out this Will, at whatever cost.
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Even through Joseph’s fears, God’s will, his history and his plan were at work. Joseph, then, teaches us that faith in God includes believing that he can work even through our fears, our frailties and our weaknesses. He also teaches us that amid the tempests of life, we must never be afraid to let the Lord steer our course. At times, we want to be in complete control, yet God always sees the bigger picture…
what is weak (cf. 1 Cor 1:27). He is the “Father of orphans
and protector of widows” (Ps 68:6), who commands us to love the stranger in our
midst…Every poor, needy, suffering or dying person, every stranger, every
prisoner, every infirm person is “the child” whom Joseph continues to protect.
For this reason,
(“Patris Corde,” # 2,
1, 4, 5)
The Fourth Station:
Jesus Meets His Mother
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
It is not physical proximity which comforts Christ in His suffering, but a union of mind and heart between mother and Son. She shared in His disposition of full acquiescence to the Father’s Will and forgiving love towards His persecutors.
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The same aura of silence that envelops everything else about
Joseph also shrouds his work as a carpenter in the house of
The total sacrifice, whereby Joseph surrendered his whole existence to the demands of the Messiah's coming into his home, becomes understandable only in the light of his profound interior life. It was from this interior life that very singular commands and consolations came, bringing him also the logic and strength that belong to simple and clear souls, and giving him the power of making great decisions-such as the decision to put his liberty immediately at the disposition of the divine designs, to make over to them also his legitimate human calling, his conjugal happiness, to accept the conditions, the responsibility and the burden of a family, but, through an incomparable virginal love, to renounce that natural conjugal love that is the foundation and nourishment of the family. This submission to God, this readiness of will to dedicate oneself to all that serves him, is really nothing less than that exercise of devotion which constitutes one expression of the virtue of religion.
(“Redemptoris Custos,” # 25)
The Fifth Station:
Simon Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
The Christian Life is our means of participation in Christ’s work of redemption. All that we do in our identity as Christian, especially in that which is most tiresome, can be for us the means of sharing in Christ’s Way of the Cross.
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Work is a means of participating in the work of salvation, an opportunity to hasten the coming of the Kingdom, to develop our talents and abilities, and to put them at the service of society and fraternal communion. (“Patris Corde,” # 6)
The growth of Jesus "in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man" (Lk 2:52) took place within the Holy Family under the eyes of Joseph, who had the important task of "raising" Jesus, that is, feeding, clothing and educating him in the Law and in a trade, in keeping with the duties of a father… For his part, Jesus "was obedient to them" (Lk 2:51), respectfully returning the affection of his "parents." In this way he wished to sanctify the obligations of the family and of work, which he performed at the side of Joseph. (“Redemptoris Custos,” # 16)
Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption.
(“Redemptoris Custos,” # 22)
The Sixth Station:
Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
In the Franciscan tradition we emphasize that God became man as a means of expressing His Goodness and Love. It delights the Heart of God to stir up the flame of love in human beings, so that they too may give expression to His Goodness and Love, in their own milieu. Every loving gesture flows from God and back to God for His Greater Honor and Glory.
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Joseph is traditionally called a “most chaste” father. That title is not simply a sign of affection, but the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love. A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts and makes for misery. God himself loved humanity with a chaste love; he left us free even to go astray and set ourselves against him. The logic of love is always the logic of freedom, and Joseph knew how to love with extraordinary freedom. He never made himself the center of things. He did not think of himself, but focused instead on the lives of Mary and Jesus. Joseph found happiness not in mere self-sacrifice but in self-gift.
(“Patris Corde,” # 7)
At the culmination of the history of salvation, when God reveals his love for humanity through the gift of the Word, it is precisely the marriage of Mary and Joseph that brings to realization in full "freedom" the "spousal gift of self" in receiving and expressing such a love… Joseph and Mary arc the summit from which holiness spreads all over the
earth. (“Redemptoris Custos,” # 5)
The Seventh Station:
Jesus Falls the Second Time
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
Christ’s Obedience did not seem to be leading to a happy ending. On the contrary, it seemed to be destroying Him and all that He had worked for. At such times as this it is crucial to place our confidence in God and be steadfastly obedient, until His Plan is fulfilled in and through us.
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Often in life, things happen whose meaning we do not understand. Our first reaction is frequently one of disappointment and rebellion. Joseph set aside his own ideas in order to accept the course of events and, mysterious as they seemed, to embrace them, take responsibility for them and make them part of his own history… Our lives can be miraculously reborn if we find the courage to live them in accordance with the Gospel. It does not matter if everything seems to have gone wrong or some things can no longer be fixed. God can make flowers spring up from stony ground. Even if our heart condemns us, “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 Jn 3:20).
In his role as the head of a family, Joseph taught Jesus to
be obedient to his parents (cf. Lk 2:51), in accordance with God’s command (cf.
Ex 20:12). During the hidden years in
the will of the Father. That will was to be his daily food
(cf. Jn 4:34). Even at the most difficult moment of his life, in
The Eighth Station:
Jesus Meets the Weeping Women of
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
Compassionate
solidarity is essential to the mystery of relationships. The women wept for Christ in His peril, and
He in turn showed concern for them in the sufferings they would undergo. Standing faithfully with Jesus and Mary in their
needs,
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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… 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.
(“Quamquam Pluries,”Encyclical of Pope Lea XIII # 3)
This bond of charity was the core of the Holy Family's life,
first in the poverty of
The Ninth Station:
Jesus Falls the Third Time
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
One of the marvels of the Love of God is that it is constant and unchanging. Our love tends to waver according to circumstance, but even in the moment of greatest anguish Christ’s Heart was not embittered, but filled with love and forgiveness.
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If through Christ's humanity this love shone on all mankind, the first beneficiaries were undoubtedly those whom the divine will had most intimately associated
with itself: Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Joseph, his presumed father.
Why should the "fatherly" love of Joseph not have had an influence upon the "filial" love of Jesus? And vice versa why should the "filial" love of Jesus not have had an influence upon the "fatherly" love of Joseph, thus leading to a further deepening of their unique relationship? Those souls most sensitive to the impulses of divine love have rightly seen in Joseph a brilliant example of the interior life. Furthermore, in Joseph, the apparent tension between the active and the contemplative life finds an ideal harmony that is only possible for those who possess the perfection of charity.
Following St. Augustine's well-known distinction between the love of the truth (caritas veritatis) and the practical demands of love (necessitas caritatis), we can say that Joseph experienced both love of the truth-that pure contemplative love of the divine Truth which radiated from the humanity of Christ-and the demands of love-that equally pure and selfless love required for his vocation to safeguard and develop the humanity of Jesus, which was inseparably linked to his divinity. (“Redemptoris Custos,” # 27)
The Tenth Station:
Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
This was for Christ a moment of weakness, humiliation, shame, and suffering—yet it had the effect of revealing His sublime Love and Dignity. His exposure revealed Who He was to the eyes of all, the Beloved Son, entirely offered in Love. Ultimately, beyond the initial shame, all human lives, steeped in misery though they be, will be revealed in the dignity accorded them by the God Who created them and the Son Who shed His Blood for their redemption.
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God acted by trusting in Joseph’s creative courage. Arriving
in
The Gospel does not tell us how long Mary, Joseph and the
child remained in
(“Patris Corde,” # 5)
The Eleventh Station:
Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
In Christ’s Crucifixion we can behold the Mystery of Consecration. Christ’s Hands and Feet were irrevocably sealed for a single purpose, never again to be used for anything else in His earthly life.
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salvation." His fatherhood is expressed concretely "in his having made his life a service, a sacrifice to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission connected with it; in having used the legal authority which was his over the Holy Family in order to make a total gift of self, of his life and work; in having turned his human vocation to domestic love into a superhuman oblation of self, an oblation of his heart and all his abilities into love placed at the service of the Messiah growing up in his house."
(“Redemptoris Custos,” # 8)
The Twelfth Station:
Jesus Dies on the Cross
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
Christ’s Death on the Cross seemed most untimely: He was in the prime of life, His Mission barely begun. He allowed His Life to end, accepting the Hour appointed by the Father, thereby placing a limit on all the varied potential His earthly life could have had. The result, however, was new and risen life. For souls, union in Christ’s Death means a dying to exclusive self-life, and new birth in Christ’s Life.
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In the course of that pilgrimage of faith which was his life, Joseph, like Mary, remained faithful to God's call until the end.
In the words of the "annunciation" by night, Joseph not only heard the divine truth concerning his wife's indescribable vocation; he also heard once again the truth about his own vocation. This "just" man, who, in the spirit of the noblest traditions of the Chosen People, loved the Virgin of Nazareth and was bound to her by a husband's love, was once again called by God to this love… Are we not to suppose that his love as a man was also given new birth by the Holy Spirit? Are we not to think that the love of God which has been poured forth into the human heart through the Holy Spirit molds every human love to perfection? This love of God also molds-in a completely
unique way-the love of husband and wife, deepening within it everything of human worth and beauty, everything that bespeaks an exclusive gift of self, a covenant between persons, and an authentic communion according to the model of the Blessed Trinity.
(“Redemptoris Custos,” # 17, 19)
The Thirteenth
Station: The Body of Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
The Body, the Limbs, the Sacred Members taken down from the Cross had been entirely spent for the Good Pleasure of the Father. Nothing had been withheld, no moment wasted, no energy exerted for any other end. Looking back from heaven someday upon these moments of our lives, we will wish to see that this body of dust had been entirely spent on the greatest good, the Divine Good Pleasure. We may even envy ourselves these precious moments of opportunity to give Him glory through suffering and service while still in our mortal frailty, and so give evidence also of our love.
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In the human growth of Jesus "in wisdom, age and grace," the virtue of industriousness played a notable role, since "work is a human good" which "transforms nature" and makes man "in a sense, more human."
The importance of work in human life demands that its meaning be known and assimilated in order to "help all people to come closer to God, the Creator and Redeemer, to participate in his salvific plan for man and the world, and to deepen...friendship with Christ in their lives, by accepting, through faith, a living participation in his threefold mission as Priest, Prophet and King."
What is crucially important here is the sanctification of daily life, a sanctification which each person must acquire according to his or her own state, and one which can be promoted according to a model accessible to all people: "St. Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up to great destinies;...he is the proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of
Christ, there is no need of great things-it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic."
(“Redemptoris Custos,” # 23, 24)
The Fourteenth
Station: The Body of Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
V. We adore You, O Most Holy Lord Jesus Christ, and we bless You.
R. Because, by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
There is only one exit from the Tomb of Christ: the Glory of the Resurrection. But the Tomb itself is dark. We too journey in this darkness, and hope in the good that awaits us according to His Promise.
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The Church, after the Blessed Virgin, his spouse, has always
held
Even today we have many reasons to pray in a similar way: "Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and sin...graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of darkness...and just as once you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God's holy Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity."
(“Redemptoris Custos” # 28-31)
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