The Chaste Heart and Unworthiness in the Presence of the Divine
How St. Joseph Impacted Christ's Ministry (Part 3)
This is the final part in a series of articles reflecting on the impact of the Chaste Heart of St. Joseph on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and His ministry. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here. I highly recommend them, but they aren’t necessary to understand this article.
Today, we will view how Christ treated those whom were astonished and humbled by the reality of His Divinity during His public ministry.
Christ was always gentle and reassuring to these people. He restated that they are loved and called by God to seek holiness- even when they felt unworthy in His presence (which all of us are, by the way!)
The two examples that we will examine in this article are St. Peter after the catching of the fish and the woman at the well. Perhaps Christ saw in their humility a reflection of his own father’s Chaste Heart.
“Do not be afraid to take Mary into your home”
While renewing my consecration to St. Joseph with my wife, I was fascinated by Fr. Calloway’s presentation on the theories for why St. Joseph decided to divorce Mary quietly following the Annunciation. It is a short, easy-to-understand summary of the 3 theories put forward by theologians over the centuries. They are:
1.) Suspicion theory- St. Joseph thought that Mary committed adultery, so he decided to divorce her.
2.) Stupefaction theory- St. Joseph quite simply had no idea how to handle the news, so he decided to just divorce her quietly.
3.) Reverence theory- St. Joseph knew that Mary was the prophesied virgin who would give birth to the Messiah, the Son of God. Fearing his own unworthiness to witness and guard this Divine Intervention, St. Joseph decided to quietly divorce Mary, seeing her and Jesus as too holy and better off without him.
I might be biased by Fr. Calloway’s writing, but I hold to the reverence theory.
Quite simply, St. Joseph would have been very familiar with the Sacred Scriptures, especially prophecies about the Messiah. While St. Joseph was a carpenter and not a Scriptural scholar, I find it hard to believe that he would miss that his wife was claiming to be the virgin from Isaiah 7:14. It would be quite difficult to miss that connection. (It’s not every day that a virgin conceives, especially in ancient Israel!)
The Chaste Heart was already struck by the holiness and beauty of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It would have been absolutely humbled to learn just how high her holiness truly went.
This is the woman that, after the Trinity, is the holiest in all of heaven, most worthy of our praise. The Immaculate Heart of Mary meditated on all the events of Christ’s life, and the womb of the Immaculata would be the first tabernacle of Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity!
St. Joseph, as stated in the previous article, was not an oaf. His decision to divorce Our Lady was not out of ignorance on what was unfolding; rather, it was acknowledging that Mary was destined for a level of holiness unimaginable, and her Son was higher even than her!
No one is worthy to stand in the presence of the almighty God, even in the form of a baby developing in His mother’s womb.
That would leave St. Joseph with two options- Mary is lying or telling the truth. Considering that St. Joseph was the chosen earthly protector of that lone Son of God, you would think that God would give St. Joseph the gift of wisdom and knowledge to recognize Mary’s holiness; therefore, I think that St. Joseph believed what his wife told him.
In his humility, recognizing the true holiness of his wife and the Divine Nature of his Son, St. Joseph chose to step back quietly. Not because he thought that Mary was an adulterer, but because St. Joseph (like all of us) recognized his unworthiness in the presence of God. Although it ultimately wasn’t in line with God’s plan, St. Joseph thought that the best move would be to remove himself from Mary and Jesus’ life. Thank God (literally!) for sending that angel to reassure St. Joseph in his vocation!
In short, St. Joseph, from the moment that he learned of Jesus’ conception, bowed in awe, unworthiness, and reverence to the Divine. In His mercy, God intervened to reassure St. Joseph in the call to be the earthly father of Christ.
Jesus would look mercifully on those whom He encountered in His ministry with that same humble disposition, always beckoning them further into the Divine mystery unfolding before them.
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man”
In St. Peter’s first encounter with Christ, it seemed that words were put to the reverence and awe that St. Joseph felt at the news of the Incarnation.
We read in the fifth chapter of Luke’s Gospel that Christ calls to Simon Peter on the shores of Lake Gennesaret. Despite St. Peter’s failure to catch any fish the previous night, Christ desires to work a miracle- providing an unimaginable bounty of fish for St. Peter and his fellow fishermen.
It was at the sight of that miracle that St. Peter recognized something holy about Jesus. Based on the text, we can’t say that St. Peter necessarily thought that Jesus is God in that moment, the Transfiguration would also imply that Christ still needed to reveal more to His Apostles about His Divine Nature, but St. Peter absolutely knew that there was something in Jesus worthy of reverence!
Like any reasonable man who had just witnessed a miracle before his very eyes, St. Peter was shocked. Confronted with the holiness of Christ, St. Peter could only look at the unworthiness of his own sinful ways and cry out, “‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’” (Luke 5:8).
If we hold to the Reverence Theory from above, then the words of St. Peter voice the emotions of St. Joseph at the news of the Incarnation quite well.
Recognizing the identity of the soon-to-be-born Savior of the World, St. Joseph decided to remove himself from the life of the Christ Child; in the same way, St. Peter tried to remove himself from the presence of the holy Miracle Worker Who stood before him.
St. Joseph recognized this reality, but the angel of God sent in his dreams assured Joseph to continue on the path that God was inviting him to walk- the vocation of earthly father of the Redeemer. St. Peter also recognized this, but Christ Himself reassured St. Peter to follow Him.
We learn from St. Joseph’s and St. Peter’s lives that Heaven intervenes to reassure us that God still calls us forward.
St. Joseph was still called forward by the angel to continue in his vocation, and St. Peter was called by Christ to do the same. As if to say, “Despite your unworthiness, Simon Peter, I still want you to be one of my Apostles and the Rock of my Church”.
That sentiment is summed up in Christ’s actual words to St. Peter, “‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men’” (Luke 5:10).
It would be hard to imagine that Christ looked on St. Peter in that moment with anything besides love, tenderness, and mercy. It would also be possible that Christ recognized in the reverence of St. Peter a reflection of St. Joseph’s humility at the Incarnation.
The woman at the well
Later in Christ’s ministry, He encounters a woman in Samaria who you could say was even more unworthy than St. Joseph and St. Peter. This Samaritan woman:
Had five different husbands throughout her life (John 4:18)
Didn’t worship God in the way that He explicitly asked His people (4:20)
Didn’t have a proper understanding of God (4:22)
In the presence of the Incarnate God, this Samaritan woman needed Christ to “connect the dots” on what He was trying to tell her.
Finally, Christ cut right to the truth, “‘I am he [the Messiah], the one who is speaking with you’” (John 4:26). Just like in the lives of St. Joseph and St. Peter, the weight of Christ’s presence was revealed. The Samaritan woman had already acknowledged her unworthiness, but Christ continued speaking with her anyways. That was a clear sign of the tenderness and affection He had for those who approached Him with honesty and humility.
In response to this wonderful news and gaze of the Son of God, “The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?’” (John 4:28-29).
Perhaps that reaction was mixture of emotions- excitement at the thought that the Messiah had finally come, but also running to tell others and escape her feelings of unworthiness in the presence of Christ.
Regardless, Jesus spent the entire conversation- one in which He recognized the woman’s unworthiness before she even spoke- looking on that Samaritan with the truth spoken in love, tenderness, and mercy.
Although this woman was more sinful than the chaste, loyal St. Joseph, Christ still could have looked at her with the love that He felt for his earthly father’s beautiful humility. In both cases, unworthiness in the presence of the Almighty God weren’t hidden, but became the means by which they humbled themselves at the revelation of the Son of God.
In conclusion
Throughout His ministry, Christ was greatly impacted by the virtues and example of St. Joseph. When He encountered men and women who humbled themselves in His presence, Christ would have looked with tenderness and mercy on those poor sinners, recalling St. Joseph’s humility at news of the Incarnation.