Belief That Leads to Eternal Life

The following is a relfection on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker from the Magnficat subscription written by Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Benedict XVI was pope from 2005-2013. 

The saints are the permanent catechesis given to us by God over the course of history: The saints, in fact, are the ever-new translation of the Word of God into human life; in the saints, the Word becomes life, flesh, and blood….

Saint Joseph was privileged to be very close to the Lord and so the essential points of Christian life shine through in an exceptional way in his life, too. Saint Joseph lives the Christian life before the outward origin of Christianity; he bears within himself the hope, the faith, the patience of Abraham, of the patriarchs and prophets, and, thus, like Simeon and like Anna, stretches out toward the Lord. The faith of these simple, silent, and imperturbable believers opens the gate for Christ.

The great wise men of those days and the powerful men in the political world did not know Jesus, or else they opposed the announcement of him; the simple believers held the key of the ages in their hands, and, in the crisis of a world full of conflicts and dangers, their faith opened up the path of salvation….

The Gospels do not say much about Saint Joseph, but in a few words we find a great wealth of insight. An initial observation: the Gospel says that Saint Joseph was a just man…. The just man is one who accepts the Word of God and lives it…. Therefore, the name “just” for Saint Joseph means that Joseph was a true believer. God was a concrete reality in his life. His closeness to God, his intimate openness to the living God was the source of his uprightness with regard to others. Joseph was not one of those men described in the Psalms who
say that God does not care: There is no God. God has forgotten, he has hidden his face, he will never see it (Ps 10:4, 11)…. It seems to me that the words of the Letter to the Hebrews regarding Noah could serve as a portrait of Saint Joseph: By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, took heed and constructed an ark for the saving of his household (11:7). And this Holy Family is the true ark of salvation for the whole world, for all ages.

Building an ark of salvation: This is a program for us, too. Every living parish is an ark of salvation; Christian families are arks of salvation; and it is always by faith that an ark is built.