Honoring Saint Joseph

The "Silent Constancy"
Fr. Peter Krebs, S.T.

So often I am inspired to reflect on the life of Joseph, and what I like to think of as his “silent constancy”.

Joseph was an ordinary man, a family man, a worker who earned his living with his hands. But isn’t this something that can be said of many people? And isn’t this to say that holiness is accessible in the most ordinary and everyday occupations? Yes, in Joseph we come to see that the secret of sanctity is in our work and in the fulfillment of our duties with constancy.

What is the source of this constancy in Joseph? He passes through the Gospels without our hearing him utter so much as a single word. He is not on record as having written a single line. Joseph, enshrouded in silence, inspires silence – yet paradoxically, a silence full of words, life giving, refreshing, soothing, satisfying; a silence of substance, a silence leading to constancy.

We need a minimum of silence to concentrate on what we have before us, to resolve the questions which daily life frequently poses before our eyes. Nothing upsets the clear vision of the soul more than the turbulence stirred up by trivial preoccupations, and by the swarm of things, which demand our attention and can make us shallow and inconsistent.

Joseph in his silence listened, and in his listening he learned. Through his silence he was able to hear the angel reveal in a dream the great secret which was to affect not only his own life, but also that of all human kind. Imitating Joseph’s silence can help us reach into what really matters, for it means silencing every frenetic and discordant voice, enabling us to hear the live, clear and penetrating Word of God speaking to each one of us, through creatures and events.

In his silence Joseph came to know the plan of God. And thus he could and did carry out, at any and every moment, what his Creator expected of him. This is Joseph’s silent constancy.