The Divine Resemblance between Jesus and Joseph
2 min • Digitized on July 30, 2021
From The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, in file "The Life and Glories of St. Joseph", page 384
By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A.
As in creatures all is finite, so all is capable of increase. What, then, may we imagine, must have been the growth of this ardent love in the heart of our saint during the long period which he spent with Jesus! Those things which tend naturally to add to human love, in him ministered fresh fuel to the divine flame within him.
The constant association with the Son of God made Man and given to him as his own Son, the serving Him and being served by Him for thirty years, and, we must add, their marvellous resemblance created a bond between them which was unequalled of its kind.
This resemblance, we are told, by that devout client of St. Joseph, the Chancellor Gerson, in his magnificent panegyric of the Saint before the Council of Constance, was most remarkable in his countenance and even in all his outward demeanour.
This likeness would be to a certain extent natural, inasmuch as Joseph was nearly related to Mary, but it was, moreover, the expression and result of that extraordinary similarity of temperament and disposition which bound together Jesus and Joseph by a greater natural sympathy than had ever existed between two individuals.
And, as nature thus tends through consanguinity to produce a resemblance which fosters love, and as its power in their case had been peculiarly enhanced, so may it also be piously believed (as has been already suggested) that the Holy Ghost in forming the Body of the Incarnate Word heightened this similarity and conformity in such a manner as to add a supernatural character to the relationship which was to unite Jesus with Joseph by a closer bond than ever united a son to his human father.