God gave Mary the pure virgin Joseph to hide and protect His Sacred Mysteries
2 min • Digitized on February 8, 2022
From The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, in file "The Life and Glories of St. Joseph", page 116
By Edward Healy Thompson, M.A.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TESTIMONY OF THE SYNAGOGUE TO THE VIRTUES OF JOSEPH.
The Divine Word, when appearing upon earth to redeem and renew our fallen race, would not, in assuming the nature of man, touch anything that was defiled, but willed to be born of an Immaculate Virgin.
This Virgin, however, as the Fathers have observed, must first be espoused to a husband, that he might be the shield and protector of her honour, which would otherwise be exposed to injurious aspersions when she became a mother, as well as to conceal for a time the secret of the Incarnation.
That mysterious cloud which in the desert covered, as with a white veil, the Ark of the God of Israel, presents us with a striking figure of the office of Joseph, the most glorious of the Patriarchs, divinely elected to be the husband of Mary, the most highly gifted among all the daughters of Eve, in order to hide from every profane eye the adorable mystery which was to be effected in that true ark of the Living God, the bosom of Mary, wherein He was coming to abide as in His Tabernacle.
God, who willed to accomplish this two-fold object, had in His wisdom provided His holy Mother with a spouse who, while united to her in the marriage bond, should not only be the guardian of her virginal purity, but be himself a virgin, and with the love of virginal purity so deeply rooted in his heart that it was to be like to her own, and receive additional lustre from it, as does the white cloud from the rays of the orb of day which it veils from our view.