Minute Meditations

St. Joseph, Pure of Heart

Hands forming a heart by water

Just as Joseph’s life was completed by the child he raised to adulthood, so will the life of any person who seeks Jesus be free from the enslavement to sin. Joseph is the embodiment of reverence and self-control because he allowed God to cleanse and renew his heart. St. Joseph is a man of purity precisely because he availed himself of the moral law that the child presents. With Mary and Jesus beside him, Joseph could withstand the erroneous conception of human freedom as the fulfillment of any desire of the human will.

Joseph is a pure-hearted man because he accepted the will of God. The movement of the Spirit in his life yielded both decency and discretion. He was content to serve God’s plan by serving Mary and Jesus. Through them and in them, Joseph daily beheld the face of God, and from that he never looked away.

—from the book Joseph: The Man Who Raised Jesus
by Fr. Gary Caster


Saint Joseph: The Man Who Raised Jesus | Franciscan Media
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