Jean-Jacques Olier: Feelings Regarding the Grandeurs of Saint Joseph (Part One)

 Introduction

Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657) was a French priest and founder of the Sulpicians (Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice).  Though encouraged at a young age, by St. Francis to Sales, to become a priest, he lived for fashionable society; when he studied at the Sorbonne, he hoped for academic glory, striving to learn Hebrew in order to defend his thesis in that language, just for the thrill of it.  When his eyesight began to fail, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto, where he was cured and converted.  Taught by St. Vincent de Paul and Charles de Condren, superior general of Pierre de Bérulle's Oratory of Jesus, he undertook both spiritual reform and works of charity.  Eventually headquartered at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, he founded a seminary and an order of priests, the Sulpicians, who continued Olier's dual aim, especially in following St. Vincent de Paul's lead in caring for the poor.  (A pupil of the seminary, St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, later extended this care to the education of poor children.)  Though he recovered from a first stroke in 1652, a second one in 1653 left him paralyzed and in great suffering for the remainder of his life.  

Olier's greatest legacy is the Sulpicians themselves, but he also left behind a number of writings.  Part of the French School of Spirituality, inaugurated by Pierre de Bérulle (whose influence comes to Olier both through St. Vincent de Paul, Bérulle's former roommate, and Charles de Condren, Bérulle's successor at the Oratory), Olier's main writings are devotional, such as the Introduction to the Christian Life and Virtues, the Catechism of the Interior Life (which is available in English), and the Explanation of the Ceremonies of the Mass.  Recently, though, a number of his mystical writings, previously unknown and unedited, have been published in French: these include The Crystal Soul: On Divine Attributes in Us and From the Creation of the World to the Divine Life.  The editor of the monumental Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca series, Jean-Paul Migne, also edited Olier's works (as well as Bérulle's).

The writing below is one Migne discovered just before his edition of Olier's works went to print: the book was already type-set, so he had to add this writing as a supplement appended to the end of the book.  The short writing consists of one full chapter in two sections, an the beginning of a second chapter.  Below is Chapter One, Section One.

Feelings Regarding the Grandeurs of Saint Joseph

Jean-Jacques Olier 

Chapter I

Saint Joseph Considered Through Relation to the Eternal Father and to Jesus Christ His Son

The admirable Saint Joseph was given to earth in order to visibly express the adorable perfections of God the Father.  In his single person, he bore His beauties, His purity, His love, His wisdom and His prudence, His mercy and His compassion.  One single saint is destined to represent God the Father, while one needs an infinity of creatures, a multitude of saints, in order to represent Jesus Christ; for all the Church labors only to manifest to those outside the virtues and perfections of her adorable Head, and Saint Joseph alone represents the eternal Father!  All the angels together are created to represent God and His perfections; a single man represents all His grandeurs.

So it is necessary to consider the august Saint Joseph as the grandest, most celebrated, most incomprehensible thing in the world, and, through proportion, like God the Father, hidden and invisible in his person, and incomprehensible in his being and in his perfections.  And is there nothing to confound and frighten our ignorance and our misery, in seeing that the purer and holier he is, the less capable he is being understood by us?  If Saint Joseph, from this point of view, seemed incomparable to us and placed in a class apart, it is because he, he alone, is the universal image of God the Father on earth; because of this, this saint being chosen to be His image on earth, He gives him, with Him, a resemblance to His invisible and hidden nature, and, in my view, this saint is outside of the state of being comprehended by the spirits of men.  In such a way that faith must serve us as a supplement in order to adore in him what we cannot comprehend.

§I: How Much God the Father Honored the Great Saint Joseph

Saint Joseph being chosen to be the image of God the Father, it was an admirable thing to see the virtues and the perfections of this holy person.  What wisdom!  What force!  What prudence!  What simplicity!  I don’t believe there ever was anything similar in the world; for it is easy to comprehend that, if God the Father took this saint to be the idea and the image of His perfections, if He rendered visible in Him what was hidden from all eternity in the bosom of His being, the excellence of this great man is incomparable…

1: He is the image of the beauties of the eternal Father.—Doubtless, there was a grave and modest exterior, there was an admirable composition, a beauty without parallel, because of Him Whose figure he was in the very eyes of the Son of God; for if the heavens, earth, the elements, in a word, all the composition of the world, is so beautiful, so rare, and so admirable, ordered with such weight, number, and measure (Wis 11:20), that it must serve us in admiring the perfections of God and that it represents His beauty to us; what ought to be that [beauty?] of this great saint whom God the Father forms expressly, by His hands, in order to figure Himself to His only-begotten Son, and to place, ceaselessly before His eyes, His true portrait and His image, as a compensation in time for His absence and a kind of solace during the years of His pilgrimage?

And what is even more considerable is that this world, so beautiful and so perfect, and which publishes, on all sides, the beauty of its Author, represents to men only the admirable grandeurs of God, considered as a sovereign being and a perfect essence, that is to say, as grand, good, wise, and infinite; but it does not figure Him with the attractions and charms of the Father, it only represents Him as sovereign and as first cause, while Saint Joseph, formed based on the eternal Father’s idea to represent Him to His Son, himself represents Him in the quality of Father and bears in himself all the lovable traits, all the charms and the sweetness, of the divine fatherhood.

2: He is the image of the holiness of the eternal Father.—How great is the holiness of Saint Joseph, chosen to be the image of God the Father!  This great saint lives in a perfect holiness, separated from all the goods of earth and from all creatures, and the Gospel represents him to us to contemplate as full of this incomparable holiness., in saying: Cum esset justus, “when he was just” (Mt 1:19), that is to say, holy.  He is, furthermore, established with this unique characteristic of holiness, that he is destined to be the guardian of the holiest and most precious creature of the world.  In effect, Our Lord chooses a saint, and one of the grandest saints of the world, to be the guardian of the most holy Virgin after His death, a saint who will be like one and the same person with Him, finally, a virgin man, to be the protector of His Mother.  Here, God the Father chooses a man whom He makes the image of His holiness, so that he would be the surety and the protection, not only of the Virgin, but also of His Son, Whom He eternally engendered, in sanctitate et justitia coram ipso [in holiness and justice before him] (Lk 1:75).

3: He is the character and the image of the fruitfulness of the eternal Father.—The Church offers us Saint Joseph to honor for eight days before the holy mystery of the Incarnation, so that, in Saint Joseph, we would adore God the Father, preparing and bearing, in His womb, the adorable design of the holy mystery of His Son; this mystery being hidden in the ages, the adorable bosom of the Father is given us to venerate in Saint Joseph; this is why this same saint is represented to us bearing, in his arms and upon his breast, Our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father engendered Him in Himself from all eternity.  The angels, who are not a characteristic of the fruitfulness of God, are not called “fathers” by one another; but Saint Joseph, image of this divine fruitfulness, is the father of Jesus Christ: he was like a sacrament of the eternal Father, under which God has borne, engendered His incarnate Word in Mary, and under which He inspired the divine substance.  In this great Saint, God the Father appeared in His fruitfulness and yet separated from the flesh and blood, which in no way enter into the generation of the Father: qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo natus est [who is born, not from bloods, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God] (Jn 1:13).

4: He is the image of the love of the eternal Father for His Son.—God the Father, in choosing Saint Joseph to make him His image with regard to His Son, lived in the bosom of Saint Joseph, where He loved His Son with an infinite love, and continually saying of this only-begotten Son: Hic est Filius Meus dilectus in quo mihi bene complacui [This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased] (Mt 17:5).  The Father in Himself loves His Son as His eternal Word, and, in Saint Joseph, He loves this same Son as the incarnate Word.  He resided in the soul of this great saint and rendered it a participant, no only in His virtues, but also in His life and in His father’s love; this is why the divine Saint Joseph entered into the love of the eternal Father for His Son and loved Him in the extent and ardor, the purity and holiness, of that love.

5: Saint Joseph is the exterior character of the compassion and of the tenderness of the eternal Father for the miseries of men.—The eternal Father, having chosen Saint Joseph to make Him the image of His fatherhood, took, in him, a spirit of compassion and of tenderness for the miseries of men, and became, in him, the Father of mercies.  Before His Incarnation, the Word was full of rigor: Vox tonitrui in rota, vox confringentis cedros [the voice of thunder in wheel, the voice shattering cedars] (Ps 77:18, 29:5).  But since He became man, He is rendered sensible to our ills; He is full of sweetness and of tenderness: Mitis et humilis corde [Meek and humble of heart] (Mt 11:29).  He is full of compassion for our miseries.  And it is thus that the eternal Father made His image, in communicating Himself to the great Saint Joseph.  From all eternity, God the Father was separated from the flesh, elevated in holiness, infinitely above our state; at that time, He was insensible to our ills and full of severity for men; but, from the moment that He was dressed in the person of Saint Joseph and that He veiled Himself under the humanity of this great saint, He became merciful, full of tenderness and of sensibility for human miseries.  In him, He is Father of mercies; this is why Saint Paul, after having said God be blessed, Benedictus Deus, adds, Father of Jesus Christ, Father of mercies (Eph 1:3), that is to say, that, in rendering Himself the Father of Jesus Christ in Saint Joseph, He becomes Father of mercies, while, before, He was in His state of God, just and insensible.

6: Saint Joseph, image of the wisdom and of the prudence of the eternal Father.—Since God the Father willed to appear in the person of Saint Joseph, He made him an abundant communication of His spirit of Father, a quo omnia paternitas [from Whom all fatherhood] (Eph 3:15), and, in order to guide eternal Wisdom, He gave to him himself an admirable light and wisdom.  For if God commits most powerful angels, and even the first of these grand and sublime intelligences to the guidance and protection of kingdoms, if He even deputes these pure spirits to guide the heavenly spheres and those immense bodies, what ought to be the grandeur of that saint to whom God commits the guidance of His Son, more precious than a hundred thousand worlds and than a hundred thousand million kingdoms!  What light to guide and direct, in all things, this Son Whose movements and all of Whose steps were so precious and so dear!  Ah!  It is said that the holy Virgin had the perpetual vision of God and, sometimes, even the beatific vision, because of her Son; it is certain that her divine Son had this clear and distinct vision of the Divinity, so that, among other things, He does, at every moment, what His Father willed, quæ placita sunt ei facio semper [what is pleasing to Him I always do] (Jn 8:29), and so that He continually does what He saw Him do, facio quæ video Patrem facientem [I do what I see the Father doing] (Jn 5:19); be it in order not to ever disobey Him and to satisfy the adorable designs which God the Father had for all His steps and all His movements; be it, also, because of their importance for the human race.  Now, the same motive obliges us to believe that the great Saint Joseph, charged with the guidance of Jesus, Whom he was to bring to the accomplishment of the adorable designs of God His Father, designs of so great a consequence for the salvation of men, was himself enlightened by that divine light, in order to do everything according to the spirit of God; further, I want to say something that comes to my spirit and to which I do not dare respond, since it seemed strange to me.

It is that the light of Saint Joseph, which had been given him for the guidance of the Son of God, was of the nature of that of the most holy Virgin, which the holy doctors said had been glorious, God having given her all the graces that His omnipotence could accord to a pure creature.  If, then, the light of Saint Joseph is a light of glory, it had to have been always infallible, for guiding the Son of God, Who did not know how to fail; for, otherwise, one would expose the Son of God, obeying Saint Joseph, either to failing in the designs of God and in His duty, or to disobeying him who held the place of His Father and of whom it is expressly said that He follows all his wills: Et erat subditus illis [And He was subject to them] (Lk 2:51).  Having been given by God to all men as the model of obedience, if He had disobeyed Saint Joseph, everyone would have found, in His disobedience, a pretext to excuse their own and to say that one could fail by obeying, and that superiors do not have all that is necessary for guiding with assurance; would this not make a God failing in His promises and in His providence, if H refused to superiors the spirit which is necessary for us, to direct us?  No, one is never deceived in obeying, God Himself rendering Himself the guarantee of persons who guide others.

Jesus Christ Our Lord would thus be in a worse condition than the rest of men, who cannot fail in obeying.  Jesus Christ would be in a worse condition than the inferior angels; they are submitted to their superiors with an entire confidence, and they receive from them assured, certain, and infallible lights in all their guidance, although it is not as important as that of the Son of God.  Now, if the angels, because they are glorious, have superiors who are endowed with a light of glory, what ought to be the light of Saint Joseph, destined by God the Father to guide Jesus Christ as his inferior, and to govern the most holy Virgin, His Mother!  And what shame to expose the Son of God to arguing against His Father and against him who is filled with the very spirit of God!  Ah, what!  Would God the Father have wanted to expose Our Lord to this unseemliness, in refusing our saint a grace so befitting and so necessary to his condition?  Our great saint is, then, filled with an admirable wisdom, since God permits him the guidance of wisdom itself, Christum Dei sapientiam [Christ, God’s wisdom] (1 Cor 1:24), and, if He has the custom of giving graces proportioned to the eminence of the employments that He confides to us, what, then, will have been that light, that wisdom, to which Wisdom Himself was submitted?  Saint Joseph was, for Jesus Christ, what Moses had once been for the people of God: as that people, figure of the Savior, was drawn out of Egypt by Moses, so Our Lord was likewise drawn out by Saint Joseph; for we see, in that passage of Saint Matthew drawn from Hosea, Ex Ægypto vocavi filium meum [Out of Egypt I called My son] (Hos 11:1, Mt 2:15), that the people of Israel in Egypt is called “son of God,” since it was the figure of Jesus Christ.  Saint Joseph is, in effect, the protector of Jesus Christ in His flight into Egypt, protector Salvatoris Christi sui, and holds Him in his safekeeping during the course of His life.

O eternal Wisdom!  If Moses had had so intimate a communication with You, that He saw You face to face (Ex 33:11), what, then, would He have with Saint Joseph?  The first, who was to guide the figure of Your Son, sees You face to face, and the second, Who will guide Your Son Himself, will it not be full of Your favors?  If he who bore the law of death was so much in glory during this life that the children of Israel could not suffer the splendor of his face (Ex 34:29-35), what will it be, adds Saint Paul (2 Cor 3:7-11), for him who will bear the law of life and spirit in his arms?  Doubtless, he enjoyed an adorable contemplation and a glorious vision of God.

I report this though, and I draw consequences like these from my spirit, clarified, however, it seems to me, by the light of faith, not feeling here any activity, any labor of my intelligence, in producing these things.  I leave it to my director to judge them.

Part Two

Source: Œuvres complètes de M. Olier, Fondateur de la Société et du Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice, ed. Jean-Paul Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 1285-1291.

Translation ©2024 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.