ho can doubt
that when Joseph reached the end of his life, his divine foster child in
his turn carried that saintly father from this world to the next, to Abraham's
bosom, to be taken to himself in glory on the day of his ascension?March 19
Joseph, the father of Jesus
ho can doubt
that when Joseph reached the end of his life, his divine foster child in
his turn carried that saintly father from this world to the next, to Abraham's
bosom, to be taken to himself in glory on the day of his ascension?
A saint who had loved so deeply during his life could not but die of love. Unable to love his dear Jesus as he wished amid the distractions of this life, and having completed the service required by our Lord's tender years, it only remained for him to say to the Father: "I have finished the work which you gave me to do"; and to the Son: "My child, to my hands your heavenly Father entrusted your body on the day when you came into this world; now to your hands I entrust my spirit on the day I leave this world."
Such, I believe, was the death of this great patriarch, the man chosen to perform for the Son of God the tenderest and most loving offices possible, apart from those fulfilled by his heaven-sent wife, the true mother of that same Son.
| Augustine Day By Day | The Augustinians - St. Thomas of Villanova Province |
From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.
HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman