Brian J. Nolan
The deep devotion that Thérèse had for Saint Joseph was surpassed only by her reverence for Mary. The husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the guardian of Jesus held a special place in Thérèse's piety from a very young age: “I have honored him from childhood, and this reverence has been intertwined with my love for the Holy Virgin.”1 Even as a little girl, she contributed joyfully to the preparations for the May altar at her family home by gathering “... the finest roses... wildflowers and daisies growing along the rural paths!”2 And she kept some of her flowers “... for the statue of Saint Joseph...”3
Thérèse had an extraordinary reason for her tender devotion to Saint Joseph. A few weeks after her birth, she was miraculously spared from the brink of death through his intercession during the fervent prayers of her tearful mother Zélie. Two doctors had given up hope that little Thérèse would survive the intestinal illness that had unfortunately claimed the lives of two of her little brothers, both named “Joseph.”
The remarkable intervention of Saint Joseph in the Martin home occurred at a time of heightened veneration for this saint, about two years after Pope Pius IX declared him the patron of the entire Church on December 8, 1870. The pope's proclamation was a reminder of Saint Joseph's power to do good for the Church from heaven (on earth). The scope of Joseph's influence is excellently explained by Basil Cole:
… the universal patronage of Saint Joseph is lower than Mary's but higher than any other saint. The service related directly and immediately to the Word made flesh is undoubtedly higher than any other service, except for the role of becoming the Mother of God. And since Christ is the head of the mystical body, Saint Joseph's service also pertains to all the members of the Church and is the fundamental reason why we should honor him in a special way and turn to him in times of trouble…4
When Thérèse followed Pauline and Marie – two of her four sisters – to the Carmel in Lisieux, the place of Joseph in her piety could not find a better environment for growth. Her spiritual mother, Saint Teresa of Ávila, was exceptionally deeply devoted to “the glorious Saint Joseph” and called him the founder of her reform and monasteries. And her devotion to Joseph was also instilled among her spiritual sons and daughters. In her autobiography, Thérèse wrote about Saint Joseph: “I do not remember ever asking him for something and he did not grant it.”5 Thérèse mentions this in one of her – altogether more than fifty – poems titled To Our Father Saint Joseph (PN 14, stanza 4):
Saint Teresa, our Mother,
You were called upon with love.
Assures that your prayer
was always heard.
Thérèse successfully fervently asked Saint Joseph for powerful intercession in many important events in her life. For example, when Pope Leo XIII relaxed the rules for religious preventing frequent Holy Communion in 1890, Thérèse saw this as an answer to her prayers to Joseph. Therefore, whenever she passed by his statue, she placed flowers at its feet. And on his feast day, six months before Thérèse died at the age of twenty-four on September 30, 1897, of tuberculosis, her eldest sister and godmother Marie (Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart) found her in the hermitage of Saint Joseph. Marie advised Thérèse that, given her fragile health, it would be better for her to go straight to her cell rather than walk around the hermitage of Saint Joseph. The saint replied that she had a special request for Joseph: “I came to ask Saint Joseph to obtain from God the grace to spend my heaven by doing good on earth.”6
Marie told her that she did not need to ask Saint Joseph for that because she knew that Thérèse had asked Saint Francis Xavier for the same during the novena a few days earlier (March 4-12, 1897). But Thérèse insisted that the intercession of Saint Joseph was necessary for her intention.
Céline explains that Thérèse “seemed as if she were haunted by the desire to return to earth after death. She thought of it constantly…”7 This great desire of Thérèse to gather souls for the love of God after death was echoed in that Pope Pius XI proclaimed Thérèse the patroness of missions alongside Saint Francis Xavier on December 14, 1927.
One hundred years before the Second Vatican Council pointed out “false exaggeration” as one of the extremes of Marian devotion, Thérèse warned against exaggerated admiration for Our Lady. Thérèse instinctively focused on imitating her virtues based on what we know of Mary's life from the Gospels. Instead of miracles, sensations, or ecstasies, she found in the Gospel signs of Mary's life simplicity and humility, complete devotion to Jesus in serving others.
Thérèse's reverence for Saint Joseph corresponds to her tender respect for Mary and her detachment from any sentimentality. Thérèse understood well that the Holy Family, like most of us, had to deal with life's difficulties from the perspective of faith. And thus, she preferred to see them in their ordinariness and did not like when their life was arbitrarily exaggerated:
For example, that the little Jesus molded birds from clay, breathed on them, and gave them life.8 Oh, no! The little Jesus did not perform such useless miracles just to please His Mother. Why then wouldn’t they have been miraculously transported to Egypt, which would have been so necessary and so easy for God? They would have been there in an instant. But no, in their lives everything unfolded just like in ours.
And how much effort and disappointment! How often did good Saint Joseph receive reproaches! How often did people hesitate to pay for his work! Oh, how we would be surprised if we knew everything they endured!9
Thérèse's balanced reverence for Saint Joseph implies that he experienced ordinary human worries: “... And good Saint Joseph! Oh, how I love him! He could not fast because of his work. I see him planing and occasionally wiping sweat from his brow. Oh! How I pity him! How simple their life seems to me!”10
The twists of Saint Joseph's laboring life also find a place in one of Thérèse's eight plays: The Flight into Egypt. One of the themes in this play, which Thérèse wrote for the moments of communal recreation (so-called recreation), reflects her awareness of the inequality between the rich and the poor at the end of the nineteenth century in France. (Which was a critical issue at the time.) As Guy Gaucher explains: “In the troubles of carpenter Joseph, we can see the insecurity [of the worker's position].”11
And when Thérèse lay on her deathbed, even through terrible suffering she could use her imagination for her spiritual benefit. When she could not consume the food presented to her, she imagined that she was hosting the Holy Family: “Saint Joseph and little Jesus each received a peach and two plums… The Holy Virgin also had her share. When they give me milk with rum, I offer it to Saint Joseph; I say to myself, oh, how good that will be for poor Saint Joseph!”12
A few months before her death, Thérèse once stopped by the statue of Saint Joseph in the garden of Carmel in Lisieux to place flowers at his feet. When asked if she did this to receive some special help from him, she replied: “Oh no! To make him happy!”13 Her response expressed the tender affection she held for Saint Joseph.
Seeing Thérèse's deep and balanced reverence for Saint Joseph, it does not surprise us that the figure of Saint Joseph also figures in her expectation of heaven, expressed in the fifth (last) stanza of her poem To Saint Joseph:
After the exile of this life
we have sweet hope:
with our dear Mother,
Saint Joseph, we will see you.
(From the journal Carmel in the World, vol. LVI, no. 2, pp. 129–132,
translated by Jan Novák.)
