The Imitation of Saint Joseph

By Matthew Kauth

The Church is a city set on a hill and on that hill there is a lighthouse. The Church directs her light this way and that as occasion warrants. That we might not make a shipwreck of our faith (see 1 Tm 1:19), she illuminates dangerous crags and reefs when all the world would tell us the water is clear.

Each age has its heresies, and ours is a hatred of origin, of fatherhood. But if we come from somewhere and someone, we cannot be self-made. As an anchor against the wave of patricide, a light in the darkness of our age, the Church has been fixing her light, ever increasingly, on Saint Joseph. It is him to whom we look. He is who we must imitate.

But how can we imitate that which we do not know? How do we speak about one whose words are not recorded? How do we attempt to look like one whose visage has never been captured?

It will do no good to pin virtues onto Joseph as if he were no more than a mannequin. He was and is a fact and he was and is a man, a righteous man. How can we see him?

In this illuminating work, Fr. Matthew Kauth opens our eyes to what Joseph saw, so that we might imitate what he imitated.

• Part I examines the teachings of Aquinas to help us understand the depths of our human nature and why we come to love some things more than others, and what it means to imitate that which we love, for better or for worse.
• Part II looks back at Joseph's lineage, providing a sweeping tour of salvation history and the patriarchs of the Old Testament, showing how Joseph was their fulfillment.
• Part III brings us inside the life of the Holy Family, taking us along for their harrowing journeys to Bethlehem and Egypt, and their daily life in Nazareth, to show us how growing closer to Joseph and imitating him binds us to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.
• Part IV closes with a look at our lives today and the life of the Church, and the challenges we face to live a life of virtue in a fallen world, imploring us to turn to Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church.

In these pages, a true image of Joseph begins to emerge from obscurity. Silence itself begins to speak eloquently.

Go therefore to Joseph. Imitate what you see. And live without fear under the patronage of our just father.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAN Books
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781505121469

Book preview

PART I

IMITATION

SIMILITUDE AND LOVE

WHY DO WE LOVE ONE THING rather than another? Why do we love one person more than another?¹ The Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, has a rather simple response: We love things and persons, in part, because they are like us. Aquinas often quotes Sirach 13:15: Every creature loves its like. This may not appear very noble or flattering, but that does not make it untrue. We are animals, after all, even if rational animals. The creature loves its like. It loves that which agrees with it. It loves that which is harmonious with itself. It is a very simple statement that is hard to deny when examined.

We see this tendency both in terms of appetite for nutrition and hydration (being drawn to those things which agree with us) as well as that of reproduction. The object desired must be fitting to the desire itself. If thirst is present but the water is hot, the dog will not drink. If food is present, it must be agreeable, it must harmonize with the appetite. The mate chosen must have qualities that suit the appetite. That which lies outside the likeness of species does not attract. Dogs do not attempt to court cats. In a given species, that which does not present the ideal likeness of the species does not easily attract. Males of a given species develop a wide array of qualities to manifest to the female that their genetic inheritance should be selected. Whether the criteria for best be the strongest, the brightest, the most beautiful, or the flamboyant, it has to do with perceived perfection. What if the choices are limited? In a given species, the very potency of perfection is often sufficient to be harmonious. This is an interesting point. Even if neither of the animals possess in themselves the perfections of their species, they nevertheless look for them. Likeness can be a cause of love even if it is only in the other potentially. This is true both of the brute beast as well as the rational animal.

This may seem as if one is only loving oneself in this scenario. Is that true? Is love intrinsically selfish? Aquinas holds that one loves in another what he finds, and first loves, in himself. This is not selfish in the pejorative sense, not even for animals. That animals behave in the way just described is fact. Why they behave in this way is another and more difficult question. What can we observe? The entirety of animal activity can seem merely self-directed. Two dogs see one bone. They are not likely to share. Ten lionesses in one pride are not likely to agree on equal portions from a recent kill. Yet, looked at more closely, animal activity is directed at one and the same time to the good of the individual but not simply for the individual. Animal activity is ultimately directed not toward the individual’s own good as an end but rather its own good toward the end of bestowal.² Their activity is ultimately for the imparting of their own likeness in reproduction. In some sense, we can say that they love their own image as imparted more than their own image as possessed. This is the Dionysian axiom that love is diffusive of itself. It is the nature of love not simply to possess but to bestow. One cannot bestow, of course, what one does not previously possess.

This, also, is true of the actual self. Rational animals possess themselves in a unique way as having dominion over their actions. We cause our own actions and, to some degree, shape our own desires. We love that which is congruent or has affinity with our desires, but we in turn mold those desires, whether those desires are natural, as in nutrition, hydration, reproduction, and education, or desires that have been formed by us over the course of inclining ourselves to objects for further ends. In other words, I can begin to love a food or a fashion because the person I love is inclined to that particular object. I can also love a food or a fashion because it is part of the culture in which I am nurtured. What I cannot do is have no desire for food or clothing.

What is fascinating about us as rational animals is that we can observe and know our desires and that we can direct them, shape them, and hone them. We have natural inclinations that we neither create nor can destroy. Those inclinations direct us toward the end of human flourishing. Yet we are actors in what we become. In that becoming, there is a certain ambivalence with regard to particulars, and yet every choice shapes us. Over the course of time, through repeated acts of volition, like water dripping onto a stone, we hollow out in our stony hearts new pathways. I begin to form myself and conform myself to the objects that I love, objects that I choose. Rationality leaves its mark on my emotional life, directing it so that it is inclined to certain goods and not to others. Aristotle once said that as a man’s character is, so too does the end seem to him. As a man has shaped himself, or been shaped in turn by others, so does the world look (or appear) to him. There is a plasticity in rational creatures. We have a given nature with relative capacities and definite ends, and yet, how we exercise ourselves in that nature is as unique as each individual.³ We have a capacity, Aquinas says, to incline ourselves to ends. The good has that very notion of end, both in itself (something is said to have reached the end if it is perfected in its kind) and a good for me, if it is convenient to the appetite in question. There is objectivity and there is subjectivity. There are goods which correspond to a natural appetite and those that do not. Among those that do, we have a capacity to conform ourselves to greater or lesser goods. This is the very process of education and formation. What is the good to choose and how do I grow in capacity to enjoy not just this good but higher goods? How do I perfect my choosing and in so doing perfect myself?

Take an example from your childhood. When you were a child, there were certain things you enjoyed doing in which you now take no interest. When we are children, we often say to ourselves, When I am in control, I will always eat this food, stay up this late, wear these clothes, et cetera. And yet, when we attain that state of being in control, we (usually) choose otherwise. Why? Why do we not remain Peter Pan? Because as we grew, our desires grew as well. We cultivated greater goods and thus shaped our desires. We grew up. We were no longer content with the same insipid fast food or drink. We grew in the culinary arts. We were no longer content with the same four chords but grew to delight in the intervals of Mozart and the inversions of Bach. We were no longer satisfied with comic books because we longed to think more deeply about things. One can go back to those childhood memories with fascination and wonder, but it is difficult to uneducate your palate, unlearn what you have come to know, and desire to return to something less rather than more. A return to the simplicity and freedom of childhood is often desired, but not at the cost of being a simpleton or a slave to the passions. Being like a child is not the same thing as being childish. We have a strong hand to play in our loves, and we do so by forming them and conforming them to objects of greater or lesser nobility. As our character is, so does the world seem to us. But that character was shaped by repeated acts of choice for this or for that. We were not born with a character intact. There are few things in life about which we can say, I was born this way. For us, it is twofold, thus am I and thus have I become. What I will be depends on what I choose to love.

To this point we have considered some aspects of a healthy love of oneself and nothing of the love of another. Is love not supposed to be about others? How is this not egotistical and narcissistic? How do we break out of the gravitational pull of the self and concern ourselves with another?

Mere animals, we noted, seek their good for the ultimate end of bestowal. Think, for example, of the Alaskan salmon. They swim hundreds of miles to return to the stream in which they were hatched, only to similarly spawn and then die, their carcasses supplying the needed nutrients for the hatched fish to survive. Is the rational creature so noble?

He is and he is not. It is for us a matter of choice, which gives more merit to our love and at the same time makes us capable of refusal. Corruptio optimi pessima. The corruption of the highest is the worst of all. Having dominion over our actions entails that we have the capacity to choose things under some aspect of good, even if it is only an apparent good (we never choose anything we actually believe is bad). We can lie to ourselves about the object’s goodness and avoid thinking about it, motivated by another aspect, which is in fact good. No child begins smoking because he likes the taste of cigarettes and the feel of smoke in his lungs. He begins because others do it, in imitation of others that he admires. He does it because of the settings that surround it. He conforms himself to it until he himself has come to like it. He does not choose to smoke because of the intrinsic deleterious effects but on account of the good he believes will accrue to him should he engage in that act. Yet after long habit has set in, he has conformed his desires and inclined himself to that activity. He likes to smoke.

If I choose a genuine good for myself, I can also will a genuine good to another. I can want this food I have prepared for me and for you. Since I can choose goods freely, I can also bestow them onto another freely, and not by compulsion. This is love properly stated. It is not simply that you are a good for me and I want you for myself. It is not simply that I will a good to you for the purpose of you giving me something else I want. That is commerce. We do that sort of thing as well. Yet at its apex, the rational creature can look at another as a self. A rational creature can look at the good which is fitting for himself or herself and will that good toward another self. But I cannot will a good to you if I don’t see it as a good. This is why I must first love myself in order to love you. What I understand the good to be for me allows me to will it for you.

This is the wisdom of Christ, who tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and to do unto another what you would have them do to you. We begin to understand this in the family home, trying to discern, to grow, and to form our character in order to love the good such that I might be able to love another by bestowing the good. We become connoisseurs of the good, not simply aesthetes of pleasure but the actual good that makes us flourish as the kind of creatures we are. We do not seek to possess ourselves simply for ourselves but for bestowal, in order to be able to make a gift of self for others, and so for the good that is held in common. This process begins in imitation. What do those around me consider good? How do they bestow goods? What is worthy of my efforts? For what do I act?

If we would return now to our two original questions, we discover that we have come to a greater clarity of the love of things and of persons, including ourselves. But have we come to understand the reasons we love some things and some persons more than others? We love some things and some persons more than others either because they bear a likeness to the natural desire within us, or the desire that is in us has taken shape through repeated acts of volition. We cannot shape all of our desires. We cannot determine whether or not we want to be happy. This is in us not as something chosen but as something given. We are inclined to be happy by nature and that is by the Author of nature Himself. Furthermore, as we are naturally inclined to the fullness of goodness (which is God alone), we are under no compulsion to any particular good but are free to choose or not to choose it. If we choose one thing rather than another, we do not lose an attraction for the thing not chosen. Nothing short of the total good can satisfy us.

How then does it come about that we love some particular persons rather than others? Some we love more than others because we see in them more good relative to our desire. If the desire in question arises from the sense appetite alone, we think that the beloved object is good simply because it is pleasing to us. If the desire is a rational one, we desire it because of the good we know in itself. For example, I may desire to eat the freshly baked cookies on the counter because my senses have transmitted information to my mind and begun the process (pre-cognitive) of finding those cookies pleasing and eliciting desire to eat one. I might have a reason to choose something else for other purposes—for example, fasting, so as to grow in love of God. Both are good. One is good for one reason (pleasing to my senses) and the second for another reason (a higher end).

When another person is not merely the object of my senses (and in this sense pleasing or not pleasing to me) but another person, I can move from desire or aversion on the sense level to willing the good for the person on a more noble level. I can begin to see a likeness not just of the body (which is necessary as it reveals that we share the same nature) but also on the level of possible friendship. They are like me. They see what I see. They possess what I would like to possess as a good. They love what I would like to love. They fit.

All friendship is based upon some form of common life. What it is we share with the other as common determines what sort of friendship there is. Love is not love, contrary to the modern motto. Love is always a kind of love. What good is it that I am willing to you and to me? If I want to will the good to you, it remains to be seen what sort of good it is. True friends, as noted, see a likeness in the other as to fundamental principles of thought. They discover in the other a concordance, a harmony of thought. It is just this sort of discovery that creates in us the moment of budding friendship experienced as a mutual you too? moment.⁴ To have a true friendship, one has to see in the other something of what he sees in himself. It is within that moment that the likeness of the one enters into the solitude of the other and they share something on the level of their person.

Aquinas holds that all rational love is a kind of friendship, since all rational love terminates in a person. By rational love, he simply means that everything we love, even