FORTY-SECOND SERMON
ON ST. JOSEPH AS THE PATRON OF THE DYING.
Subject.
St. Joseph is a comforter and helper in the extreme necessity of approaching death; therefore he should be constantly invoked by us all, and with the most tender devotion and reverence. Preached on the feast of St. Joseph.
Text.
"And when he saw that the day of his death drew nigh, he called his son Joseph." (Gen 47:29)
Introduction.
The sole earthly comfort of the aged Jacob was his son Joseph; and when the old patriarch heard that his dear child was still alive, " he awaked, as it were, out of a deep sleep . . . and he said: It is enough for me if Joseph, my son, be yet living."! And when he had seen him in Egypt, and embraced him, it seemed as if he had lived long enough and had nothing more left to wish for on earth: "Now shall I die with joy," he exclaimed, "because I have seen thy face." And when he knew the day of his death to be at hand, he called his son Joseph, as if he had no other sons. To him alone he commended himself and the care of his other children; in his arms he wished to die, and his eyes were to be closed by Joseph, as the Lord had promised him: "Joseph also shall put his hands upon thy eyes. My dear brethren, all know well that the Joseph of those days was a figure and symbol of our holy St. Joseph, the foster-father of Christ and the spouse of the Blessed Virgin. archdiocese of Treves, how well thou hast done in choosing as thy patron this great Saint! Great reason hast thou on this day to congratulate thyself, as thou art doing, by holding this joyful feast in his honor, for Our Lord could not have given thee a mightier or better defender, after His blessed Mother, nor couldst thou have chosen a better consoler in all thy necessities. Happy country, if thou only remainest constant in thy love and confidence to him, and in thy efforts to honor him! More than happy all who in trials and difficulties, and especially at the approach of death, call on St. Joseph and receive from him the great grace of having him to assist at their death and close their eyes! For after Jesus and Mary, there is no one who can better help and console in that dangerous time than he. If I succeed in proving this latter point, I hope and desire with all my heart to awaken in you and me a more firm confidence in, and a zealous, constant devotion and love for this holy patron.
Plan of Discourse.
St. Joseph is a comforter and protector in the extreme necessity of approaching death; therefore he should be invoked by all with the greatest and most tender devotion and reverence. Such is the whole subject of this sermon.
Most holy St. Joseph, obtain for us that childlike trust and constant reliance on thee from and by those whom thou hast in thy power, that is, from Jesus, thy Child, and Mary, thy spouse! Help us herein, ye holy angels!
There are many kinds of helpers and friends in this world as long as we live together; most people experience their services when they least need them; few can profit by them when really and helper in want. " There is a friend for his own occasion," says the in Wise Man, " and he will not abide in the day of thy trouble." l As long as things go well, and people may hope for something from you, you need not seek long for friends; they will come in troops of their own accord; but if the wheel of fortune takes a turn, if the time of want comes on, "he will not abide;" there are few who will stand by you; the most of them will turn their backs on you, and say to themselves: I must look after myself. Then, too, others are afraid of showing their friendship or relationship, lest they might be asked to help, to give proof of their good will, and to assist in the time of need. Then you see that you have built on sand, that the professions of good will were only empty words, mere lip-service, and you learn the truth of the proverb: A friend in need is a friend indeed.
And granted that there are some whose feelings are upright in this respect, and who, like true friends, stand by you in your necessities, where in the whole world can you find any one to help in your most extreme necessity, when you are most in want of help, that is, in the last moments of your life? There is no one in the world who can comfort us then, no matter how near he may be to us, or how great his love for us. In that hour of death, when help and consolation are so badly needed, no comfort, nor assistance, nor counsel can be expected from any one. We may call as much as we please, but in vain; no one can aid, no one can assuage our pain; in the hour of death all friendship is severed, all love is at an end. The dying man alone knows how he feels at heart; he must leave all and depart alone; he must set out on the unknown way to " the house of his eternity."
O necessity above all necessities! "Death is the most terrible of all terrible things! " such is the lament of all philosophers, heathen and Christian. Terrible on account of the past, terrible in the present, terrible on account of the future, terrible in all its circumstances, each one of which is enough to make a cold sweat come over the dying man, and to cause his hair to stand on end! To die is to be separated at once and forever from the world and everything in it; never more to see the light of day; sad necessity! To die is to be torn away violently from parents, children, friends, acquaintances, and from all we love best; bitter necessity! To die is to be robbed of house and home, money and wealth, service and occupation, joy and pleasure; for none of all those things may be taken on the road to eternity; hard necessity! To die is to depart in the greatest agony of body, in desolation of soul, in the darkness of the glassy eyes, in the dumbness of the tongue, in the loss of the use of all the senses; painful necessity! To die is to arrive at that time when all our sins, even those we now know little of as to their gravity and number, so that we hold them as grains of mustard-seed, as weak threads that time when even they will lie like a millstone on our breasts, drawing us down into the abyss; dolorous necessity! To die is to arrive at that time when the words will be said: " Time shall be no longer." No more time to atone for past faults, to do penance for sin, to advance the affair of our salvation; necessity full of anguish! To die is to come to that time when the devil will put forth his utmost strength, summon all his rage and hatred, call together all the forces of hell to bring the poor soul to despair in the last moment, that he may drag it down with him into eternal flames. "The devil is come down, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time;" dangerous necessity! To die is to travel and not know where to go; terrible necessity! To die is to go to judgment, in which one is to be pronounced blessed forever or to be lost eternally; fearful necessity!
Wo to me if at that time I have no friend whom I can call on for help! Would you then wish to appeal to those who so care fully follow the world and its vanities? whose thoughts and cares from morning till night are directed solely to temporal gain, prof it, and wealth? Try if they can give you any assistance in that hour. Death may not be turned aside by money; the Author of life may not be bribed; in that hour rich and poor are on an equality. Wo to you if you have no other consolation to hope for! Call, in your need, on those whose favor you now rely on so confidently, in whose service you now wear out body and soul, for whose sake you now risk soul and conscience; see whether death will have any respect for them. Wo to you if you have no other help to expect! Call, in your need, on that person to whom you now give your heart and affections,, whose love you consider the greatest good; explain the condition in which you are, and see if help may be looked for from that quarter. Wo to you if you have no other to call upon! Call, in your need, on your parents, your children, your husband, your wife, for whose sake you have borne so much care, labor, and toil, that things might be well with them. Wo to you if you have no one else to appeal to! They will stand around your death-bed, they will shed tears, they will mourn; but to save you from your extremity, go with you into eternity, speak to your Judge for you that they will not, cannot; that cannot be done by any one on earth.
My dear brethren, why have I spoken of those matters to-day so much in detail? That you may know how highly we are to honor, how diligently to invoke, how earnestly to reverence and love him who can then help and assist us; for we must judge of the value of the help given from the greatness of the need and from the scarcity of help to be hoped for; that will show us the value and advantage of the friend. A helper of that kind, after his virginal spouse, is in a special sense St. Joseph; and if I were assured of his favor and good will, and knew that I could with childlike confidence call on him in my last moments, then, although the hour of death is full of anxiety and terrible anguish and fear, yet would I cry out, with Jacob, cheerfully and joyfully: " Now shall I die with joy, because I have seen thy face."
For if it is true that all creatures are subject to Joseph, and must obey the least sign given by him, as the celebrated Gerson asserts, who spared no pains to spread the honor of Joseph throughout the world, and who in the Council of Constance worked hard to have his birthday celebrated in the Church: " It is no wonder," says he, "that Christ wished all creatures to obey Joseph, since Christ Himself obeyed him;" l then in that hour the power of the devil must yield to the power of the protection of Joseph, so that the evil one cannot vex or disturb me. If it is true, as the angelic Doctor St. Thomas of Aquin expressly says, that " it is granted to Joseph to help in all necessities" and that opinion is confirmed by St. Teresa, so enlightened in all divine things, who says: I know by experience that this glorious Saint helps in all necessities; a confidence that impelled the Catholic Church, and especially this archdiocese of Treves, to choose St. Joseph as patron then there is no doubt that the extreme necessity of death is not excepted; for to what purpose should he help us during life if he left us at the hour on which our salvation depends? What good is it to me to have safely sailed the high seas if i am wrecked in port? No; let other saints have from God the power of helping in special cases during life; the Almighty has set no bounds to the power of Joseph in this respect: " It is granted to Joseph to help in all necessities, without exception, and therefore much more in the hour of death.
This power is founded on the two titles of honor that are peculiar to him alone among all the angels and saints; for on the one hand he is the foster-father of his Creator, and on the other the spouse of the Queen of heaven, Mary, by whose hands, as St. Bernard says, God dispenses all His graces. Who could imagine that such a child can deny anything to the request of such a father, or that such a spouse could refuse to grant the prayer of her bridegroom? Yet why do I speak of prayers? They might indeed be necessary to other saints, but not to St. Joseph; he, says Gerson, need not ask anything of Christ; he has but to command and give orders. It is true that other saints confer countless benefits on us by the help of God, but it is by their prayers and entreaties, as servants are wont to entreat their masters, and God Himself addresses them in those terms: " Well done, good and faithful servant." Or else they speak as courtiers to their sovereign, as David calls the angels: " You ministers of His that do His will." Or, at the very farthest, as one friend would speak to another, as Christ called His apostles: "I have called you friends." Joseph, on the other hand, speaks to Him as a father to his son; he need not ask anything of Christ; he has but to command and give orders; he can do what he wishes without entreaty; his authority, his will is enough. Therefore beyond all doubt so powerful a saint can help if he will, even in the extreme necessity of death, more than the other saints; and if I make sure of his friendship by devotion and love to him, what comfort and help may I not expect from him in that hour, in which, if he abandoned me, he would see his child go down to eternal death?
We find a figure of the departing soul in the Israelites when Explained they were leaving Egypt and had come to the Red Sea. Poor people, what were your feelings on the occasion? " They feared exceedingly," says the Scripture, "and cried to the Lord;" everywhere were heard groanings and lamentations, as if fear and anguish possessed them all. For before them they saw nothing but the sea, that threatened to swallow them up in its waves; if they looked behind they saw Pharao and his hosts coming after them, full of rage and fury. And what happened to them? Moses held his rod over the sea, and made a dry path for them to cross over without danger. Why did God work this prodigy by the hand of Moses, since on other occasions it was Aaron who performed miracles by the same rod? In the preceding chapter we read: " Moses took Joseph's bones with him, because he had adjured the children of Israel, saying: God shall visit you; carry out my bones from hence with you." As if, according to some interpreters, the memory of such a great benefit should be coupled with the memory of Joseph, their first benefactor. Be that as it may, we have far more reason for taking this incident as a figure of the power of the intercession of our St. Joseph. My dear brethren, the time shall come when we shall have to travel out of this world into an unknown land, and to arrive at that shore where we shall have nothing before us but the boundless ocean of eternity, and behind us the rage of pursuing demons; before us the fathomless sea of the judgments of God: " Thy judgments are a great deep," as the Prophet David says; be hind us the yelling and gnawing of a disturbed conscience. Oh, what terrible danger we shall then be in! What anguish and dread shall overwhelm us! But even then no true child of Joseph's need be alarmed; his help and assistance shall be far more powerful to bring the departing soul in safety from the world than the dead bones of Joseph of old were to save his people. Ask who was he of whom the Wise Man says that he sat as the husband of the valiant woman among the judges and senators of the land: " Her husband is honorable in the gates, when he sitteth among the senators of the land." " He was Joseph," answers St. Bonaventure, " who was given as spouse to Mary; " a he sits at the gate of eternity, that he may bring his devout clients safely into the city of glory. Again, why did Our Lord wish to suffer the bloody sweat in the Garden of Gethsemani? Because, says St. Gregory, He wished to represent the terrible anguish we shall feel in the judgment that awaits us at the hour of death." Why did this happen in the garden, and not elsewhere? The great St. Jerome, the Venerable Bede, Suarez, and others believe that the grave of St. Joseph was in the Garden of Olives, and therefore that Our Lord went there according to His wont to pray, as we read in the Elucidarium Virginis. Mark, my dear brethren, how when the Lord wishes to represent to us the agony of death He goes to the garden, to the grave of St. Joseph, to let us see that the heavy burden of this last hour will become light for us under the patronage of St. Joseph, and that we should have frequent recourse in our prayers and devotions to this Saint if we wish to enjoy his help and protection at the hour of death.
If this interpretation should seem far-fetched and doubtful to some then I appeal to the general and devout sense of all Christians in the Catholic Church; for when there is question of what sort of a patron any saint is, if the Scripture says nothing of the matter, almost the only means of finding out the truth is to refer to the general sense of the faithful, since God never inspires us with confidence in any saint without having appointed him as our helper in certain things. Look, then, at the statues erected here and there to St. Joseph; generally you will find on them the inscription: " The patron of the dying;" listen to the young people singing hymns in the church; whenever mention is made of St. Joseph you will hear something like the following: dear St. Joseph, when the fatal hour comes do thou be my pa tron, and pray for me to the Avenger and Judge; or else: Do thou be the third, with Jesus and Mary, to assist me when my last day has come, and death awaits me with its terrors. And what else is the meaning of the custom of repeating the names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the ears of the dying but to encourage them and terrify the demons? Is it not a certain sign that this Saint is regarded as a special helper in the hour of death, being appointed to that office by God?
Oh, if we could look into the hearts and minds of the dying, what consolation and cheerfulness we should find many a one to enjoy, who has been devout to St. Joseph, when he hears that sweet name! If we might call on the departed souls as witnesses, how many would come forward who have been helped by Joseph in their last necessity, and brought safely to the gate of heaven! I cannot refrain from mentioning what I know by personal experience of a certain dying person who was very devout to St. Joseph, and whose name is known to many of you from his learn ed works; this man, although he had served God in the religions state for many years, began to be exceedingly troubled when the end came near; lie grew fearful, anxious, down-spirited, nor could any one succeed in encouraging him; the only answer he would make to them was: Alas! alas! inscrutable judgment of God! strict justice of God! how will it be with me when I have to appear before it? At last some one reminded him of St. Joseph,, and told him to be of good heart, for the Saint whom he loved so tenderly during life would not abandon him in death. The bare mention of the name seemed to drive away all the clouds from the sick man's mind, and instead of moaning he begun to laugh and weep for joy. Shortly before his death he asked some of us who were standing by to sing quietly the hymn he was so accustomed to: Great Joseph, son of David, etc., from the beginning to the end, and meanwhile he gave every sign of the consolation he experienced by his cheerful countenance and sweet tears. This occurred a few years ago.
My dear brethren, Joseph is a friend, a helper, and a protector in the hour of death. I need add no more. And the conclusion we have to draw is evident; after the virgin Mother of God, there is no better helper to whom we can appeal; therefore we all have good reason to honor this patron whom we have chosen with all possible devotion, with childlike confidence and constant love, as long as we live. There is no better helper, for there is no greater or more dangerous necessity than that of death, in which, if we are left helpless, it is all up with us forever, and there is no man on earth from whom help can be hoped for then. And we all have reason to seek a helper in this necessity, for it is one that will certainly befall us all, without exception; other calamities are not general; they occur here and there; but neither prayers nor entreaties can ward off the stroke of death; we must all die sooner or later.
Ah, why have I not thought of this before? Why have I not run to thee, St. Joseph, for refuge long ago? Why have I not future, placed my confidence in thee? Why have I been so niggardly, slothful, tepid, and cold towards thee; for I have hardly thought of thee, or I have uttered thy name carelessly, without fervor or devotion, in prayers I happened to come across now and then which I said with distracting thoughts. It is true I have not honored thee as thou deservest! I have not loved thee as my own advantage and necessity required! From this moment I declare myself thy zealous servant; and I will renew, preserve, and increase in myself and those belonging to me, as far as I can, a great esteem and respect for thee by daily invoking thee, and by advising and helping others to do the same! Every week, as long I live, I shall fix on a day to be dedicated to thee by some special devotion; no business shall steal the time from me, so as to prevent me from attending public devotions in the church when ever they are held in thy honor. And now I will cry to thee as David did to God: "Depart not from me; for tribulation is very near; for there is none to help me." The tribulation of death is coming nearer and nearer, and no one can aid me! " Be thou my helper; forsake me not." Think of thy own time of need, when the angel said to thee: " Arise, and take the Child and His Mother, and fly into Egypt. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the Child to destroy Him." Ah, great Saint, I shall be in extreme distress one day! A terrible trial shall come upon me; " It will come to pass" that the hellish Herod will seek my soul, with all his hosts, and try to fill it with anguish and destroy it! Arise, then, and take it, thy child, under thy care, that it may not fall a prey to the hellish wolf! " Be thou my helper; forsake me not "! " It will come to pass " that my past sins will seek to drive me to despair; arise; be my helper; forsake me not! "It will come to pass" that my strength and vital powers will gradually leave me, that my dying tongue will not be able to call on thee, perhaps, that my glassy eyes will not be able to behold thy picture, that my dead ears will not be able to hear thy sweet name, that I will knock with fear and trembling at the gate of eternity, to appear before the judgment-seat of God; arise, then, and take thy child under thy care; remember the confidence I placed in thy intercession, the prayers I now send forth to thee, and mean to send forth till the end. Be my helper; forsake me not! And then I shall be able to say to myself with contented mind, or to think it, if unable to say it: " Now shall I die with joy," since Joseph is my helper and protector. Amen.