Ave Maria Meditations
(About St. Joseph): His whole life and work in the Kingdom of God was spent in immediate contact with our Lord, and not simple contact merely, as might have been the lot of one who had lived with Him and been His constant companion for so many years, without having any special office in relation to Him. The office of Saint Joseph could not be discharged without the most intimate and perpetual communication and companionship with Him and His Blessed Mother.
(St. Joseph) lived for our Lord and for her, he labored for them, and watched over them, and guided and ruled them. It is in this, his participation in the order of the Hypostatic Union, that the saints see the reason for the foundation of the belief in his pre-eminent sanctity, in which, after the Mother of God, he has no compeer except in the blessed precursor, Saint John, with whose name that of Saint Joseph is coupled by the Church.
+ Henry James Coleridge, SJ
