Ave Maria Meditations
The opinion that Saint Joseph is the greatest of the Saints after Our Lady is one which is becoming daily more commonly held in the Church. We do not hesitate to look on the humble carpenter as higher in grace and eternal glory than the patriarchs and the greatest of the prophets- than St. John the Baptist, the apostles, the martyrs and the great doctors of the Church. He who is least in the depth of his humility is, because of the interconnection of the virtues, the greatest in the height of his charity: he is the lesser among you all, he is the greater.
Pope Leo XIII in an encyclical wrote, “the dignity of the Mother of God is so elevated that there can be no higher created one. But since Saint Joseph was united to the Blessed Virgin by the (marriage) bond, there is no doubt that he approached near than any other to that super eminent dignity of hers by which the Mother of God surpasses all created natures. (Marital) union is the greatest of all; by its very nature. It is accompanied by a reciprocal communication of the goods of the spouses. If then God gave Saint Joseph to Mary to be her spouse, He certainly did not give him merely as a companion in life, a witness of her virginity, a guardian of her honor, but He made him also participate by the (marriage) bond in the eminent dignity, which was hers.
+Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange from The Mother of the Savior and our Interior Life
