Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English

Peace father,
First of all I thank-you for your answers…
Could I ask you what is the Church’s position regarding St. John the Baptist and St. Joseph? Some even say that they are without personal sin, I honestly doubt it, although I believe that they both were immensely holy, by virtue of their role in proximity and in relation to Christ.
Martin

Priest’s answer

Dear  Martin,
1. Regarding your second question, you ask whether St. Joseph was free from sin as was the Most Holy Virgin.
The answer to that is no, because Our Lady, by a singular privilege, was free from original sin and from disordered inclinations (theologians call it the origin of concupiscence) from the very first instant of her existence.
Though in the case of St. John the Baptist we have biblical sources that allow us to claim that he was cleansed of the original sin he had contracted, and was sanctified while he was still in his mother’s womb, we have no information about St. Joseph, other than he was the spouse of Mary and that he lived with her.

2. However this note is of singular importance because God never assigns a task to anyone without providing him with the necessary grace.
And since the task assigned to St. Joseph was that of protecting and providing for Jesus and his most holy Mother, the grace he received must have been extraordinarily high.

3. We should add to this one more thing. With the Incarnation of the Word, Mary received a new, extraordinary and great sanctification in her soul. Already at the beginning of her existence she had received a sanctification that far exceeded that of all the Angels and Saints combined. When the Angel salutes her, instead of calling her by name, he calls her “full of grace”.
In the words of St. Thomas, her holiness, from the very first instant of her existence, was in a way infinite.
However, with the Incarnation of the Word, she received a new and superabundant boost of sanctification.
This, as St. Thomas says, so that she could pour it on those she would meet in her life, and for whom the Lord was preparing her to be mother of grace and mother in grace.
We see this play out so beautifully in the encounter with her cousin Elisabeth, who the moment she heard her voice was filled with the Holy Spirit.
It is not difficult for us to conclude that St. Joseph’s cohabitation with Mary must have been a constant source of sanctification.

4. That is the reason why theologians say that if the source of concupiscence (the inclination toward evil) in St. Joseph was bound, i e. inoperative, by reason of the extraordinary task that God had assigned to him –  from the moment of his cohabitation with Our Lady, and because of the presence of Jesus, God made man, the soufce was extinguished. There was therefore a further progress in sanctification and a confirmation in grace higher than all other saints, with the exception of Our Lady.

5. Only Jesus Christ had the hypostatic union, meaning the union of his human nature and his divine Person.
Our Lady obviously did not have the hypostatic union because her person is human and not divine as that of Jesus.
However theologians rightly say that Our Lady touches the hypostatic union, because she was united in a particular way to the person of God, having carried him in her womb and having lived with him for thirty years.
St. Joseph also touches the hypostatic union, though to a lower degree, because he lived with Jesus for thirty years.
If the presence of Our Lady was sanctifying for him, the presence of Jesus must have been infinitely more sanctifying.

6. Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Quamquam pluries (15.8.1889) highlighted another aspect in regard to the sanctification of St. Joseph: namely his being the spouse of Our Lady.  Now spouses are one singular reality according to what God said at the dawn of creation. There is therefore a communion of holiness between them, such that the holiness and the merits of one become the holiness and merits of the other.
Here are his precise words: “In truth, the dignity of the Mother of God is so lofty that naught created can rank above it. But as Joseph has been united to the Blessed Virgin by the ties of marriage, it may not be doubted that he approached nearer than any to the eminent dignity by which the Mother of God surpasses so nobly all created natures. For marriage is the most intimate of all unions which from its essence imparts a community of gifts between those that by it are joined together. Thus in giving Joseph the Blessed Virgin as spouse, God appointed him to be not only her life’s companion, the witness of her maidenhood, the protector of her honor, but also, by virtue of the conjugal tie, a participator in her sublime dignity”.
Nobody was one, in holiness and purity of life, more than Our Lady and St. Joseph. 

7. This is the reason why the holiness of St. Joseph exceeds that of St. John the Baptist.
So that Our Lady is given the cult of hyperdulia,  that is above all Saints, precisely because she touches the hypostatic union,  and St. Joseph is given the cult of protodulia, that is of first among the Saints, a notch above even St. John the Baptist.

I thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide this clarification.
And as I recommend you to treasure your devotion to St. Joseph, I bless you and remember you in my prayer.
Father Angelo