Saint Joseph/fr

Le rêve de saint Joseph, Philippe de Champaigne

Saint Germain s'est incarné sous les traits de Saint Joseph, père de Jésus et époux de Marie.

Dans le Nouveau Testament

Il y a peu de références à saint Joseph dans le Nouveau Testament. La Bible fait remonter sa lignée jusqu'au roi David. Elle raconte également comment, lorsque l'ange du Seigneur l'a averti dans un rêve qu'Hérode prévoyait de tuer Jésus, Joseph a tenu compte de cet avertissement et a emmené sa famille en Égypte, avant de revenir après la mort d'Hérode. Joseph aurait été charpentier et serait décédé avant que Jésus ne commence son ministère public. Dans la tradition catholique, saint Joseph est vénéré comme le patron de l'Église universelle et sa fête est célébrée le 19 mars.

Autres comptes

Selon l'Évangile apocryphe de saint Matthieu sur la naissance de Marie, lorsque Marie atteignit l'âge de se marier, le grand prêtre convoqua tous les hommes célibataires de la maison de David pour qu'ils apportent leurs bâtons à l'autel. Car le Seigneur lui avait révélé que « de la verge de celui dont la fleur s'épanouirait et sur laquelle l'Esprit du Seigneur se poserait sous la forme d'une colombe, serait l'homme à qui la Vierge serait donnée ».

Joseph, étant avancé en âge, retira son bâton. Comme aucun signe n'apparaissait, le grand prêtre consulta Dieu, qui répondit que Marie devait être fiancée à l'homme dont le bâton n'avait pas été présenté. Lorsque Joseph sortit son bâton, une colombe s'y posa et, selon d'autres récits, il se couvrit de fleurs et de feuilles.

Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus, Guido Reni (1620s)

Devotion to Saint Joseph

The sixteenth-century mystic Teresa of Avila was greatly devoted to Saint Joseph and chose him as the patron of her order. She wrote:

I don’t recall up to this day ever having petitioned him for anything that he has failed to grant.... With this glorious saint I have experience that he helps in all our needs and that the Lord wants us to understand that just as he was subject to St. Joseph on earth—for since bearing the title of father, being the Lord’s tutor, Joseph could give the Child command—so in heaven God does whatever he commands.

Childhood of Christ, Gerard van Honthorst (c. 1620)

The Holy Family

In a dictation delivered on May 6, 1979, the Ascended Master Jesus said that Saint Joseph taught him much more than the sacred labor of carpentry:

He taught me the sacred labor of the alchemy of the Holy Ghost, the changing of the water into wine. Truly I am the son of Joseph, the great miracle alchemist of all time. And truly my works show forth his handiwork and the blessed grace of my mother.

Where history has not preserved the record, the Ascended Masters have from time to time given us glimpses into the life of the Holy Family. One such story was dictated by Mother Mary to Mark Prophet in 1968:

I recall one morning when beloved Jesus was yet a small lad that he came to me with a very hard piece of wood that he was trying to whittle. He desired that I should persuade Joseph to exchange it for a softer piece, one that would lend itself more easily to molding. I sat him on my knee, and I proceeded to explain to him that there was an ingrained quality that of old had been placed within trees making one to possess a harder quality and another a softer quality. I told him that the soft wood would easily mar and that, were he to use it, the little image that he sought to whittle would not endure the knocks and tumbles that might later come to it, whereas a carving made of hard wood would endure more substantially.

I also told him that the wood enjoyed being shapened by his hands and that the only difference between the soft and the hard wood would be that of a greater use of patience on his part. He brushed back his hair which had fallen across his eyes and, with great and quick gentleness, planted a kiss upon both of my cheeks. I noticed a trace of a tear in one eye as he dashed away to continue his work of shaping the hard wood.

In another dictation, Mother Mary told us that Saint Joseph “did father and nourish the Christ Child and therefore set the pace of the age of Pisces.” The Blessed Mother said:

May all of you who are of the Masculine Ray in this life remember his example in all of his lifetimes and know that your stature in God can be modeled after this role model of one who dared to defend Woman, who dared to raise up that Manchild, and stand as the protector not only of a family but of an entire area of a planet, until that one could fulfill his Christhood.

The Youth of Our Lord, John Rogers Herbert (1847)

The mantle of Saint Joseph

Saint Germain has said:

Yes, I AM Saint Joseph, and I walk in the full mantle of my office as protector of Mary and of every mother and every woman and of every child in the earth. And I tell you, beloved, that I play that role. As many in the earth call to me as Saint Joseph, so I respond to that name.

Knowing who I am, therefore, I can be called by any name, any key of any name of any past incarnation. Thus, I have rolled them into one and determined to be called by you merely “Holy Brother,” Saint Germain.

See also

Saint Germain

Sources

Pearls of Wisdom, 1988, vol. 1, ch. 2.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 24, no. 68, June 1981, endnote 1.