"Spend your life in honouring St. Joseph, and your love and homage
will never equal the love and homage paid to him by Mary; it will
approach never so distantly to the obedience, the love, the homage
paid to him for thirty years on earth by the Son of God. But in
proportion as your heart grows towards him in the reverence and
unbounded confidence of a son will you trace in your soul a more
faithful copy of the Incarnate Word."-Letter on Devotion to St.
Joseph, by Herbert, Bishop of Salford, 1877. Passages from the
visions and revelations of saints and holy contemplatives-St.
Bridget, Sister Maria of Agreda, and others-have been interwoven
with the.narrative, simply in the way of illustration, and not as
being invested with authority, except in the sense in which, after
due examination, they have been favoured with ecclesiastical
approval: namely, as containing nothing contrary to faith. and
morals, and affording pious and profitable helps to meditation.
Finally, observations and reflections have been introduced as
occasion offered which were suggested by various authors whose
works have been consulted, or which occurred to the writer's own
mind from consideration of the materials before him. It is no
uncommon idea, even among Catholics, that the devotion paid to St.
Joseph and the lofty estimate of his prerogatives now prevailing in
the Church are innovations of comparatively modern date, and that
they have no precedent or sanction in antiquity. But this is far
from being the case. In the writings of the ancient Fathers are to
be found, not only what' may be called prolific germs, but also
positive and explicit statements of doctrine, which sufficiently
show how deep in the consciousness of the Church lay the belief of
Joseph's exalted dignity and sanctity, and how definite a shape it
had assumed even in the early ages. The devotion paid to him has,
it is true, been much more distinctly formulated in later
centuries, when his place in the celestial hierarchy came to be
more fully recognised; but from the first this great Saint had a
peculiar attraction for many holy and gifted souls, who regarded
him with singular veneration and affection, as the citations given
abundantly testify.
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