And nowhere do we see this loving care of God which we call His Providence better set out for our study than in the detailed preparation which preceded and attended the birth of His Son into this world.  There was that preparation of the Mother who was to be the source of the humanity of the Child Jesus which we have been dwelling upon; there was also the preparation for the proper guardianship of both Mother and Child during the years of Jesus’ immaturity.  There are certain things which are self-evident when once we turn our minds to them; and it is thus self-evident that the care of our Lord and of His Blessed Mother would require the preparation of the man to whom they should be committed.  In the state of society into which our Lord was born, He and His Mother would need active guardianship of a peculiar nature.  The man who should provide for our Lord’s infancy must be a man, in the nature of the case, who was receptive of spiritual monitions and devoted to the will of God.  It was a delicate matter to live before the world as the husband of Mary of Nazareth, and to live before God as the guardian of her virginity and as the foster-father of her divine Son.  Only a very choice nature could respond to the demands thus made upon it, a nature which had been habitually responsive to the will of God and long nurtured by the richness of His grace.

We know very little of St. Joseph; but God’s choice of him for the office he was to fulfil near the blessed Virgin Mary and her Son reveals the nature of the man.  He is described to us as “a just man,” one whose judgment would not be swayed by prejudices, but who would be open to the consideration of any case upon its merits:  a man who would not view events in the light of their effect upon himself and his plans, but who can calmly consider what in given circumstances is due to others.  Such men are rare at any time for their production is a matter of slow discipline.

We gather that both S. Joseph and S. Mary were of the same lineage, were descended from the same ancestor, David.  We gather also that S. Joseph was much older than his bethrothed wife, for he had been already married and had a family.  All the notices of these brothers and sisters of the Lord imply that they were considerably older than the Child of Mary, and that they felt that they had the sort of authority over Him which commonly belongs to the elder children of a family; the sort of doubt and criticism of His course which would be the instinctive attitudes of elders toward the unprecedented course of a younger.  We have, I think, a right to infer from the terms of the narrative, that S. Joseph would have been well acquainted with S. Mary and was not taking a wife who was a stranger to him.  Indeed, considering the actual development of the situation, I myself feel quite certain that those are right who maintain that the proposed marriage was intended to be merely a nominal union, the ultimate design of which was the protection