Years ago I came across a painting of the Holy Family by 18th century Italian artist Pompeo Batoni. It features the Blessed Mother, dressed in brilliant green, blue and reddish-pink clothing, holding the infant Jesus. Her right hand gently supports his back, while her left hand cradles his little foot. His arms are wrapped around her neck, his face pressed against her cheek. Legend has it that Batoni painted the face of Mary using eight of the most beautiful girls in Rome as models.
As striking as the images of Mary and Jesus are, it is the face of Joseph that appeals to me most. The upper left quadrant of the painting features only his head resting on its side upon folded, calloused hands, as he proudly studies Mary and Jesus. His balding head gives way to a wrinkled forehead and face smiling broadly in delight at his family. It is a quiet painting, and one gets the impression that Joseph is at peace in joyful admiration — at prayer.
The museum sold small postcard reproductions of the painting, but they were of such poor quality that I did not purchase any. Years later, I discovered that a greeting card company was offering Christmas cards with Batoni’s painting on the cover, and I decided they would be my gift to the parish. Much to my chagrin, the card makers had made two changes in the painting: they had reversed the image, and they had cropped out the face of Joseph.
I wasn’t happy that Joseph had been removed from the Christmas card, but I don’t think he would mind. Apparently Batoni’s intent was to place him softly in the background so that we would capture his silent delight at the main subjects of the painting, Mary and Jesus. It is as if we are to understand that even in the mind of Joseph, Mary and Jesus were the most important.
Joseph also remains somewhat in the background in the Gospels. The evangelists tell us that he graciously accepted God’s strange invitation, communicated to him by angels in dreams, to take his betrothed, Mary, into his home as his wife. She was pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, and her child was God’s own. Subject to Roman law, Joseph took his family to Bethlehem for the obligatory census, and it was there Jesus was born. Later he was told again by angels in dreams to flee from Herod’s grasp to Egypt, then return to Galilee, where they settled in a town called Nazareth.
When they took Jesus to the Temple to present him according to the Law of Moses, Joseph must have been deeply distressed to hear Simeon tell Mary that Jesus would be a rejected sign, and that she herself would be pierced as with a sword. Within a few years, they would lose Jesus for a few days, when he stayed behind in Jerusalem speaking with the teachers and all along each of them thought he was with the other. How strange these happenings must have seemed to Joseph, yet he quietly remained in the background, doing as God asked and loving Mary and Jesus.
For my birthday this year, the Carmelite nuns in Little Rock gave me a reproduction of a painting by a fellow Carmelite which depicts Joseph and Jesus in their carpenter’s shop. It is a modern portrayal of the pair, whose features are dark and clearly Middle Eastern. A few months earlier I had admired a similar reproduction hanging in a hallway of the monastery, and little did I know the nuns were testing me to see if I liked it. Their birthday gift was accompanied by a card with a poem by Sister Jean Ryan:
Silence list’ning to silence
Is Joseph to the Word,
And thereupon a house is built,
Yet not a sound is heard.
Joseph was always content to care for Mary and Jesus, abiding in a mystery he probably did not understand but accepted as God’s gift and his vocation. In their house he stayed quietly in the background, working diligently at his trade to support the family, teaching Jesus how to work saw and lathe, tending vigilantly to Mary’s needs, watching and loving them both. I’m struck by the fact that in a sense his every word to Jesus was a prayer, his every glance an act of adoration: this boy was both son and savior.
I once heard a radio broadcast of an American Christmas folksong by Richard Vinson of Danville, Va. The words are Joseph’s, and they would be beautiful accompaniment to Batoni’s portrait of the Holy Family. Joseph sings, in part:
Mine to see his living’s made
Mine to teach a peasant’s trade
God’s to show the path He’s laid
Ain’t this boy a wonder?
Hold him to me when he sleeps
Rock him gently when he weeps
Sing him secrets heaven keeps
Ain’t this boy a wonder?
Every family is a mystery caught up in God’s plan, and every husband is a Joseph, called to take up his part with devotion. He delights in his wife and children, whom he recognizes as God’s precious gifts entrusted to him for a time to father and foster.
Do you have an intention for Bishop Sartain’s prayer? If so, send it to him at Bishop Sartain’s Prayer List, Diocese of Little Rock, 2500 North Tyler St., P.O. Box 7239, Little Rock, AR 72217.