By Michael Pakaluk and Fr. Raymond J. de Souza

St. Joseph at the Foot of the Cross

by Michael Pakaluk

In graveyards you have seen ensembles of statues representing the Crucifixion, with Mary standing at the foot of the Cross on one side, and St. John on the other. And many paintings represent the same scene. It seems intended by the Spirit that we contemplate the Crucifixion in this way.

Now, we know that Mary in that scene is undergoing a kind of passive or vicarious crucifixion, in which we too are invited to share. She is as if God's instrument for viewing the Crucifixion.

We know, too, that St. John represents the keenness and quickness of holy purity in attaining to the Lord, his innocence as if a mirror of the innocence of the Lamb. St. John also stands for you and me, because when Our Lord gave his mother to St. John ("Woman, behold your son," John 19:26), we know that Jesus was giving her not simply to him but also to all of us.

Therefore, although everyone had fled - and this is how Divine Providence works - Our Lord in His deepest suffering was not without succor, not without His friends. We abandoned Him: we might justly have been, from that time forth, excluded.

But in His mercy, He so arranges the scene of His suffering and death that we are there nonetheless - in such a way that it remains in our power, with the greatest naturalness, to return there, and be there, to contemplate his Passion, simply whenever we wish. We now enjoy the great gift: of belonging there.

But if Mary is there with Him at the foot of the Cross, and really, the whole Church in her person and in the person of St. John, then, is St. Joseph not also there? I mean, not merely as one of us, but rather as the one whom "God made as if the father of the King and steward of the whole household."

It seems incredible that he would not be there. Two figures are traditionally placed at the foot of the Cross in the ensemble: one a man and the other a woman. One might squint one's eyes and imagine, vaguely and generally, that a husband and wife were looking on and encouraging their son, as if in a contest. Yet the father is missing: he has passed. Is that man there, who indeed is a "son," also some kind of stand-in for him?

Do not get me wrong: I do not think that St. Joseph was at that time in Heaven. Therefore, he could not have been at the foot of the Cross in the way a saint can be present to us in a particular place, by way of apparition or even by distinct communication.

I agree, rather, with what seems to be the sententia communis among saints and doctors: They held that, although St. Joseph, like Mary, is now body and soul in Heaven, nevertheless, he did not attain this honor through as great a privilege as Mary's. His body was not assumed into Heaven at the point of his passing. Nor did he attain to Heaven, like Enoch or Elijah, prior to the saving Passion, by the retrospective application of the merit of that great act of salvation.

Rather, I believe (as is the common opinion) that St. Joseph was one of those holy men who rose from their graves after the Passion. (Matthew 23:52) His body and soul went to Heaven, but only after the Passion.

That he was assumed afterwards into Heaven would explain why there is no grave nor any relics of St. Joseph, and not even any legends of relics. He was in "the Hades of the righteous," a kind of limbo, awaiting liberation at the time of the Passion. (Indeed, we can personalize Our Lord's "descent into Hell" and regard it as including the intimate goal of rescuing his foster father.)

St. Joseph, then, could not have been present at the foot of the Cross in the manner of a saint. But there is something else - call it "intentional presence." Readers who have lost a child or a spouse will know exactly what I am talking about. What is left is like a hole in the heart, which is actually never filled, and which we never want to be filled.

(The absence is not incompatible, indeed, with happiness, but in the midst ...