Today is the Solemnity of the Foster Father of Jesus, St. Joseph.
The Treatise on the Love of God Book 7, Chapter 13, of St Francis de Sales, says this of the great Patron of the Church and of the Visitation Order:
“One can hardly well doubt that the great S. Joseph died before the passion and death of our Saviour, who otherwise would not have commended his mother to S. John. And how can one then imagine that the dear child of his heart, his beloved fosterchild, did not assist him at the hour of his departure?
Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Ah! how much sweetness, charity and mercy, did this good foster-father use towards our Saviour, when he was born a little child in the world! And who can then believe but that, at his departure out of it, this divine child rendered him the like a hundred-fold, filling him with heavenly delights?
While our Saviour was yet a little child, the great S. Joseph his foster-father, and the most glorious Virgin his mother, had many times carried him, but especially in their journey from Judea to Egypt, and from Egypt to Judea. Ah! who then can doubt that this holy father being come to the end of his days, was reciprocally carried by his divine foster-child, in the passage from this to another life, into Abraham’s bosom, to be translated thence into his own, into glory, on the day of his Ascension?
A saint who had loved so much in his life, could not die but of love; for his heart not being able to love his dear Jesus as much as he desired while he continued amongst the distractions of this life, and having already performed the duty which was required in the childhood of Jesus, what remained but that he should say to the eternal Father: O Father, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do:(1) and then to the Son, O my child! as thy heavenly Father put thy tender body into my hands the day of thy coming into this world, so do I render up my soul into thine, this day of my departure out of the world.
Such, as I conceive, was the death of this great patriarch, a man elected to perform the most tender and loving offices that ever were or shall be performed to the Son of God, save those that were done by his sacred spouse, the true natural mother of the said Son.”