Joe and the Holy Spirit: A Spirit of Adoption

St Paul says to us in his letter to the Romans: 

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!" [to God]. (Romans 8:15)

It was through Joe that Jesus was legally adopted into the royal household of David (True Husband and Father). We could very well re-word St. Paul's words regarding Jesus and Joe:

For Jesus did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but He received a spirit of adoption, through which He cries, "abba, father!" [to David].

Some time ago, I shared a portion of St Augustine's reflection on the lineage of Jesus, in which he reflected on the linage of Mary as being a daughter of Aaron (One Mother, Two Roots). Hence, Mary with Joe form Jesus as both a king and a priest of the Old Covenant (albeit the fulfillment of the Old Covenant kings and priests). If we are made members of Christ (CCC, 1213), then we too are brought into the fulfillment of the Old Testament kings and priests. I wonder, therefore, if this gives any support to what St. Peter says to us:

But you are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own..." (1 Peter 2:9)

Providentially, I am writing this post on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, and it just really occurred to me that I have referred to both of them. Perhaps, yet another movement of the Holy Spirit and Joe together!

True Husband and Father

Today, we celebrate the great St. Augustine, the great preacher of the Western Church. In addition to being a great teacher, he also had a great devotion to Joe. Take, for example, Paragraph 26 from one of his homilies on the New Testament:

Among [the Jewish] people then, because it was necessary that there should be an abundant increase until Christ came, by the multiplication of that people in whom were to be prefigured all that was to be prefigured as instruction for the Church, it was a duty to marry wives, by means of whom that people in whom the Church should be foreshown might increase. But when the King of all nations Himself was born, then began the honor of virginity with the Mother of the Lord, who had the privilege of bearing a Son without any loss of her virgin purity. Since it was a true marriage, and a marriage free from all corruption, why should not the husband chastely receive what his wife had chastely brought forth? For as she was a wife in chastity, so was he in chastity a husband; and as she was in chastity a mother, so was he in chastity a father. Whoever then says that he ought not to be called father, because he did not beget his Son in the usual way, looks rather to the satisfaction of passion in the procreation of children, and not the natural feeling of affection. What others desire to fulfill in the flesh, he in a more excellent way fulfilled in the spirit. For thus they who adopt children, beget them by the heart in greater chastity, whom they cannot by the flesh beget. Consider, brethren, the laws of adoption; how a man comes to be the son of another, of whom he was not born, so that the choice of the person who adopts has more right in him than the nature of him who begets him has. Not only then must Joseph be a father, but in a most excellent manner a father...

I also just came across this painting that has Joe and Augustine together. You read a little about it here. St. Augustine is at the bottom left, and Joe is standing right next to Mary. Notice that Jesus and Joe are the only figures looking at each other.

One Mother, Two Roots

Last week, I shared a part of a homily of St. John Chrysostom where he demonstrates that Mary is a daughter of David. This week, I share a paragraph from St. Augustine's work The Harmony of the Gospels, where he indicates that in addition to being a daughter of David, she is also a daughter of Aaron:

Thus, too, even if one were able to demonstrate that no descent, according to the laws of blood, could be claimed from David for Mary, we should have warrant enough to hold Christ to be the son of David, on the ground of that same mode of reckoning by which also Joseph is called His father (Luke 2:33, 41, 48). But seeing that the Apostle Paul unmistakably tells us that Christ was of the seed of David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3), how much more ought we to accept without any hesitation the position that Mary herself also was descended in some way, according to the laws of blood, from the lineage of David? 

Moreover, since this woman's connection with the priestly family also is a matter not left in absolute obscurity, inasmuch as Luke inserts the statement that Elisabeth, whom he records to be of the daughters of Aaron, was her cousin (Luke 1:5, 36), we ought most firmly to hold by the fact that the flesh of Christ sprang from both lines; to wit, from the line of the kings, and from that of the priests, in the case of which persons there was also instituted a certain mystical unction which was symbolically expressive among this people of the Hebrews. In other words, there was a chrism; which term makes the import of the name of Christ patent, and presents it as something indicated so long time ago by an intimation so very intelligible.

And if Mary is a daughter of Aaron, then she too is a descendent relative of Eleazar (Numbers 20:22-29). And if she is in relation to Eleazar, then her heavenly, bodily resurrection along with Jesus and Joseph was prefigured as I wrote about in the post on the Solemnity of the Assumption.