Why didn't Our Lady tell Saint Joseph about the Incarnation before the Visitation?
Our Lady's silence—and St Joseph's trial—are a central but subtle part of the Visitation.
Our Lady's silence—and St Joseph's trial—are a central but subtle part of the Visitation.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the Visitation follows the Incarnation, and reveals God’s hidden governance of souls
That Our Lady’s journey shows her quiet trust in Providence and restraint in revealing grace
Why Saint Joseph was left in darkness while Mary waited for God’s time to speak.
He shows us that the Visitation begins not just a journey to Elizabeth, but a time of silence, trial, and perfect submission.
The Visitation
The Nine Months
Chapter VIII
St. Luke i. 39-56.
Story of the Gospels, § 5
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Dealings of God with souls
There can be little doubt that the Annunciation and the Incarnation were immediately followed by the Visitation, as we call it, of our Blessed Lady.
The manner in which this mystery is related by St. Luke, who seems to speak of our Lady as if she were altogether alone in her journey, both to the house of her cousin, and when she returned thence to Nazareth, suggests the opportunity of some remarks on the relation of these Gospel narratives to the actual history which it is well to make at the outset of the part of our work on which we are now engaged.
It is well also to remind ourselves of certain truths concerning the manner of the dealings of God with souls, as well as concerning the formation of the Gospel history as we have to form it, which may help us the better to understand the narrative on which we shall now for some time be occupied. We shall speak first of these ways of God in general.
No thoughtful person can doubt that one of the most beautiful parts of God's dealings with His creatures is the manner of His conduct of single souls, one by one, along the path which His Providence has chosen for them.
His wisdom, His love, His patience, His foresight, His indulgence, and other wonderful attributes, shine out more and more conspicuously, in proportion as we come to be able to understand these methods.
But in our present state of imperfect knowledge and feeble intelligence, the whole of this great range of the works of God can hardly be said to be within our reach. His thoughts are not as our thoughts, and His ways are not as our ways. He reserves to Himself the knowledge of the human heart, and we are consequently without even the preliminary and elementary knowledge of His own action thereon.
All that we can say is that the little which we know shows us how wonderful and beautiful the whole must be.
God’s dealings with each single soul
But it must be remembered that God has not only a special treatment for each one of His children, but that He deals with us all, not singly, as if there were no other soul in the world but our own, but by using us for the instruction, edification, enlightenment or crucifixion one of another, in such a way that the threads of each life which He guides so unerringly are intertwined with the threads of all the lives of all those we come across – those with whom we live, those above us or under us, our friends and our enemies, our family, and strangers with whom we are thrown into contact – and that no eye but His own can trace out the innumerable influences under which our character is formed and our trial carried out, the services we render one another, the mischiefs we do one to another.
A man's character is affected by his home, and by his companions outside his home, and he works in his turn on all around. A family is tinged, or stained, or elevated, by every single member of all of whom it is made up.
An accident, as it seems, takes away the mother, or the father, or chains some one of the children to a sick bed, deprives the brothers of the softening influence of their sisters, or leavens the whole by the introduction of some single stranger, a teacher, or a servant.
Nothing of this kind is without its influence, and, if this be so, how multitudinous are the influences under which we live!
Who can think out all the effects that he has experienced, from what seem chance events, meetings, separations, bereavements, connections? Yet all these things and a thousand others are managed for us by the forethought and decree of God.
We can only repeat that His ways are not as our ways, and His thoughts are not as our thoughts. Each soul is the subject of a separate discipline and treatment by Him, and He arranges the thousand lives which are continually interlacing, in such a way as to make the discipline He allots to each one have on all the others, in the degree in which He so wills it, the effect He intends for each.
Application to St Joseph and to Our Lady
Let us apply this to the case of our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph.
It has been said that in the case of the frequent miraculous or marvellous Conceptions, of which mention is to be found in the annals of Sacred Scripture, it had usually been the case for the husband of the mother of the saint or hero who was to be born to be told beforehand of the promised Conception of the child.
Every thought in our Blessed Lady was perfectly well ordered and calm. Her mind was not so overpowered, even by the greatness of the message of the Angel or of the mystery which followed on that message, that she could forget her natural ties and relationships, and especially those which connected her with St. Joseph.
It is true that he could have nothing to do with the mystery which was to be carried out by the operation of the Holy Ghost. But she was still his wife, still bound to him by the closest affection, an affection only deepened and intensified by the union of hearts between them on that very point of the preservation of the most perfect purity.
The great elevation which had come to her, and which had made her the Mother of God, did not destroy the duties, the relations, the dependence on him to which her marriage vow bound her.
But she had received no commission or hint to inform him of what had passed. Nor was she told how or when the communication would be made to him.
No guidance given as to what to say to St Joseph
It is impossible that our Lady could fail to notice this omission, and to understand that it must have a meaning and a purpose.
Here, amid all the joy and the responsibility which had come to her was a question which she might ask herself, and await the solution in the Providence of God. It cannot be doubtful that she must have longed, in the calm and perfectly submissive manner in which she could long for any thing not yet declared as the will of God, for the moment when he whom she loved so tenderly could share her happiness and give her his sympathy and assistance in the great work laid upon her of honouring the Incarnate King of heaven and earth.
But the "times or moments," as our Lord said to His Apostles just before his Ascension, are kept by God in His own power, and it is not for us to know them. One of the delicate methods which He often adopts for the eliciting some very beautiful exercises of virtue, is the delay of something desired, the selection by Himself of the proper moment, sooner or later, when something is to be done or to be made known.
He is as wonderful in His choice of moments as in His choice of instruments and of means. He makes perfect and ripens souls like flowers, one by one, and His beautiful working on each must take its own time. We cannot doubt that this, too, was well understood by our Blessed Lady. It was one of the things she would keep and ponder in her heart, that God must have some beautiful design of His own with regard to her Spouse.
She would not indulge her natural affection so far as to ask, as St. Peter asked about St. John, "Lord, and this man, what?" when our Lord answered him almost severely, "What is it to thee?"1
The designs of God
It appears to have been the plan of God that St. Joseph, whatever he might think or surmise, or even know, in a human and ordinary way, concerning the mystery which had taken place, was to be left without any Divine direction concerning it until the time came when his own action was requisite for the carrying on of the sacred mystery.
In this God only proceeded in the way which He so often follows, of leaving His saints in the dark about His future decrees concerning themselves, until the necessary moment comes. For the delay which is thus secured for the silent working of His graces in the hearts which are so dear to Him, is often the most precious opportunity which is afforded them in a whole life, for the exercise of the most sublime virtues.
It may be a period of exquisite trial, but of trial exquisitely corresponded to, by a patience, a humility, a charity, a prudence, and an exercise of confidence in God under difficulties, which may win for the person who is thus tried the very highest of crowns.
It was characteristic of Eve that she should go at once to Adam with her miserable discovery of the sweetness of the forbidden fruit. Mary kept her secret to herself and to her God, leaving it to Him to reveal it in His own time and way to St. Joseph, confident that the time and the way which He would choose would be the best for her and the best for her Spouse.
We can hardly imagine her speaking before she had the command to speak. She might hope, but she could not know, what was to be the counsel of God as to her husband's future position to her or her Child.
But in so mighty and lofty a mystery every detail was in the hand of God alone. That the Holy Family was to have a divinely appointed head, and that that head was to be St. Joseph, was a decision not yet manifested, and which could not be taken for granted.
Silence as to St Joseph’s favours
Never, in truth, have the servants of God been otherwise than silent and secret as to the favours He has bestowed upon them or the great commissions which He has confided to them. To speak of such things without necessity would be altogether inconsistent with the saintly character.
On the other hand, God was to give to St. Joseph the opportunity of that peculiar and unique trial to which his faithfulness was exposed, and which we shall have presently to endeavour to explain. There would have been no room for this, which was the condition, in a certain sense, of that incomparable eminence which he was to attain in the kingdom of God, if the common ways of human action had been followed, and the husband of Mary immediately informed, on the authority of God, of the mystery which had been carried out in her womb by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and of the position which he was himself to occupy in relation to the mystery.
Thus we see in this, as in all the delays of God, that He holds back from what seems to us so natural and so much an object of desire, for the wisest reasons, in order to make the boon when granted more precious, the grace when won more deep and lasting, the joy more intense, the blessing in itself greater, because conferred on a soul more fitted by expectation, trial, and desire for the reception of the highest graces.
While we are tempted to chafe in impatience, God is ripening the soul in which we are interested for gifts more excellent, and the glory so long delayed is all the more splendid, when it comes as the conquest of prayer and the crown of the patient exercise of virtue.
Subscribe now to never miss an article:
The Visitation
Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:
Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel
His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible
He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.
If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.
But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.
Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?
Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram: