Shadow is often used to portray death- for death is always obscure to us, and dark, and we also keep it obscure in this modern world, even when it breaks down our doors. Like the shadows that seem to prey on us from the far end of the room at midnight, death waits in the recesses of our minds, minds cluttered during the day by deeds and words: but it waits.
St. Alphonsus Liguori exhorts us all, in Preparation for Death, to look carefully at that shadow, to bring it to the light, to examine it and to think about it: daily. Morbid? Depressing? Impossible? Perhaps, alone. For that seems to be the hardest thing about death: we travel through that darkness alone- no friends and family, no wealth or even the recommendations and testimonies of those we count on- we go alone, clothed only in what love we have seeded and watered. Even so, even in fear and trembling, St. Alphonsus asks us to deal with our own death. Why?
It is the same reason that “the best examination of conscience is to look at a Crucifix”. Death is a result of sin, the sin we all share as mankind, as well as our own sins. Only Our Lord came to take the punishment of eternal damnation from us who have accepted Him as Savior; yet we still pay the penalty of physical death, we still face our particular judgment. It is far better that we begin to face that judgment now, daily, to ask God to know ourselves and thus change with His grace and help, before it is too late. I am thinking especially of the words of Our Lord: “Do not let a man who has something against you take you to the court: negotiate with him on the way, so that you are not thrown into prison.”
Daily facing death is intimately connected with dying to oneself, if our dealing with death is not morbid or self-pitying, self –centered. For in this facing of death, we see ourselves more honestly. When we picture ourselves before the King of the Universe, a King-Judge, what do we see? We must ask for the grace to see ourselves as God sees us and for the grace to not remain standing, but to fall on our knees and clamor with joy because Our Lord is willing to save us- save me! Let this preparation for death make us honest, humble, and only too willing to “decrease so that He may increase”: to accept and rejoice in suffering because, as St. Gianna Molla told her husband after she had been revived (before her final death a few days later): “We are not fit to appear before the Lord without suffering.”
But how? How do we deal with death each day, in a holy manner, with peace and joy? St. Gianna was not speaking out of servile fear, but rather inspired and holy love of God. She understood clearly that we must undergo suffering for love, and to die to ourselves so that we may live for God unselfishly. I do not think the selfish see God- they are not able, they have not been willing or accepted the grace to be able to see beyond themselves. And I say this with trembling, for I am a cesspool of self-pity and selfishness.
So how? How do we accomplish this- this walking in the shadow, this dying to self?
Let us look to Our Lord, for He is our primary example. His life is an instruction in a holy abasement, a holy death. I construct my thoughts here from Fr. Doze’s book: In His twelfth year, Our Lord went to the Temple in Jerusalem. The mighty Temple! The golden House of God, filled with prayers symbolized and actualized with sacrifice and incense. His House! Here, here was His Father’s business; and He stayed, and stayed, teaching and loving His priests and the people coming to obey His commands- commands of liturgy, of religion. He knew their hearts. But still He stayed.
His mother comes, she comes on the third day, a day forever appointed as a day of metamorphosis. She comes, with St. Joseph the Shadow, and she says: “My Son, why have you done this to us? Your father(my emphasis) and I have been looking for you for three days.”
Our Lady uses the term for father, earthly father, for the shadow-father, for St. Joseph. An oversight? No. And Our Lord’s immediate response, “Didn’t you know where I was? I must be about My Father’s( my emphasis) business” is followed by an action that doesn’t seem to correspond to His words: And He went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient unto them, and He grew in grace and wisdom. Surely both actions: staying in the Temple and going down to Nazareth, subject to His earthly mother and foster father- surely both are the will of God; for He obeyed His Father “in all things”.
In His going down to Nazareth, down into obscurity and obedience, He showed what it meant to die to self. In His submission to His own creatures, He showed what it meant to die- but a death with an end, a purpose, and a death that brings forth life, like the grain of wheat falling to the ground. It was a foreshadowing of the Cross, and this going down to Nazareth was an example He left us of a carrying of that Cross in daily life.
In going down to Nazarethin submission, He also left us a profound example of humility; that this fruit, this virtue, is a hallmark of God’s presence in a life. A ‘daily dying’ is intimately connected to humility and is a real connection to God: “If you wish to be My disciples, then take up your cross and follow Me.” The hallmarks of a saint, a person living in love with God, are humility and love.
In taking Our Lord down to Nazareth, St. Joseph comes into stark relief as the carpenter of daily death, alongside his well-known role as the Patron of a Happy Death. He is the protective shadow, who leans over us as a loving presence and teaches us with gentle, hard-worn hands, how to die well; how to die as he did: with his hand in Our Lady's and his heart given to Our Lord.
St. Joseph is teaching me how to stay in the day, to die to my vain imaginings and desires for others or for my past or future. Everything is to be left to God, everything I do from the washing of the dishes to the writing I am doing now, is to be done for God!
Sitting in church, at Holy Mass, I was at the point where I wished to be received into the Holy Family: to be within the bosom of that holy and joyful, comtemplative and humble trio. I wished to go down to Nazareth. It was no accident that it was the feast of the Holy Family, although I had not anticipated this. I was simply ready, had read and prayed, and knew; and there I was, sinner and insect, hoping for entrance; and there was St. Joseph, his hands bringing me in.
Like Our Lady, St. Joseph remains silent and obscure, because he points to God so effectively.
O Glorious St. Joseph, silent and humble, Shadow of the Father, pray for us.
