Page 64 - Reflections on St. Joseph

From 1859, tension continued to grow with the House of Savoy, due to its having annexed
Tuscany, the Dukedoms and the Legations. In 1860 Cavour occupied Romagna, the Marche and
Umbria. After the defeat of Castelfidardo (September 18) the Pope was left only with Rome and
the surrounding Patrimony of St. Peter.

Freemasonry and anticlericalism blocked any attempts to reconcile the government of Italy
with the Holy See, especially with regards to the appointment of Bishops to numerous vacant
Dioceses. In the fall of 1867 the Garibaldini uprisings threatened Rome. In the end, on the 20th
of September, 1870, by way of the breach at the Porta Pia, Rome was occupied by troops of the
Italian government.

Philosophical, religious, moral and social errors were occurring at the same time as the political
upheavals. They were condemned, after nearly ten years of reflection, by the Encyclical “Quanta
cura” and its celebrated list of eighty erroneous propositions, called the “Syllabus” (December 8,
1864). It would be easy to imagine the reaction to Pius IX by his adversaries and the accusations
made against him of being against civilization and progress. (cf. Tarcisio Stramare, OSJ, “San
Giuseppe nella Sacra Scrittura, nella Teologia e nel Culto”, Ed. Piemme, Roma, 1983, p. 271)

A Powerful Protector

The Church, officially exalting the dignity and
holiness of St. Joseph, at the same time
recognizes that the mission given to him by
God, regarding the physical body of Jesus, also
extends to his mystical body, and thus invokes
his patronage. The secondary title “Guardian
of the Redeemer - the figure and the mission of
St. Joseph in the life of Christ and the world” is
an explicit declaration of the “perennial
timeliness” of St. Joseph, whose mission was
not just historical - that is limited to a
particular time and place as is the case with
any other personage - but ‘meta-historical’,
involved in the mystery of the Incarnation. (Cf
Redemptoris Custos, 1) and extends to all the
fullness of time which belongs to the ineffable
mystery of the Incarnation of the Word.” (cf.
Redemptoris Custos 32). “The entire Church
was already there with him, as in a seed,
already ripening in humanity and in the blood
of Christ Jesus. The entire Church was there in
the virginal maternity of Mary most holy,
mother of all the faithful, who at the foot of
the Cross she would inherit in the blood of her
first son Jesus. So small to the eye, but so great

40 Reflections on st. joseph