by Angelo Forti
In all the cultures of the world, names always have a symbolic meaning: they can refer to a place, to a moral quality. The ancient Romans expressed this meaning with a play on words Nomen omen, that is, the name is an omen. Even in the Bible, many characters enter the scene and are explained by revoking events that have acquired a symbolic value. Abraham means “The father has been exalted”; Emanuel, referring to Jesus as "God with us", Jesus calls Simon with a new name "Kefa", stone, and Peter becomes "stone", symbol of stability. The name Giuseppe also means "he who adds".
Remaining in the vein of the symbol, we can read the initials of his name as the synthesis of a moral capital that he also added to our lives with the exercise of this moral quality and with his intercession. If we consider Joseph's initial letters we discover a flowerbed an excellent splendor of moral qualities.
- The first quality with which the evangelist calls Joseph is that of being a "just" man, a mirror of Justitia. Joseph's justice was born from the awareness that he had been given the management of a singular mission: that of being next to Jesus as a "shadow", a reflection of the Father, creator of the heavens and the earth.
He stands before God as a collaborator and faithful executor of a plan of grace that has been conferred on him with so much trust in his human qualities and faith: total availability.
- The second quality is obedience. Every time the gospel mentions Joseph it is to entrust him with a task. He does not know where God's desires will lead him, but he is confident that everything is at the service of the good of humanity.
- The “s” stands for silence. Saint Joseph did not say a word recorded in the gospel, but he wrote an important and fundamental page in the history of salvation. This silence teaches us that it is more important to listen to God before talking about God.
Saint Joseph had understood that it was necessary to establish a correct relationship between words and silence, in which a planet of reality chases each other. - The fourth letter we encounter is "e".
This letter in the Italian language has a conjunction role which in this case we can read as a connection between the feelings of the heart transmitted to the energy of the hands. His profession as a carpenter gave him the qualification of a craftsman, that is, an artistic ability to connect exquisite human qualities to an excellent relationship with others. - The letter “p” is the origin of the word “prudence”. Prudence is defined by St. Thomas Aquinas as "right judgment of feasible things." Prudence plays its role through the triangle of three human qualities: memory of the past, compression of the present and foresight of the future. From these sources of grace Saint Joseph always and promptly discovers the direction of travel to which God calls him.
- The letter "h" in the Italian language has no sound and supports some vowels in verbs. In Latin it is the initial letter of "humilitas", a human quality that constitutes the foundation of every authentic relationship with God. The Virgin Mary sang it in front of her cousin Elizabeth and Saint Joseph shared it throughout her life. Jesus in his preaching echoed this virtue practiced by Saint Joseph, when he said: Learn from me who am meek and humble of heart.
Saint John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation on Saint Joseph “Redemptoris custos” wrote: «Saint Joseph is the man of interiority, the man capable of living interiority, a man capable of experiencing profound contemplation, in daily relationship with the divine mystery."
Contemplating means having our eyes fixed on the mission assigned to our life. In Giuseppe the gaze was an invocation to understand.