The venerable Giuseppe Quadrio

Who knows if our feminists would subscribe to the assertion that "a woman's love always determines a man's way of loving". It was formulated by a Salesian priest, who died in his early forties in the concept of sanctity, in the middle of the last century, Don Giuseppe Quadrio. He had understood this since he was a child when, at just ten years old, he had entrusted himself to what would be the only woman in his life, the Madonna, taking the vow of perpetual virginity into her hands. The example came to him from the Saint whose name he himself bore, the most pure husband of Mary and father of Jesus and of whom he would be very devoted throughout his life.
Perhaps, as for Don Guanella, it was the air of his Valtellina mountains among which he was born that made him breathe the beauty of everything that is pure. A few kilometers from her birthplace, Vervio, the Madonna appeared at the beginning of the sixteenth century and continued to dispense her graces in the sanctuary of Tirano, where little Giuseppe was certainly often taken by his mother.
He will shape himself to a Christocentric and Marian spirituality, which will become his life program: "To be only yours [Mary] and Jesus' forever."
Such radical choices at an early age are justified by an interior movement of the Holy Spirit and can only be understood by those who experience them; Pascal had already underlined in his aphorisms that the heart has reasons that the mind cannot always explain.
Even today, teenagers like Blessed Chiara Badano and Carlo Acutis, a fifteen-year-old from Milan who died six years ago after a heroic Christian life, are the living testimony of a Church that is sometimes unpredictable in its expressions of Grace.
Don Bosco is at home in Valtellina, in the educational structure of the capital and in the person of numerous exemplary Salesians to whom the valley gave birth. But it is also through the Salesian Bulletin, which in Don Quadrio's time was still called Meridiano 12, the ideal continuation of the Catholic Readings desired by Don Bosco. It was for the fifteen-year-old Giuseppe the instrument of knowledge of the Salesian works, which aroused in him the desire and then pushed him to enter the novitiate of the Congregation. A priest who brilliantly graduated from the Gregorian University in Rome, a teacher at the Salesian Theological University of Turin (which later, when transferred to Rome, would become the Pontifical Salesian University), a trainer of young people and a brilliant publicist, he had all the skills to "make a career". Instead he always preferred a life of humility and meditation, which brought him closer to that of his patron.

Mary's “virginizing” love

The central concept to describe the personality of Saint Joseph is for Don Quadrio that of the "virginizing" force that Mary inspired in him, the first young man she ever came across, enveloping him in the climate of purity that pervades any young man or girl who approaches her. he is devoted.
To represent Saint Joseph as an old man is to mortify him as "a man incapable of love": instead "everything makes us think that Joseph, at the time of the wedding, was a strong, virile, chaste, self-controlled young man... burning with love, a full flower of promises and strength."
But it also demeans his marriage to Maria, almost as if to say that it was only a little less than a farce. Instead, “Joseph's marriage to Mary was perfectly virginal. This is a truth of faith linked to the dogma of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God", but perfectly true.
He wants to help understand the beauty and truth of this marriage with a comparison: two young spouses, bent over the cradle of their newborn, forget themselves and almost do not realize they have bodies, seeing in him the realization of their love.
For Mary and Joseph this realization is the Child Jesus: “What was the bond that consummated the conjugal love of Mary and Joseph? This bond could not be the flesh, because the consummation of their love was in Jesus."
He writes that "The essence of human marriage is revealing the profound mystery of one's being to a creature, giving oneself body and soul to him, with complete, exclusive and definitive abandonment." Even excluding the strictly material aspect, the few indications of the Gospel offer a view of the Holy Family in full harmony with these values.

In this idea of ​​the "virginizing" power of Mary, the experience of the expert educator of the Salesian youth world emerges, where Marian devotion leads back to Don Bosco's dream, in which the two pillars of salvation from the storms of evil are constituted by the Eucharist and by the Madonna.
Those who consecrate themselves to God in religious life relive the experience of Saint Joseph when they welcome celibacy not as an obligation, but as a gift to rejoice in and which pushes them to give themselves totally to the person they love. Did Giuseppe have the opportunity to meet other girls? We don't know, but the biblical data affirms that Mary was chosen as the only one who was right for him and he gave himself to her with enthusiasm, as a fundamental piece in the great mosaic of the salvation project that was being accomplished. She gave himself with her body, offering the physical energies of a worker for daily maintenance; with her heart, loving freely and with joy, as appears in the episode of the discovery of Jesus in the temple: "Your father and I are distressed", and one does not feel anguish for those who do not love oneself; with the spirit, because he is defined as "just", who lives by faith.
Thus, remember, whoever embraces celibacy must be "a loving and passionate spouse", because otherwise he may perhaps always be faithful to his commitments, but he will never be a model of a consecrated person.
Protector of the Church
Whoever is devoted to Saint Joseph cannot help but have the Church at heart, of which he is constituted as the protector, because he took care of her in the person of its first Head, Jesus, also saving it from dangers. Furthermore, embodying evangelical purity and simplicity in his person, he is invited to experience that "return to the Gospel" which was one of the hopes of the Council. Don Quadrio died in 1963, offering his life for the Second Vatican Council, which began in October of the previous year. The celebration of the Holy Mass for Don Quadrio followed the rite of Saint Pius V, as the liturgical reform desired by the conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium had not yet taken place. It was therefore habitual for him to recite the so-called "Leonine prayers", said by the priest kneeling at the altar, which also implored the intercession of Saint Joseph for the conversion of sinners and the protection of the Holy Church. “Protector Sanctae Ecclesiae” was the invocation that Pius IX in 1870, in stormy times for the Catholic world, had included in the litanies of Saint Joseph, constituting him Patron of the ecclesial community. And he will certainly have rejoiced at the introduction of the name of Saint Joseph into the ancient and venerable Roman Canon, desired by John XXIII. Pope Benedict XVI is a tireless advocate of the need to re-evangelize the Church, restoring the primacy of adoration and faith in God in the Christian people. That faith which in Saint Joseph was "generous, heroic, prompt and loving".
Generous in offering all her virginal love to Mary; heroic in defying her legal requirements by welcoming her into her home; she was ready to obey without question the command to flee to Egypt and then return to Nazareth; she was loving when she looked at that son who called him father.