Saint Joseph answers Proust's Questionnaire

Summer is a good time for great interviews, and the questionnaire attributed to Proust offers such a wide range of questions that it actually allows us to get to know the interviewee's personality well.

In years past, Jesus of Nazareth and his mother, Mary, had already answered this questionnaire, so all that was left was for Joseph to do so as well. Once again, his answers almost always come from what is recorded about him in the four Gospels, the most reliable historical source on the Holy Family.

1) What is your favorite virtue?

– According to Saint Matthew, my favorite virtue is justice, because since Mary, being married to me, was conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit, I, “being just”, did not want to expose her to defamation, despite the right I had to publicly repudiate her, dishonoring her (Mt 1, 18-19).

2) What quality do you most appreciate in a man?

– Consistency, because “not everyone who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. ” (Mt 7:21-23).

3) What quality do you most appreciate in a woman?

– Grace, because Mary is “full of grace” (Lk 1:28), that is, very funny!

4) What do you appreciate most about your friends?

– Availability, like that of the four men who carried their paralytic friend to Jesus on his mat, so that he could heal not only his ailing body but also his soul (Mk 2:1-12). The best friends are those who do everything for our physical health and, above all, for our salvation.

5) Your main flaw?

– They say it's muteness, because not a single word of mine appears in the four Gospels. Not even a 'because'!

6) Your favorite occupation?

– Work, because it was thanks to it that I supported Mary and Jesus, to whom I taught my trade as a carpenter (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3).

7) What is your idea of “perfect happiness”?

– My family, which is not in vain the Holy Family, image and likeness of the Holy Trinity here on earth.

8) A heartbreak?

– Not being able to offer Mary a more worthy place for Jesus' birth. Indeed, while in Bethlehem, “the time came for Mary to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:6-7).

9) What would you like to be?

– The last, as I was in fact in my family, because Jesus is God himself and Mary the most perfect human creature, that is, the immaculate one.

10) In which country would you like to live?

– In the Holy Land, which is my homeland, because I am “of the house and family of David” (Lk 2:4-5).

11) Favorite color?

– That of the lilies of the field, “which neither toil nor spin” , but “not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these” (Mt 6:28-29).

12) What flower do you like?

– The rose, because it reminds me of Our Lady who, according to the Litany of Loreto, is the mystical Rose.

13) What animal do you prefer?

– The donkey, a helpful and hard-working animal, on which I fled in the middle of the night with Jesus and Mary to Egypt when Herod wanted to kill the newborn Christ. It was also on a donkey that Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, shortly before his passion and death on the Cross (Mt 21:1-11; Mk 11:1-11; Lk 19:29-38; Jn 12:12-19).

14) Favorite prose author?

– Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, because they are the two evangelists who refer to the birth and childhood of Jesus.

15) Favorite poets?

– Jesus, because there is no poem more beautiful than the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5, 1-12).

16) Your fictional hero?

– The father of the prodigal son, because he is generous in giving his son the part of the inheritance that he had no right to claim; because he respects his son’s freedom to leave; because he welcomes him without resentment, with the joy and compassion of the most loving of mothers (Luke 15:11-32).

17) Favorite heroines in fiction?

– There is no heroine, fictional or real, more heroic than Mary, beside the Cross of Jesus (John 19:25).

18) Favorite composers?

– Those who, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, acclaimed Him saying “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38).

20) Favorite painters?

Luke is credited with this gift because in his Gospel he describes Mary, full of grace, in such a wonderful way that it is as if he were painting her portrait. Indeed, he not only presents her as an extraordinarily intelligent woman, for upon receiving the Angel's message, "she pondered what kind of greeting this might be" (Luke 1:29), but also as a very active person: as soon as she learned that her relative Elizabeth, despite her advanced age, was already six months pregnant, "she arose... and went with haste to the hill country, to a town of Judah" (Luke 1:39).

21) Real-life heroes?

– Married couples who, like Mary and I, have gone through a serious marital crisis (cf. Mt 1:18-21), and the misfortune of losing a child (Lk 2:41-51) and, despite this, have remained united as a couple and as a family.

22) The historical heroines?

– After Our Lady, the holy women who accompanied her to Calvary, namely “his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene” (Jn 19:25).

23) Your favorite names?

– Jesus and Mary, for obvious reasons.

24) What do you hate most of all?

– Hypocrisy, like Jesus, indulgent towards sinners, but severe towards the Pharisees (Mt 23, 1-36).

25) The historical figure you most despise?

– Pontius Pilate, because he was an unscrupulous politician: knowing that Jesus was innocent (Mt 27, 18; Mk 15, 10; Lk 23, 4, 13-16, 22; Jn 18, 38; 19, 4 and 6, etc.), he condemned him to be scourged and, later, to death on the Cross.

– The fact that Jesus, with the strength of his word alone, overthrew the soldiers who came to arrest him: “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’ They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am he.’ (…) So when Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” (John 18:4-6).

27) What gift of nature would you like to have?

– If I had been more talkative, I would have satisfied the curiosity of those who wanted to know more about the first years of Jesus' life, of which I was, with Mary, the main witness.

28) How would you like to die?

– How I died, in Nazareth, surrounded by Mary and Jesus.

29) Current state of mind?

– “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to little children. Even so, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” (Mt 11:25-26).

30) What mistakes inspire you with the greatest indulgence?

– Those committed out of weakness and which lead to repentance and conversion, as in the case of Simon Peter who, after having denied Jesus three times, recognized his triple guilt and, repentant, “wept bitterly” (Mt 26:69-75; Lk 22:54-62; Mk 14:66-72; Jn 18:15-18 and 25-27).

31) Your motto?

– “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Mt 5:8).