…There are also NO relics of St. Joseph’s body. Now, I reason this way. In the early church many officials were relatives of Jesus (and hence of Mary and Joseph as well). Yet there is preserved no record whatsoever of where Joseph lies buried. And no Catholic has EVER claimed to have a relic of his dead body.
This last sentence is one of my favourite bad arguments 
- it is very weak 
, because the same could be said of the Patriarch Noah. But what evidence of belief in the Assumption of Noah is there ? What reason - apart from lack of a reference to his being buried - is there to believe he was assumed ?
There is OTOH evidence (of a sort) for the Assumption of:
- Ariadne
- Ganymede
- Oedipus
- Romulus
- Julius Caesar
As an assumption-story, it is irrelevant that the assumption of (say) Romulus into heaven is not in the Bible - neither, at one time, were the passages in the Bible that (wrongly or rightly) have been taken for assumption-stories; the important thing is the existence of the idea that Romulus, or Enoch (say) was said to be assumed. The existence of a text saying “Enoch was assumed” does not prove he was - texts are of many kinds. This is why literary genre, authorial intention, the history of the tradition, & the setting of the text within a tradition by which it is interpreted, are so important.
An example - there is no tradition in the Church that Isaiah the Prophet was assumed into heaven; despite the text “The Assumption of Isaiah”. The objections that his grave is known, & that he was sawn apart by King Manasseh of Judah, are not final; he could have been raised from the dead & assumed - there is just no reason to think he was. The A. of I. does not have a tradition of being interpreted as the record of an event - a sprinkling of testimonies to it would not make a
tradition of testimony to it.
An unbroken succession of testimonies to the A. of I. as an event would be
theologically significant - it would not by itself prove the truth, or even the orthodoxy, of such a belief; theological proofs are cumulative. That’s why the Bull defining the Assumption of Mary uses a
variety of type of argument.
For St. Joseph’s Assumption, OTOH, there is only a sprinkling of testimonies - Francisco Suarez S.J. (1548-1617) favoured it; but, though he is one of the great names in Catholic theology, one theologian, no matter how gifted, orthodox, holy, distinguished, cannot speak for the whole Church. If all 30+ Doctors of the Church could be quoted in its favour, that would be a weighty argument - but not conclusive.
There is no
- liturgical commemoration of it
- moral unanimity of the Fathers for it
- consensus of theologians in its favour
- universal tradition of it
- Biblical evidence for it
- it’s like the Assumption of St. John: that was believed at one time by some; it is a pious legend.
There is a text about St.Joseph’s death at the age of 111 - it could be used as a counter-testimony to belief in his Assumption
Add to that the fact that he (together with Holy Mary) literally raised God as his own child, and we can begin to faintly grasp the incredible holiness and sanctity of this man. Yes, I believe St. Joseph is in heaven soul and resurrected body. Anybody else feel the same way?
God bless.
Is there a significant difference between:
- 1. Rearing the God-man in obedience to God’s declared Will
- 2. Living by faith from day to day in obedience to the same God’s Will made known by the (now glorified) Jesus Christ
?
Materially, Jesus was as human as John the Baptist - it is the Identity of Jesus that makes Him different. And to perceive Who He is, needs faith, whether one is in the Holy Family, or is St. Paul, or lives 1000 years later. If St. Joseph had not had faith, to see God Incarnate with his eyes would have done him no good. It is faith, not bodily proximity to Jesus, that is crucial: as St. Augustine says of the BVM:
[ For to a certain one who said, “Blessed is the womb, which bare Thee,” He Himself made answer, “Yea, rather, blessed are they who hear the Word of God, and keep it.” Lastly, to His brethren, that is, His kindred after the flesh, who believed not in Him, what profit was there in that being of kin? **Therefore Mary is more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ, than in conceiving the flesh of Christ.****Thus also her nearness as a Mother would have been of no profit to Mary, had she not borne Christ in her heart after a more blessed manner than in her flesh. ** (
http://www.well.com/user/aquarius/augustine-virginity.htm)
[my **emphases]
Without faith in God,
1. would have been impossible
and that usually ends the conversation.
