September 18 2023 - St. Joseph of Cupertino - Mystical Gifts and Charity

 St. Joseph of Cupertino was renowned for mystical gifts, particularly, he was given the gift of flight—he would literally fly through the air, float, and levitate in prayerful ecstasy. This mystical gift was so frequent that his biographers said that he spent over half of his religious life in the air in ecstatic levitation and flight. 

The collect for today's mass alludes to his gift of flight: "DEUS, qui ad unigénítum Fílium tuum exaltátum a terra ómnia tráhere disposuísti: pérfice propítius; ut, méritis et exémplo seráphici Confessóris tui Joséphi, supra terrénas omnes cupiditátes elevati, ad eum perveníre mereámur.O God, Who didst purpose to draw all things unto Thy Son when He was lifted up from the earth: mercifully grant that we, by the merits and example of Thy seraphic Confessor, Joseph, being lifted above all earthly desires, may be worthy to come unto Him." 

This gift was such a spectacle that for 35 years he was forbidden from celebrating Mass publicly, lest his gifts become a distraction to the worship of God.  But on many occasions faith was kindled in those who witnessed his gifts, and of course the stories of his gifts were recorded and verified for the cause of his canonization.

St. Joseph of Cupertino is also loved because he is one of the great patron saints of students. St. Joseph apparently was not a great intellect. I heard one Franciscan priest call him intellectually dense. In fact, he was turned away from his initial attempts to enter religious life because he seemed “incapable of any useful activity.” Eventually, the Franciscans allowed him to take care of the convent mule—that was all they thought he could do. It was only after a period of time that the friars came to understand the great virtue of this humble, simple friar. It was also discovered that he had the gift of infused knowledge. Not through natural study, but through this gift of grace he could unravel challenging theological and moral questions to the astonishment of scholars.

And hence he is known as a patron of students, especially at exam time, praying and hoping that St. Joseph Cupertino will come to their aid with a bit of infused knowledge of their own that they had failed to attain through their studies.

With all of his mystical gifts, the greatest was his charity. Whatever our intellectual gifts or spiritual gifts, we are called above all to practice charity. “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.” In other words, if we go throughout life without charity—without the practice of self-sacrificial Christ like love, then we are just going through life making a bunch of noise. And the mission of the Church is not served by Catholics who are just making a bunch of noise.

Rather, we are to exert the effort necessary to practice charity when the Lord presents us with the opportunity for it. Some of us think that if the Lord were to just give me spectacular spiritual gifts, then I could win souls. But St. Paul is saying, no, his job, your job, the task of every Christian is to practice, above all, charity. Charity is the choice to remain patient when we want to be impatient, a choice to practice kindness when we want to be selfish, a choice to endure and persevere in doing good when we want to give up, a choice of being humble when we want to be pompous, forgiving when we want to brood over injury.  

Work, work, work at growing first in charity, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.