Okay, so the ‘normative’ view of looking at the Holy Family as an earthly reflection of the Holy Trinity is (Joseph/Father), (Jesus), and (Mary/Holy Spirit). Jesus is, of course, the Son Himself; the Virgin Mary is the Spouse of the Spirit, who works with the Spirit to bring the Son into the world, who in the theology of St. Maximilian Kolbe is the created Immaculate Conception that parallels the Holy Spirit’s own uncreated Immaculate Conception; Joseph is the Foster-Father of Christ and head of the Holy Family. And this mapping of the Holy Trinity onto the Holy Family makes sense. BUT…. Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle does something very interesting in his comparison of Mary with God. He associates Mary not so much with her usual partner, the Holy Spirit, but rather draws explicit parallels between her and the Father. For example:
In the one birth, we have an eternal emanation, in the other a temporal emanation of the eternal; in the one a production of an only Son in the self-same womb of the Father; in the other, a new production of this same only Son in the womb of the Virgin. The one and the other bypass the laws of nature, for it belongs neither to fathers or to virgins to conceive. Fathers produce but in a foreign womb, yet this Heavenly Father produces within Himself and in His own womb, something which is proper to Him alone. Virgins, remaining virgins, cannot conceive, yet here the Virgin conceives by the operation of the Holy Spirit, and becomes more nobly Virgin than before.
What links the Father and Mary are their ability to produce the Son from their own natures in a way that is utterly and totally unique to each one of them. The Father and Mary are linked by the fact that they have a son even though by all accounts they shouldn’t be able to have one - and the same Son, at that.
And that has me thinking about the usual comparison, and… couldn’t Joseph be associated with the Spirit? We do see some parallels. I don’t believe the Spirit ever directly speaks in Scripture, does He? He seems like a silent guide and protector of the early Christian community…. which sounds like Joseph, who I know for a fact doesn’t speak once in Scripture, and who is tasked with leading the first domestic church - the Holy Family.
As it turns out, the Cardinal was not the only one to identify an “affinity” between the Father and Mary, as well as the Holy Spirit and Joseph! In 1614, Fr. Pedro de Morales, S.J., specifically follows this schema of the Holy Trinity-Terrestrial Trinity analogy. You can read a full meditation on this concept by Fr. Serafino Lanzetta, M.F.M., here. But here’s a quote from one of his sources, François Bourgoing:
The former [Holy Trinity] is uncreated, the latter [Holy Family] is created and at the same time uncreated in the person of Jesus. The one is divine and eternal; the other deified and temporal. One is adorable; the other worthy of honor. One is admirable in its greatness; the other lovable in its sweetness. In the first there is a unity of essence in the Trinity of persons; in the other, a union of love, grace, and spirit in a trinity of essences and persons. In the divine Trinity, which is God, the Father generates the Son in eternity; in the other the order appears almost reversed, since the Son has given being to the father and mother —that is, Jesus to His putative father Joseph and to His most holy mother. In the first, the Father and the Son, and the Father through the Son, produce the Holy Spirit in unity of principle; in the second, Mary and Jesus, and Jesus through Mary, give life and grace to Joseph in unity of spirit.
