Section 3 | Rule #1: Regarding the Custos’ Office of Headship and Spiritual Authority

As God’s disclosed to Adam the divine mandates concerning his care for the garden and his wife, prior to Eve’s existence, implying that God had endowed Adam with the responsibility to communicate and transmit those divine mandates to Eve; and as the divine directives given by the angel of God to the Holy Family were disclosed to St. Joseph, so also, in the same way, God confirms the man in his vocation as husband and father as having spiritual headship and authority over his family, the domestic church.

This authority is confirmed by God who approached not the woman who sinned first (Eve), but he who received the commands first (Adam). After man’s fall from original justice God did not ask the woman, but only the man “Where are you?” indicating that Adam had fallen from his position of spiritual headship. As God appointed His Son Jesus Christ as head of the Bride, His Church, so also the husband, as an image of Christ is appointed by God as spiritual head of his wife and his domestic church.

Devin Schadt | Executive Director of the Fathers of St. Joseph

Ite ad Joseph