Little is known about Joseph except that he was of the line of David which was essential in order for Jesus to be legally of the house and line of David in fulfilment of the Scriptures. What is more important for us is the example which Joseph left us.
Born in Aytona, Lerida, on December 29, 1811, Blessed Francis Palau y Quer entered the Carmelite Order in 1832 and was ordained priest in 1836. Civil turmoil forced him to live in exile and outside his community. On his return to Spain in 1851, he founded his "School of Virtue" — which was a model of catechetical teaching — at Barcelona.
Maria Barba was born on the 16th January 1884 in Catanzaro, Italy. As a child, Maria learned to play the piano. At the age of fifteen, she underwent an interior conversion that turned her heart and mind totally to God. Sadly, her subsequent aspiration to religious life was opposed by her family.
Berthold was a French crusader who instituted a hermit colony on Mount Carmel in 1185. At the time, there were a number of hermits from the West scattered throughout Palestine, and Berthold gathered them together, founded a community who settled on Mount Carmel, and became their first superior.
