St. Joseph

Note: St. Joseph is one of the two main patrons of Miles Jesu, Our Lady of the Epiphany being the first. He is an extraordinary example of a layman dedicated to God and living in the world.

The Feast of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary, on March 19th, was first introduced onto the liturgical calendar by Pope Sixtus IV in 1479. A definitive outline of the life of St. Joseph is not included in the New Testament or the collection of sources that have come down to us from the first centuries of Christianity. But for those who would like to know more about this “just man” (Mt. 1:19), a reliable picture of his life can be formed from many of the saints in the second millennium of Christianity.

Following the order of events as recorded in the gospel of St. Matthew, we read, “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.” St. Bernard of Clarvaux, writing in the 12th century, reflected on what else St. Joseph might have been thinking when, “unwilling to put her to shame,” he “resolved to send her away quietly” (Mt. 1:18):

“She is so perfect and so great that I do not deserve to share her intimacy any longer; her astonishing dignity is beyond me, it frightens me.”

Had St. Joseph already begun to perceive and say “yes” to the astonishing mission of Mary, “the Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary”? (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) The portrait given of St. Joseph by the 13th century Franciscan theologian, Ubertino de Casale, seems to indicate so:

“St. Joseph was therefore the most purely virgin man, the most profoundly humble, the most elevated in contemplation.” If St. Joseph’s humility led him to doubt his own worthiness before the mystery of the great Mother of God, then how much more did it spur him on to an ever greater correspondence to God’s will once that will was made more clear to him: “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son.” (Mt. 1:24-25)

In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, a few saints bear witness to St. Joseph and his holy marriage to Our Blessed Lady – the family to which God chose to entrust His Son during his hidden years. Both St. Francis de Sales (d. 1622), a doctor of the Church, and St. John Eudes (d. 1680), who is known for his writings on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, were greatly inspired by St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) and her devotion to St. Joseph. St. Alphonsus Ligouri (d. 1787), inspired by both St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila, kept alive reverence for the role of St. Joseph in the Holy Family.“While clearly affirming that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that virginity remained intact in the marriage (cf. Mt 1:18-25; Lk 1:26-38), the evangelists refer to Joseph as Mary’s husband and to Mary as his wife (cf. Mt 1:16, 18-20, 24; Lk 1:27; 2:5). And while it is important for the Church to profess the virginal conception of Jesus, it is no less important to uphold Mary’s marriage to Joseph, because juridically Joseph’s fatherhood depends on it.” (John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos, 7)

St. John Eudes wrote that St. Joseph “is the first object of the Most Blessed Bride’s love and he holds first place in her heart, for Mary being totally given to Joseph as the bride to her husband, the heart of Mary totally belonged to Joseph…It is therefore clear that Jesus is but of one heart with Mary; as a result, we can say that Mary is but of one heart with Joseph, and Joseph consequently is but of one heart with Jesus and Mary.”

St. Francis de Sales wrote, “Even though he [Joseph] had contributed nothing of his, he, nevertheless, had played a great part in this most holy fruit of his holy bride; for she belonged to him and was planted right close to him like a glorious palm tree near her own beloved palm tree, which, according to the design of divine Providence, could not and ought not produce fruit unless it be in his shadow and in his sight.”

Perhaps the most fervent in her praises of St. Joseph, St. Teresa of Avila attributed her vocation and her understanding of the spiritual life to the husband of Mary. She named the first convent she founded, and from which she began the reform of the Carmelite order, after St. Joseph.

St. Teresa draws on the qualities of St. Joseph that are only hinted at in the tersely worded passages of the gospels. He is the man who stands in silent awe before the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption which unfolds before him as Jesus grows in “wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk. 2:52) in Joseph’s own home. She therefore advises, “If anyone cannot find a master to teach him how to pray, let him take this glorious saint as his master and he will not go astray.”

Like St. Joseph, St. Teresa met with contradiction soon after she responded generously to her vocation. For her, Joseph is the man who must take the decision to leave, while it is night, for a distant destination (Mt. 2:13). Teresa herself had secretly left her father’s house in the middle of the night when she first joined the convent. For her, Joseph is also the man of supernatural prudence, who has the responsibility of leading the Holy Family to safety (Mt. 2:19-23). After overcoming many obstacles from the local townspeople of Avila in founding her first reformed convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, St. Teresa told her sisters, “Joseph will watch over us at one door and Our Lady at the other; Christ would go with us; the convent will be a star giving out the most brilliant light.”

In the 19th century, the overwhelming swell in recognition of St. Joseph’s sanctity and the steady increase in devotion to him among the faithful led to Pope Pius IX’s proclamation of St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church in 1870. In this same century, the “seer of Lourdes” – St. Bernadette Soubirous – bore witness to a lively devotion to and understanding of St. Joseph.

In the 20th century, Servant of God Pope John XXIII, who had a great devotion to St. Joseph, directed that Joseph’s name be inserted in the Roman Canon of the Mass – which is the perpetual memorial of redemption – after the name of Mary and before the apostles, popes and martyrs. In 1982, Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Brother André, the “miracle-worker of Mount Royal”. Although only a simple brother who had reluctantly been admitted to the Congregation of Holy Cross, he was greatly devoted to St. Joseph. The miraculous cures that flowed from his great devotion to St. Joseph, and Brother André’s openness to the needs of others, inspired the construction of Saint Joseph’s Oratory on the side of the mountain,
near Brother André’s chapel in Montreal, Canada. The Oratory became the largest church outside of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It is at the Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal, Canada, that worldwide devotion to St. Joseph is centered.

The gospel of St. Matthew closes the first passage about St. Joseph with the words, “and he called his name Jesus.” (Mt. 1:25) To bestow the name of a child was the duty of a father in the Jewish culture. As Pope John Paul II, now Servant of God, wrote in his encyclical letter on St. Joseph:

“In this family, Joseph is the father: his fatherhood is not one that derives from begetting offspring; but neither is it an ‘apparent’ or merely ‘substitute’ fatherhood. Rather, it is one that fully shares in authentic human fatherhood and the mission of a father in the family. This is a consequence of the hypostatic union: humanity taken up into the unity of the Divine Person of the Word-Son, Jesus Christ. Together with human nature, all that is human, and especially the family – as the first dimension of man’s existence in the world – is also taken up in Christ. Within this context, Joseph’s human fatherhood was also ‘taken up’ in the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation.” (Redemptoris Custos, 21)

“If anyone cannot find a master to teach him how to pray, let him take this glorious saint as his master and he will not go astray.”
–St. Teresa of Avila