I have heard it said that the First Millennium was the age of Christology, the Second Millennium the age of Mariology, and this new Millennium will be an age of Josephology - marked by an explosion of devotion to Joseph and theological development regarding this most blessed and just righteous man.
I am in a turf war with the local communists, who put up little propoganda posters with Marx on windows and streetposts - which I cover with my own adhesive labels printed with Saint Joseph and the following: “Saint Jospeh, Patron of All Workers, pray for us laboring for an eternal reward!” and back and forth we go
As a Canadian subscriber - I am guessing I am not the only one - St. Joseph is the patron saint of Canada. St. Joseph is also the patron of our diocese (Archdiocese of Edmonton) and I teach at St. Joseph's College, affiliated Catholic college at the University of Alberta. March 19th is a big day for me for a number of reasons!
I have completed the Consecration to St. Joseph with a group of men a few years and I highly recommend it - we used the Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of the Our Spiritual Father by Donald Calloway as a guide and it was a wonderful experience - both spiritually and intellectually.
St. Joseph is the patron of many other countries: Austria, Bohemia, the Spanish empire, Belgium, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and the Chinese missions.
The Greek Orthodox consider St. Joseph a "minor saint" and picture him as an elderly widower, feast day 16 December. He appears on icons only in narrative scenes, not on his own devotional image.
I’m curious, JD. Are you the foster father of Max and Pia?
St. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, but he was the adoptive and legal father of Jesus. I have three adopted children. I am not the biological father of any of them (nor is my wife their biological mother), but I am their adoptive and legal father. The only foster father designation I bore was during the period of months leading to the final decrees of adoption. In this sense, my devotion to Joseph as the patron of my adoptive fatherhood is especially strong. To me, the term foster father as applied to St. Joseph sounds archaic.
The difference is that St. Joseph, it seems to me, is exercising a kind of vicarious fatherhood on behalf of a still present God the Father, while the biological father of my children and yours voluntarily surrendered his paternity (or had it terminated by a court)
I don't think that's the same thing as the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, which is why, for me at least, foster father is a more fitting designation.
This is the clearest explanation of this term I’ve ever heard. Because I’ve also often wondered if St. Joseph might more correctly be described as a stepfather or adoptive father. But this makes so much sense. Thanks!
I've always found the picture of St. Joseph as an old man more than a little patronizing and inadequate. For one, it implies that rather than having a marriage based on genuine spousal love and affection, Joseph only wedded Mary to legitimize her and Jesus in the eyes of the law, and otherwise acted like a doddering old grandpa at best. It further strips away any challenge from his life—he was celibately wedded to a woman conceived without sin and raising God Incarnate, after all—did he never struggle with any kind of physical attraction to the woman he surely loved deeply and did he never feel frustration at being the least perfect person in the family? The "Joseph as an old man" motif also makes little practical sense. How was such a man supposed to help his heavily pregnant wife travel to Bethlehem, or flee with his family to Egypt and support them for two years? Rather than being a model for every man who's ever had to master his own passions, support his family in difficult situations, or deal with his own feelings of inadequacy and imperfections, old Joseph just sidesteps all those issues and vanishes.
Well, it's not as though "Joseph as older" just came out of nowhere. Why does almost all sacred art before the modern period show Joseph this way? It's from the Protoevangelium of James, the great (not officially 'inspired') source for much of how we depict and even think about Mary, the Mother of God. While declared as apocryphal since at least 500 AD, that hasn't stopped its influence. For instance, the Gospels don't provide us names of Mary's parents. Ss. Joachim and Anna only come to us as named in apocryphal James gospel! Yet they have a strong and ancient cult associated with them that I wouldn't be in favor of ending!
I'm not saying that we have to stick to thinking of Joseph as old (even the Protoevangelium primarily calls him simply a 'widower') and you make good points for having Joseph as a good model for contemporary men. What I'm saying is that there may be reason to pause and examine the tradition a bit more.
The reason for the protoevangelium depicting St. Joseph that way seem mostly to have to do with protecting the Church's claim to the Blessed Mother's perpetual virginity, right?
It at least offers elegant explanations for those things. And based on the absence of Joseph in the Lord’s adult life: that Joseph died (due to natural causes) some time in the silent years. Which is why he’s known as the patron of a happy death, dying with Jesus and Mary by his side.
I think it’s more than that. There is evidence that giving a virgin dedicated to the temple (like Mary was) to an elderly widower beyond reproach was a common practice in first century Judaism. And the earliest iconography we have of the flight into Egypt depicts St. James (the “brother of the Lord” I.e. Joseph’s son) accompanying the Holy Family as a full grown adult.
It also makes St. Joseph’s heroic humility even more profound, for enduring the censure he must have undergone. By “claiming” Jesus as his own son and marrying the Blessed Virgin, he as much as admitted that as an elderly man, he had impregnated this young girl, and violated the purpose for which she had been given to him for protection. No wonder there wasn’t room for them at the inn!
This is some interesting context which I previously lacked, so I appreciate it. I'm admittedly rather skeptical of apocryphal sources (as I recall, the so-called Gospel of Thomas features some rather un-Christlike actions on the part of Christ), but I can at least appreciate the influence that the Protoevangelium of James had, even if I disagree with how it's been interpreted.
For those of us who extol the (Approved but not required) (auto)-biography of our Blessed Lady in four volumes, transcribed several times by the Venerable Mary of Agreda, "The Mystical City of God" is a rewarding study. I credit this narrative as persuading me that I might well find a home in our Church.
Being the full account, from Immaculate Conception to Ascension into Heaven, of our Holy Mother of God, one would expect a definitive account of Her marriage with St. Joseph. (A vigorous man, able to support a family as a carpenter, and make several long and arduous journeys.) As for his sexual continence, he was, after all, a Saint and well able, knowing Who his wife was, to more than just allow Her to remain a Virgin. The account of this Singular Marriage is beautiful and delightful.
Aspects of proper masculinity in husbands are well described by St. Paul. By mutual consent, suspending sexual activity for purposes of procreation may be desirable. As Mary was to have but One Son, there was no question that She was to remain a Virgin. Joseph was more than willing to play his part. Which included being the head of this little family and fulfilling his duties as a husband, while remaining perfectly celibate.
My favorite statue of St. Joseph is in the Wichita, KS Cathedral. He is depicted as young and he is jacked! One theory I have head about Joseph is that being a carpenter in the Holy Land probably meant working with stone a lot as there is not a lot of wood to work with there. No idea how true that is but I like to think it is and lifting stones all day would make one very strong indeed.
Meanwhile my parish is dying and has no plan for how to save itself beyond please give us more money to cover the lack of parishioners.
Please tell me how another 3 years of talking about talking is going to fix that? I'll be shocked if we make it to Pentecost let alone three years from now.
Very thankful for this wonderful article, particularly since my middle name is Joseph. My parents declared that it was after the foster father of Our Lord. Please see the depiction of this great and saintly man in the film, "The Nativity Story". it is a reverent, and I believe, faithful telling of the birth of Our Sacred Savior. Joseph is a role model for all men.
I have to say I have found The Chosen’s depiction of Joseph very powerful. He is depicted as older than Mary but not old. And he is eminently practical. Most beautiful is the portrayal of the Nativity,
In which Mary is depicted as a first time mom, refused welcome into the house by Joseph’s relatives, clearly without sin but not without the fear any woman would feel giving birth in such a setting without another woman present. The depiction of Joseph’s patient reassurance is incredibly moving.
Absolutely. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, all of Christianity (except for the Methodists, God bless them) fumbled any response pastorally or socially to the new industrial working class. But by the end of the First Quarter, at least a portion of Catholicism picked up the ball and started running up the field. (okay, this is about masculinity, but I'll end the football analogy here). The centrality of St. Joseph in this started long before Pius XII sanctified the world wide observance of Labor Day (May 1st) by adding the feast of St. Joseph the Worker to the observances of that day.
Starting in Germany and then in Belgium, Catholics promoted St. Joseph against the false choice of only the Establishment or Revolution. With St. Joseph, Catholics affirmed the dignity of work and the virtue of worker organization. These efforts continued across generations with the Kolping Clubs, the Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB) organization of the ZdK, the Cardinist World Movement of Christian Workers and the Young Christian Workers, the Catholic trade unions, and here in America, ACTU and the Catholic Worker movement.
Popes have rightly given these efforts the patronage of St. Joseph.
"Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the origin of Catholic radicalism in America," by Mel Piehl, is an excellent account of the life and times of Dorothy Day. Very inspiring.
Much of the information comes from the catalog of a 1992 exhibition at St. Joseph's University, "Patron Saint of the New World: Spanish American Colonial Images of St. Joseph." Hispanic artists (like Murillo) are the best showing the saint as a handsome and vigorous young man. Or as I once said in print, "the studly St. Joseph."
Very well written! The best short commentary on devotion to St. Joseph I've read! Thanks so much!
I have heard it said that the First Millennium was the age of Christology, the Second Millennium the age of Mariology, and this new Millennium will be an age of Josephology - marked by an explosion of devotion to Joseph and theological development regarding this most blessed and just righteous man.
I am in a turf war with the local communists, who put up little propoganda posters with Marx on windows and streetposts - which I cover with my own adhesive labels printed with Saint Joseph and the following: “Saint Jospeh, Patron of All Workers, pray for us laboring for an eternal reward!” and back and forth we go
Great work Matthew! That is wonderful street witness that you offer in a very practical way.
St. Joseph is a faithful intercessor. A very happy feast to all tomorrow.
Two comments:
As a Canadian subscriber - I am guessing I am not the only one - St. Joseph is the patron saint of Canada. St. Joseph is also the patron of our diocese (Archdiocese of Edmonton) and I teach at St. Joseph's College, affiliated Catholic college at the University of Alberta. March 19th is a big day for me for a number of reasons!
I have completed the Consecration to St. Joseph with a group of men a few years and I highly recommend it - we used the Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of the Our Spiritual Father by Donald Calloway as a guide and it was a wonderful experience - both spiritually and intellectually.
St. Joseph is the patron of many other countries: Austria, Bohemia, the Spanish empire, Belgium, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, and the Chinese missions.
The Greek Orthodox consider St. Joseph a "minor saint" and picture him as an elderly widower, feast day 16 December. He appears on icons only in narrative scenes, not on his own devotional image.
I’m curious, JD. Are you the foster father of Max and Pia?
St. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, but he was the adoptive and legal father of Jesus. I have three adopted children. I am not the biological father of any of them (nor is my wife their biological mother), but I am their adoptive and legal father. The only foster father designation I bore was during the period of months leading to the final decrees of adoption. In this sense, my devotion to Joseph as the patron of my adoptive fatherhood is especially strong. To me, the term foster father as applied to St. Joseph sounds archaic.
The difference is that St. Joseph, it seems to me, is exercising a kind of vicarious fatherhood on behalf of a still present God the Father, while the biological father of my children and yours voluntarily surrendered his paternity (or had it terminated by a court)
I don't think that's the same thing as the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, which is why, for me at least, foster father is a more fitting designation.
Fair enough.
This is the clearest explanation of this term I’ve ever heard. Because I’ve also often wondered if St. Joseph might more correctly be described as a stepfather or adoptive father. But this makes so much sense. Thanks!
It’s interesting that JP2 does not use the term foster father in his splendid apostolic exhortation, Redemptoris Custos, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_15081989_redemptoris-custos.html
More synod 🫣
I've always found the picture of St. Joseph as an old man more than a little patronizing and inadequate. For one, it implies that rather than having a marriage based on genuine spousal love and affection, Joseph only wedded Mary to legitimize her and Jesus in the eyes of the law, and otherwise acted like a doddering old grandpa at best. It further strips away any challenge from his life—he was celibately wedded to a woman conceived without sin and raising God Incarnate, after all—did he never struggle with any kind of physical attraction to the woman he surely loved deeply and did he never feel frustration at being the least perfect person in the family? The "Joseph as an old man" motif also makes little practical sense. How was such a man supposed to help his heavily pregnant wife travel to Bethlehem, or flee with his family to Egypt and support them for two years? Rather than being a model for every man who's ever had to master his own passions, support his family in difficult situations, or deal with his own feelings of inadequacy and imperfections, old Joseph just sidesteps all those issues and vanishes.
*end rant*
I agree, Joseph as doddering old man has bothered me for as long as I can remember. So unrelatable!
Well, it's not as though "Joseph as older" just came out of nowhere. Why does almost all sacred art before the modern period show Joseph this way? It's from the Protoevangelium of James, the great (not officially 'inspired') source for much of how we depict and even think about Mary, the Mother of God. While declared as apocryphal since at least 500 AD, that hasn't stopped its influence. For instance, the Gospels don't provide us names of Mary's parents. Ss. Joachim and Anna only come to us as named in apocryphal James gospel! Yet they have a strong and ancient cult associated with them that I wouldn't be in favor of ending!
I'm not saying that we have to stick to thinking of Joseph as old (even the Protoevangelium primarily calls him simply a 'widower') and you make good points for having Joseph as a good model for contemporary men. What I'm saying is that there may be reason to pause and examine the tradition a bit more.
The reason for the protoevangelium depicting St. Joseph that way seem mostly to have to do with protecting the Church's claim to the Blessed Mother's perpetual virginity, right?
and also to address the "brothers of the Lord" issue in Scripture.
It at least offers elegant explanations for those things. And based on the absence of Joseph in the Lord’s adult life: that Joseph died (due to natural causes) some time in the silent years. Which is why he’s known as the patron of a happy death, dying with Jesus and Mary by his side.
I think it’s more than that. There is evidence that giving a virgin dedicated to the temple (like Mary was) to an elderly widower beyond reproach was a common practice in first century Judaism. And the earliest iconography we have of the flight into Egypt depicts St. James (the “brother of the Lord” I.e. Joseph’s son) accompanying the Holy Family as a full grown adult.
It also makes St. Joseph’s heroic humility even more profound, for enduring the censure he must have undergone. By “claiming” Jesus as his own son and marrying the Blessed Virgin, he as much as admitted that as an elderly man, he had impregnated this young girl, and violated the purpose for which she had been given to him for protection. No wonder there wasn’t room for them at the inn!
That's an insightful and interesting approach to Joseph, Linda. thank you.
This is some interesting context which I previously lacked, so I appreciate it. I'm admittedly rather skeptical of apocryphal sources (as I recall, the so-called Gospel of Thomas features some rather un-Christlike actions on the part of Christ), but I can at least appreciate the influence that the Protoevangelium of James had, even if I disagree with how it's been interpreted.
For those of us who extol the (Approved but not required) (auto)-biography of our Blessed Lady in four volumes, transcribed several times by the Venerable Mary of Agreda, "The Mystical City of God" is a rewarding study. I credit this narrative as persuading me that I might well find a home in our Church.
Being the full account, from Immaculate Conception to Ascension into Heaven, of our Holy Mother of God, one would expect a definitive account of Her marriage with St. Joseph. (A vigorous man, able to support a family as a carpenter, and make several long and arduous journeys.) As for his sexual continence, he was, after all, a Saint and well able, knowing Who his wife was, to more than just allow Her to remain a Virgin. The account of this Singular Marriage is beautiful and delightful.
Aspects of proper masculinity in husbands are well described by St. Paul. By mutual consent, suspending sexual activity for purposes of procreation may be desirable. As Mary was to have but One Son, there was no question that She was to remain a Virgin. Joseph was more than willing to play his part. Which included being the head of this little family and fulfilling his duties as a husband, while remaining perfectly celibate.
You may defer to Ed as the better writer, but your mock of the new synod synod was sweet. Pity the Vatican communications team.
My favorite statue of St. Joseph is in the Wichita, KS Cathedral. He is depicted as young and he is jacked! One theory I have head about Joseph is that being a carpenter in the Holy Land probably meant working with stone a lot as there is not a lot of wood to work with there. No idea how true that is but I like to think it is and lifting stones all day would make one very strong indeed.
The Synods will continue until morale improves.
Meanwhile my parish is dying and has no plan for how to save itself beyond please give us more money to cover the lack of parishioners.
Please tell me how another 3 years of talking about talking is going to fix that? I'll be shocked if we make it to Pentecost let alone three years from now.
Very painful times! Praying for you and your parish.
Very thankful for this wonderful article, particularly since my middle name is Joseph. My parents declared that it was after the foster father of Our Lord. Please see the depiction of this great and saintly man in the film, "The Nativity Story". it is a reverent, and I believe, faithful telling of the birth of Our Sacred Savior. Joseph is a role model for all men.
I have to say I have found The Chosen’s depiction of Joseph very powerful. He is depicted as older than Mary but not old. And he is eminently practical. Most beautiful is the portrayal of the Nativity,
In which Mary is depicted as a first time mom, refused welcome into the house by Joseph’s relatives, clearly without sin but not without the fear any woman would feel giving birth in such a setting without another woman present. The depiction of Joseph’s patient reassurance is incredibly moving.
Absolutely. At the dawn of the industrial revolution, all of Christianity (except for the Methodists, God bless them) fumbled any response pastorally or socially to the new industrial working class. But by the end of the First Quarter, at least a portion of Catholicism picked up the ball and started running up the field. (okay, this is about masculinity, but I'll end the football analogy here). The centrality of St. Joseph in this started long before Pius XII sanctified the world wide observance of Labor Day (May 1st) by adding the feast of St. Joseph the Worker to the observances of that day.
Starting in Germany and then in Belgium, Catholics promoted St. Joseph against the false choice of only the Establishment or Revolution. With St. Joseph, Catholics affirmed the dignity of work and the virtue of worker organization. These efforts continued across generations with the Kolping Clubs, the Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB) organization of the ZdK, the Cardinist World Movement of Christian Workers and the Young Christian Workers, the Catholic trade unions, and here in America, ACTU and the Catholic Worker movement.
Popes have rightly given these efforts the patronage of St. Joseph.
"Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the origin of Catholic radicalism in America," by Mel Piehl, is an excellent account of the life and times of Dorothy Day. Very inspiring.
Yes. I have a copy somewhere and am happy to lend it out.
Synod stuff:
// Readers could be forgiven if they get a bit confused //
The management mind relies on confusion. "Don't worry about the details. Just keep walking."
Thank you, JD for the citation! Here's a link to my full article: <https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/03/19/the-often-silent-and-surprising-history-of-devotion-to-saint-joseph/>
Much of the information comes from the catalog of a 1992 exhibition at St. Joseph's University, "Patron Saint of the New World: Spanish American Colonial Images of St. Joseph." Hispanic artists (like Murillo) are the best showing the saint as a handsome and vigorous young man. Or as I once said in print, "the studly St. Joseph."