Saint Joseph

Feast Day: March 19 and May 1 (under the title Saint Joseph the Worker)

• Joseph came from the family lineage of King David. After marrying the Temple-consecrated virgin Mary, but before bringing her formally into their new home, Joseph discovered that Mary was already pregnant.

• Joseph was bewildered. He knew Mary to be a pure, virtuous, and chaste woman who was devoted to God in all things, but it was also becoming undeniably clear that Mary was indeed pregnant. The traditional account of the mystics on the matter is that good Joseph was agonized by this incongruence.

• Since he was a good man and did not want to put Mary to shame in the public eye, Joseph resolved to quietly divorce her.

• However, the angel Gabriel informed Joseph in a dream that the child Mary bore was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was to be named Jesus. Gabriel instructed Joseph to take Mary as his wife, and to be not afraid. Joseph did so thereafter.

• After the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, another angel warned Joseph in a dream about the imminent violence against the child by King Herod the Great of Judaea. He told Joseph to take Jesus and Mary and flee to Egypt. There, the angel told Joseph once more that Herod had passed away and commanded him to go back to the Holy Land.

• In order to avoid Herod's successor and the risk of returning to Bethlehem, Joseph relocated Mary and Jesus to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew 2:22–23), where Joseph taught Jesus the art of carpentry.

• While returning home from a census in Jerusalem, Joseph and Mary discovered that Jesus was not with the rest of their caravan and returned to Jerusalem to look for him. They desperately looked and eventually found Jesus in the Temple, teaching the doctors of the law. This story is the last time Joseph is referenced in the Gospels (Luke 2:41–49).

• The details of Joseph's eventual death are not definitively known and not covered by Scripture, but we do know that he likely passed away before the start of Jesus' public ministry and without a doubt before the Crucifixion (John 19:26–27).

• Several mystics of history attest that Joseph died at home with Jesus and Mary after years of infirmity -- but most of all, good Joseph, utterly upright and enraptured by the grace and love of the Holy Trinity, died of love. His soul departed and joined the princes of Israel in Abraham's bosom, all awaiting the Passion and Resurrection of the Son of God.

• Saint Joseph is the patron saint of the Universal Church, families, fathers, expectant mothers, travelers, immigrants, carpenters, craftsmen, working people, and of a happy death.

Saint Joseph, Pray for Us!