Ite Ad Joseph!

Today on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph in the Year of Saint Joseph, we would do well to meditate on the life of the man who helped raise the Son of God. It can’t have been easy. Tradition holds that Joseph was already an old man and a widower when he married the Blessed Virgin, who was very young, perhaps 16 or so.

He had several children already (Saint James the Less comes to mind), and the children needed a mother. Mary’s parents, Saints Joachim and Anne, were also very old, and the young girl would need a protector. It was, perhaps, a marriage of convenience for all concerned.

When Mary came up pregnant, Joseph knew very well that the child was not his. The law of the time said that he should denounce her, and that she would then be stoned to death.

Nevertheless being a just man (Matthew 1:19), he resolved to cause her no scandal and to divorce her quietly and without fuss.

And then the angel of the Lord appeared to him and straightened him out.

This is followed by the Roman census, where Joseph had to take his very pregnant wife cross-country. They arrive and there’s no room at the inn. When the child is very young, they flee to Egypt to avoid the murderous rage of King Herod.

I imagine Saint Joseph being quite exasperated, “Lord, I’m too old for this!”

Of course, unlike virtually everybody else mentioned in the family (Mary, Jesus, James, Zacharias, Elisabeth, John the Baptist), none of his words are recorded in the Gospels. Except one.

The only word we know for certain that Saint Joseph said was the name of Jesus (Matthew 1:25).

As the silent man, he was perhaps the very epitome of the teaching that would later be attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: “preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary use words”. 

But he persevered, returned home at last, and raised and taught the boy who was King.

Joseph is not mentioned in any of the four Gospels after the incident at the Temple when Jesus was about 12 years old (Luke 2:42-51). Tradition holds that Joseph died sometime between then and the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Today is also the name day of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. Father Benedict. Spare a prayer for him, and ask Saint Joseph to continue praying for him, and for all of us.

And pray for me, and for my son and his lady. It appears that I will be a grandfather! It’s an awesome thing, and my brain is still doing cartwheels over it. Pray for all fathers, physical and spiritual.

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that by Saint Joseph’s intercession
your Church may constantly watch over
the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation,
whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.