St. Joseph

St. Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster father of Jesus, is known to us entirely through the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. A descendant of the house of David, he lived in Nazareth in Galilee and worked as a carpenter or craftsman. Scripture records not a single word spoken by him, yet Matthew sums up his character in one phrase: he was 'a just man.' Betrothed to Mary and finding her with child, Joseph resolved to divorce her quietly rather than expose her to disgrace, until an angel revealed to him in a dream that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Joseph took Mary into his home, named the child Jesus as the angel commanded, and assumed the duties of a father in Israel. Warned again in dreams, he carried the child and his mother into Egypt to escape Herod's massacre and later settled the family in Nazareth, where he taught Jesus his trade. The Gospels show him for the last time in the Temple at Jerusalem, anxiously searching for the twelve-year-old Jesus with Mary. Joseph disappears from the Gospel record after that scene, and tradition holds that he died before Jesus began his public ministry, passing from this life in the company of Jesus and Mary. For this reason he has long been invoked as the patron of a happy death. Devotion to Joseph grew steadily through the centuries, cherished by saints such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Teresa of Ávila, who credited his intercession with unfailing help. In 1870 Blessed Pius IX declared St. Joseph Patron of the Universal Church. Pius XII instituted the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1, 1955, St. John XXIII inserted his name into the Roman Canon of the Mass, and Pope Francis, who has a marked devotion to him, honored him in the apostolic letter Patris Corde (2020), proclaiming a Year of St. Joseph. His principal celebration, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, falls on March 19, and he is venerated as patron of the universal Church, of workers and fathers, and of the dying.