Page 49 - Reflections on St. Joseph

the Christian people, continually to invoke with great piety and trust, together with the Virgin-
Mother of God, her chaste Spouse, the Blessed Joseph; and We regard it as most certain that this will
be most pleasing to the Virgin mother herself… We have seen the devotion to St. Joseph, which in
past times the Roman Pontiffs have developed and gradually increased, grow into greater
proportions in Our time, particularly after Pius IX, of happy memory, Our predecessor, proclaimed,
yielding to the request of a large number of bishops, this holy patriarch the patron of the Catholic
Church. And as, moreover, it is of high importance that the devotion to St. Joseph should engraft
itself upon the daily pious practices of Catholics, We desire that the Christian people should be
urged to it above all by Our words and authority.”

Joseph’s great dignity and privilege stems from his role as the Spouse of Mary whose dignity is so
lofty that nothing created can rank above it, and from his role as the legal father of Jesus. He is not
a foster father, (as many people erroneously hold and teach. The term foster, not even in the
English dictionary meaning nor in the Hebrew understanding of the word, does it capture or fully
represent the role that Joseph played in the life of our Redeemer) but as a legal father, Joseph has
full rights to claim Jesus as his son, even though not the biological father of Jesus. Pope Leo goes on
to say in the same encyclical that: “Joseph shines among all mankind by the most august dignity,
since by divine will, he was the guardian of the Son of God and reputed as His father among men.
Hence it came about that the Word of God was humbly subject to Joseph, that He obeyed him, and
that He rendered to him all those offices that children are bound to render to their parents. From
this two-fold dignity flowed the obligation which nature lays upon the head of families, so that
Joseph became the guardian, the administrator, and the legal defender of the divine house whose
chief he was. And during the whole course of his life he fulfilled those charges and those duties. He
set himself to protect with a mighty love and a daily solicitude his spouse and the Divine Infant;
regularly by his work he earned what was necessary for the one and the other for nourishment and
clothing; he guarded from death the Child threatened by a monarch's jealousy, and found for Him
a refuge; in the miseries of the journey and in the bitterness of exile he was ever the companion,
the assistance, and the upholder of the Virgin and of Jesus. Now, the divine house which Joseph
ruled with the authority of a father, contained within its limits the scarce-born Church. From the
same fact that the most holy Virgin is the mother of Jesus Christ springs the reality that she is the
mother of all Christians whom she bore on Mount Calvary amid the supreme throes of the
Redemption; Jesus Christ is, in a manner, the firstborn of Christians, who by the adoption and
Redemption are his brothers. And for such reasons the Blessed Patriarch looks upon the multitude
of Christians who make up the Church as confided specially to his trust -- this limitless family
spread over the earth, over which, because he is the spouse of Mary and the Father of Jesus Christ
he holds, as it were, a paternal authority. It is, then, natural and worthy that as the Blessed Joseph
ministered to all the needs of the family at Nazareth and girt about with his protection, he should
now cover with the cloak of his heavenly patronage and defend the Church of Jesus Christ (n. 3).

In a discourse on March 19, 1969, Pope Paul VI invited Catholics to turn to Joseph’s patronage as
the Church has been wont to do in these recent times, for herself in the first place, with a
spontaneous theological reflection on the marriage of divine and human action in the great
economy of the Redemption, in which economy the first—the divine one—is wholly sufficient
unto itself, while the second—the human action which is ours—though capable of nothing (cf. Jn.
15:5), is never dispensed from a humble but conditional and ennobling collaboration. The Church
also calls upon Joseph as her protector because of a profound and ever present desire to
reinvigorate her ancient life with true evangelical virtues, such as shine forth in St. Joseph. The

Reflections on st. joseph 25