The Roles of Saint Joseph as the “Faithful Father” of God’s family

I have benefitted this year from a keener awareness of the various roles and responsibilities that God asked of our St. Joseph in his life with his companions, Mary, and the Lord. It has clearly helped me to appreciate the challenges of Joseph’s role as a husband and worker, and, particularly as Jesus’ foster father, which, as we can imagine, was not easy. Joseph lived with incumbent worry and anxiety over the child Jesus’s birth and identity and then by evading with His wife and friend, the threat on his child’s life during their earliest days together. If the beginnings were so full of stress, the rest of his life must also have been filled with anxiety that weighed heavily on Joseph’s heart.

The final scripture story sets the tone. For, just as things might have seemed more “settled” comes the story of the family “trip” to Jerusalem when the child goes off missing, staying behind at the Jerusalem temple at the age of 12. Imagine the search if one of our children had caused you and your spouse to return and to search frantically for the lost child in the “big city.” We know they found him safe and secure and evidently, they were able to settle whatever anxiety remained among them in Nazareth where Joseph worked at his carpentry trade and supplied his family with a decent home and living and learning for their days together. However, something in me says he never fully allowed Jesus too far out of sight, mind, and heart as he guided his growth and led him on the other trips and adventures, I am sure they pursued together in the Lord’s “maturing” years.

As Jesus grew old enough to witness the love of Joseph and Mary for each other and for Him, and to appreciate what His dad had taught him about shared faith, life, carpentry, and service, we can only imagine how close was the bond among them. It must have been a hard and sad day when Mary and Jesus had to face the death and passing of their beloved husband, father and friend.

We do not know exactly when Joseph’s death took him from his family. Tradition helps us presume it was before Jesus began His public life. But because Jesus was also a carpenter, we can imagine Joseph used the time they shared well, helping Him learn the art of the craft and the tricks of the trade. Nestled in Nazareth and serving his community, Joseph must have had some happy days working alongside his foster son, moving about the village, and enjoying Mary’s company and cooking.

A Model for Many Is it any wonder that the Church in its wisdom declared Joseph the “ordinary” patron saint of those who work with their hands, of travelers, of husbands, and even of a happy death? And just as Jesus gave us His mother to be our mother as He hung dying on the cross, so the Church has declared Joseph the patron saint of the universal Church to watch over us and pray to sustain our communion together as he did the Christ child so many centuries before.

Why do we make a big deal over the feast of a man we know so little about? I believe it is because what little we do know points to a man who models for all of us what it means to be a man of faith. Joseph was a loving husband and father, a man who worked well with his hands, a man who watched over and cared for his family, and who built and sustained a deep faith in his God, even when things seemed to be working “way out of control” against him and those he loved.

Joseph reminds us of God’s faithfulness to the promises He made and how we are blessed in faith by the continuing presence and power that blesses and sustains us in all the ways we need. Joseph was a man of faith whom God held dear and by whom we are blessed to know through his care for others what Jesus learned to demonstrate in His life as he cared for others as his father taught Him to be and to do. What we need to know of Joseph we can see in his son. And that gift is for us all as believers and children of a church blessed with memorable fathers from whom we have learned to be blessed and to grow into God’s love and care for one another.

St. Joseph, pray for the Church, the mystical body of Christ, and guide us together to daily care and eternal peace. Amen