Titles for St. Joseph

This is the first installment of a two-part series aimed at helping people get closer to St. Joseph, as the year named in the saint’s honor comes to a close. It is excerpted from adult faith formation which Father Kenneth R. Cardinale offered for St. John Paul II Parish in Southbridge, where he is pastor. Father Cardinale makes some of the points Pope Francis made in his apostolic letter “Patris Corde” (“With a Father’s Heart”) for this Year of St. Joseph, and looks at Joseph through some of the saint’s titles.

By Father Kenneth R. Cardinale

The first time Joseph’s name appears in the Bible is in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-17). Matthew begins with Abraham because he is writing to a Jewish audience, and he wants to show that Jesus is the son of Abraham and the son of David and the fulfillment of all the promises and prophecies in the Jewish Scriptures. This is especially true of the one which the Prophet Nathan made to King David that from his house (his lineage or family tree) the Messiah would rise (II Samuel 7:1-17). It is so important that St. Joseph is a son of David because it means that Jesus is also a son of David, a prerequisite for the Messiah.
There are some dubious characters and incidents in this genealogy. Take the verse, “Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar” (Matthew 1:3). Two of Judah’s sons were married to Tamar and both died without giving her a child. Judah promised another son to Tamar, but feared for the third son’s life, and kept putting it off. So Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute, and fooled Judah into being her customer. That is how Perez sprang into being (Genesis 38:12-30).
King David is also mentioned in the genealogy: “David became the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah” (Matthew 1:6). This episode is such a scandal that Matthew can’t even bring himself to say the woman’s name, Bathsheba, with whom David committed adultery and whom he made a widow when he engineered Uriah’s death in battle to cover up the fact that he, the king, had impregnated her (2 Samuel 11:1-17, 26-27).
So, what is the point of all this, and what does it have to do with St. Joseph? The point St. Matthew is making is that God writes straight with crooked lines.
Isn’t it shameful that Joseph and Jesus have such flawed characters in their family tree and that St. Matthew opens the closet to let us see all those
skeletons? Why couldn’t all of their ancestors have been people of unparalleled virtue?
One answer is you can’t have all those centuries without the effects of original sin. Another answer is that Jesus’ family tree makes it clear why we needed him to come: we needed our Savior to be fully immersed in our messy human experience. Hebrews says Jesus was like us in all things, except he never sinned. He had a family history with scandals and sinners to whom he would offer redemption, along with the rest of us, through his life, death and resurrection.
The Dreamer
In Matthew, God speaks to Joseph through four separate dreams: that Mary has conceived a child through the power of the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:20-25), to flee to Egypt to protect Jesus from Herod (Mt 2:13-15), to return from Egypt after Herod dies (Mt 2:19-21) and to go to Nazareth in Galilee (Mt 2:22-23).
The Old Testament foreshadows the new, and the New Testament fulfills the old. St. Joseph is foreshadowed in the Old Testament by the figure of Joseph, son of Jacob. Joseph shared his dreams with his brothers, who became so jealous that they sold him as a slave. Once in Egypt, he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams correctly and saved Egypt from famine. That’s why Pharaoh made Joseph his right-hand man, to whom the rest of the world came for food, including his brothers, whom he forgave. This is recounted in Genesis, chapters 37, 39-45, and depicted in the musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
This is where the expression “Go to Joseph” comes from. Just as the whole world went to Joseph in Egypt to get physical nourishment from Pharaoh, St. Joseph (who also went to Egypt) is the one Catholics around the world go to, to ask his intercession. He helps procure the spiritual nourishment we need from God.
The Just Man
Like the Old Testament Joseph, St. Joseph was a just and merciful man who refused to expose Mary, the unwed mother, to the consequences of the law (death by stoning). He decided to divorce her quietly to save her life. St. Joseph is one of many figures in the Bible who were people of courage and integrity, who remained faithful to God in the face of disappointment and persevered patiently in faith.
Our world today is filled with such people, which is one reason Pope Francis wrote his Apostolic Letter “Patris Corde.” He saw many ordinary people doing heroic things during the COVID-19 pandemic: parents, grandparents, doctors, nurses, first responders, priests, teachers, wait staff, etc. We have known quiet heroes in our lives, before and during the pandemic. They are like St. Joseph, an ordinary person whom God called to do extraordinary things.
Husband of Mary, Foster-Father of Jesus
St. Joseph was a working man, with no great education, living in Nazareth, an unremarkable, out-of-the-way place. He had to sacrifice all his hopes and dreams of a life with Mary when he decided to divorce her. However, like Abraham getting Isaac back when he was prepared to make that sacrifice, Joseph got Mary back, but in a very different context: God asked Joseph to live a celibate life and – oh, by the way – he was going to be responsible for raising the Messiah! He was the protector of the Holy Family, not only physically by moving and hiding them, but he also hid them under the cloak of ordinary appearance. Herod hunted for the newborn King of the Jews, but Jesus was not in any of the places one would expect, such as a palace. He was living a hidden life, learning life’s lessons as the son of a man who earned his living with his hands.
As Mary gave the Archangel Gabriel her “yes,” saying, “May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38), so Joseph gave his fiat by immediately obeying the angel’s directive to take Mary into his home.