St. Joseph has many titles

This is the second installment of a two-part series aimed at helping people get closer to St. Joseph. It is excerpted from adult faith formation which Father Kenneth 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 the Year of St. Joseph, and looks at Joseph through some of the saint’s titles.


By Father Kenneth R. Cardinale

In his apostolic letter “Patris Corde” (“With a Father’s Heart”), Pope Francis states that the 150th anniversary we are celebrating this year, of Pope Pius IX naming Joseph as patron saint of the universal Church, comes at a crucial time. (Doesn’t it make perfect sense that Joseph, who cared for Jesus in this life, should be the patron of the universal Church, caring for Jesus’ Mystical Body on earth now?) So many people who lost their jobs or whose jobs were threatened during the COVID-19 pandemic needed his intercession.
So it is providential that Joseph is the patron saint of workers. He knew what it means to earn one’s living by the sweat of his brow and with his own two hands.
Scripture scholars and historians tell us that Joseph, referred to as a carpenter in the Gospels, was more than someone who carved wood to make tables and chairs; he was more of a master craftsman who could build or repair almost anything, such as a modern-day contractor.
To emphasize the importance of St. Joseph in general, and Joseph as a worker in particular, the Church celebrates two feast days for him: his major solemnity on March 19, and the optional memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. The latter has its origins in the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which called itself a “workers’ state,” a government which exists for the benefit of the worker. In reality, the Communist Party in Russia was an oligarchy and military dictatorship which controlled the workers. I am old enough to remember the Soviet Union’s May Day celebrations on the first of that month, when it would parade its military might and weaponry through Red Square in Moscow. Pope Pius XII instituted the memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May Day to teach the truth: Workers are the backbone of any society for whom a legitimate government exists to ensure their rights to a living wage to provide for their families, as Joseph did for the Holy Family. After almost 70 years, the Soviet Union’s lies caused its self-destruction, while St. Joseph will be celebrated as the patron of workers until his foster Son Jesus comes again in glory.


The Worker

While a patron saint exists to intercede with prayers for a particular group, such as St. Joseph for workers, he or she is also a model of how to live and work. Joseph is not only this for all workers; he was this for our Lord himself as his foster father. Jesus, though the divine Son of God, was, in his humanity, like us in all things except sin. He learned life lessons by working with Joseph. Some experts estimate that 60 percent of the formation of the human person comes through education and imitation. St. Joseph is the model par excellence for working to give glory to God and help build his kingdom. This means to work honestly and with integrity, with all one’s heart and soul; to develop one’s skills and talents for one’s betterment and that of the community; to provide for one’s family; and to offer work as a sacrifice to God.
St. Paul wrote about the sacrificial nature of work in his Letter to the Colossians: “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks through him to God the Father” (Col. 3:17). We are called to offer work as a sacrifice when we are baptized. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, foundress of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph in the U.S., used to tell her sisters that the way we work is so important when we offer it to God as a prayer. We must do it because it is his will and in the way he wills, not rushing in haste because we want to finish quickly, nor crawling along because no one is watching to push us.
Of course, we must work in partnership with God, asking for his help and the help of the angels and saints. One way I try to do this, because so much of my work is writing, is to put “JMJ” at the top of each page as I write, invoking the prayers and help of Jesus, Mary and Joseph so that what I produce is God’s will and done for his glory.
The beloved Little Flower, the French Carmelite nun St. Therese of Lisieux, reminded everyone in her book “The Story of a Soul” that no action or work is too small to offer to God. For example, even picking a pin up off the floor, if done with love, is an offering very pleasing to God.
Finally, Our Lord himself in John’s Gospel reminds us of all this and that we are co-workers with God: Jesus said, “My will is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (Jn. 4:34), and, “We have to do the works of the one who sent me” (Jn. 9:4).

Patron of a Happy Death

St. Joseph is patron of a happy death. “Happy death” – isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Not really. The last mention of St. Joseph is in Luke’s Gospel when he and Mary find Jesus, a 12-year-old, in the Temple after their three-day search. Therefore, we presume that Joseph died before Jesus started his public ministry at age 30. We also presume that Jesus and Mary were with him when he died, which would certainly be a happy death.
We can ask for St. Joseph’s intercession for a happy death for our loved ones and ourselves, so that we are surrounded by our loved ones, prepared for death and meeting the Lord in a state of grace, and spared from protracted pain. After all, we are not meant to live in this world forever. When our work is done, we are called home, we pray, to our heavenly rest to be with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all the angels and saints and all of our loved ones who have gone ahead and await the joyous reunion.


This is the first installment of the-part series.

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.