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After the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph is the greatest of the saints. He is the one “into whose custody God entrusted his most precious treasures,” Jesus and Mary.
Why do we celebrate a Solemnity of St. Joseph?
In his Apostolic Exhortation Custodian of the Redeemer, Pope St. John Paul II elaborates on this statement of Pope Leo XIII, as it touches upon Mary and Joseph’s vocation with respect to the Incarnation of the Eternal Word,
[This is] the mystery in which Joseph of Nazareth “shared” like no other human being except Mary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word. He shared in it with her; he was involved in the same salvific event; he was the guardian of the same love, through the power of which the eternal Father “destined us to be his sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5).
And later,
[If] Mary is the Lord’s humble servant, prepared from eternity for the task of being the Mother of God. Joseph is the one whom God chose to be the “overseer of the Lord’s birth,” the one who has the responsibility to look after the Son of God’s “ordained” entry into the world, in accordance with divine dispositions and human laws (Custodian of the Redeemer, 8).
The Church therefore honors St. Joseph on March 19 for his faithfulness to God and to his vocation as Custodian of the Redeemer.
What does the Bible say about St. Joseph?
It would be misleading to gauge St. Joseph’s importance by the number of words attributed to him in Scripture. As is so often the case in the Bible, a few seemingly simple remarks say more than we can comprehend in a lifetime of study and reflection. The Bible does not give us an exhaustive picture of the saint, but then neither does it contain a definitive biography of Christ or His Mother. However, Scripture does tell us all that we need to know about St. Joseph, as well as the mission assigned to him in the plan of salvation.
The following points are the main facts in the life of St. Joseph that Sacred Scripture proposes as historically true.
- St. Joseph was married to Mary, the Mother of God.
- St. Joseph was considered to be the father of Jesus.
- St. Joseph exercised paternal rights over the Child Jesus.
- St. Joseph was a just man.
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