St. Joseph did not get a liturgical feast until the 15th
century in Rome, and it was only in the 16th century that a feast
was authorized for the Universal Church. As early as 150, however, the apocryphal
writing, Protevanglium of James, tried to give more details to Matthew’s and
Luke’s accounts of the infancy of Jesus, including the role of Joseph. Other
apocryphal gospels written between the second and eighth centuries influenced
the growing devotion to Joseph, and the iconography of Joseph holding a lily
comes out of these gospels plus the story of his dying in the presence of Jesus
and Mary. These writings are evidence of our interest in the human setting and
details of the Holy Family, details lacking in the Gospels. Who was Joseph?
What did he do? How did he live? How did he relate to his human and divine
charges? How did he act as a father and guardian?
Luke’s account of Mary and Joseph is from Mary’s viewpoint
while Matthew concentrates on Joseph. Matthew looks at Joseph as a man of
dreams like the patriarch Joseph in Genesis. Joseph is instructed in dreams to
take Mary into his own home, to name the child, to go to Egypt (like his
Genesis predecessor) to save the child’s life, and to return to the land of
Israel after the danger passed. Karl Rahner notes that Scripture says of Joseph
three times, “He rose up.”
There are many views of St. Joseph. St. Bernard says, “When
we do not know how to pray, we turn to Joseph,” and St. Teresa of Avila says
she knows by experience that Joseph helps in every area. “…I know by experience
[he] helps us in every need.” Jacques Bossuet contrasted the vocation of the
apostles with that of Joseph
. “The apostles were lights to make Jesus Christ visible to the whole world. Joseph was a veil to hide him. …the apostles proclaimed the gospel so loudly that their words re-echoed in the heavens. …Joseph listened, wondered and kept silence.”
Karl Rahner says that Joseph as the guardian and protector
of the Son of God is our model as we are “called to be guardian of the Holy One
in ourselves, in lives, in our work.” Rahner also says that Joseph is a good patron
for us—“a patron of the poor, a patron of workers, a patron of exiles, a model
for worshippers, an exemplar of the pure discipline of the heart.”
Who is Joseph to you as we celebrate his feast today?
Sr.
Deborah Harmeling, OSB
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