St. Joseph as Patron and Example, Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Solemnity of St. Joseph
March 19, 2020
2 Sam 7:4-5.12-14.16, Ps 89, Rom 4:13.16-18.22, Mt 1:16.18-21.24

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: [to be filled out]

• Today’s solemnity of St. Joseph is particularly special this year as the Church marks (on December 8) the 150th anniversary of St. Joseph’s being declared patron of the universal church by Blessed Pius IX in 1870. Pope Pius was particularly concerned about the situation of the Church both in the world and internally. Outside the Church was battling a fierce anti-clericalism that was culminating in the suppression of the papal states. Inside the Church, Pope Pius was trying to lead the Church against the problems of rationalism, fideism, and various other forms of modernism for which he had summoned the First Vatican Council. In this double circumstance, on December 8, 1870, he placed the universal Church under St. Joseph’s protection. Pope Leo XIII, 17 years later, eloquently told us why: “The reasons why St. Joseph must be considered the special patron of the Church, and the Church in turn draws exceeding hope from his care and patronage, chiefly arise from his having been the husband of Mary and the presumed father of Jesus…, Joseph was in his day the lawful and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family…. It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph’s dignity that, in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ.” He guarded Mary’s life and reputation against the possibility of death by stoning as a result of her having become pregnant outside of marital intimacy. Even before Joseph received the word of the angel that Mary had conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, Joseph, a just man who must have been filled with questions and suffering, protected Mary. But that was just the beginning. He protected Jesus and Mary from Herod’s envy and murderous soldiers, even at the cost of his job in Nazareth, guiding them on the difficult escape route into Egypt. He then protected and provided for them there and after their return to Nazareth. St. John Paul II asked 27 years ago today in a 1993 homily, “Is it not logical then and necessary that he to whom the eternal Father entrusted his Son, should offer the same protection to the Body of Christ which, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, is the Church?” In his 1987 exhortation on St. Joseph, Redemptoris Custos (“Guardian of the Redeemer”), he said, “Joseph has become the man in whom the whole Church trusts. This regards the entire life of the Church and all that pertains to her earthly mission.”
• But St. John Paul II wanted us to do more than entrust ourselves to the heavenly protection and prayers of St. Joseph. “Besides trusting in Joseph’s sure protection,” he wrote in Redemptoris Custos, the Church also trusts in his noble example, which transcends all individual states of life and serves as a model for the entire Christian community, whatever the condition and duties of each of its members may be.”
  • St. Joseph is a model, first, in the way to relate to God. In today’s second reading we ponder the example of Abraham as a faith but St. Joseph is likewise a model. Fr. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet commented in his famous 17th-century panegyrics, “The Bible commends Abraham to us as the pattern of perfect faith (Rom. 4:11), but Joseph’s faith was greater: Abraham is praised because he believed that a barren woman would bear a child (Gen. 15:6); Joseph believed the same of a virgin, and in simplicity accepted that inscrutable mystery of child-bearing maidenhood.” St. Frances de Sales, said, “St. Paul admired Abraham’s obedience when God commanded him to go forth out of his own country; the more so that God did not tell him which way to go: …he simply set out, and went according as the Spirit of God directed him (Gen. 12:17 Heb. 11:8-9). The perfect obedience of St. Joseph was no less excellent: the angel did not tell him how long he was to sojourn in Egypt, and he did not inquire. … He was ‘a just man,’ and so his will was at all times attuned, conformed and united to the will of God.” His obedient faith is a model for all people. He obeyed the Lord who spoke to him in dreams and told him to believe and do things that most might easily have refused, deconstructing dreams: to accept that Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit not by man; to get up immediately and flee to Egypt; to return after he had set up a life. But he responded promptly to each. Pope Benedict said in Cameroon, commenting upon St. Matthew’s expression in today’s Gospel that he was a “just man,” that St. Joseph constantly “ad-justed” himself to God’s will.
  • Second, St. Joseph is a model in how we relate to Jesus. He cared for him. He protected him. He loved him. He provided for him. That should certainly influence the way we respond to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Joseph was even more blessed that Simeon (Lk 2:28), for he held the Child Jesus in his arms not just once but many times and he shows us how to approach him with reverential, prayerful love. It should also influence way we respond to Jesus who comes to us in the disguise of the poor and needy. St. Alphonsus preached about him, “On the last day our Savior will say to the elect: ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; naked and you covered me …’ (Matt. 25:35). These will have fed Jesus Christ, lodged or clothed Him, in the persons of the poor; but St. Joseph found food, shelter and raiment for Christ in His own person. Furthermore, our Lord has promised reward to whoever gives a cup of water in His name. St. Joseph can say to Jesus Christ that ‘Not only did I furnish you with food, house and clothing: I saved you from death at the hands of Herod.’ What then must be his reward?”
  • Third, St. Joseph is a model of how to relate to Mary as spouse in committed love, what is ultimately a form of consecration. It’s traditional to relate to Mary as the model disciple. It’s natural for us to relate to her as spiritual Mother given to us by her Son on Calvary. But it’s novel to relate to her as virginal spouse. In the recent book of meditations In Sinu Iesu by an anonymous Benedictine monk, in which the priest hears Christ and Mary speaking to him during adoration, Mary says to him, “I want to reveal myself to priests as Virgin Bride and Mother. This is a secret that I have held in my heart for this time of trial for the Church. To every priest who desires it and asks me for it, I will give the grace of living in my presence as Virgin Bride — this was the vocation given to Saint Joseph — and of living in my presence as Mother — this was the vocation given to Saint John when, from the Cross, my Son entrusted me to him and him to me.” This special vocation for priests, I think, to love Mary with the chaste spousal love we see in St. Joseph is an indication of the type of committed love each of us is meant to have with her. St. Joseph teaches us to treat her with reverence, to help her fulfill her vocation as a disciple, apostle, and mother.
• St. Joseph is a likewise a model for us for how to approach the Eucharist. This connection has been growing in the Church. In 1962, Pope St. John XXIII added his name to the Roman Canon. Soon after he began his papacy, Pope Francis added his name to the other Eucharistic prayers. We invoke him now in every Mass, as well as should, in prayers for the Church. Fr. Frederic Faber, the great 19th century British priest, author and sacred lyricist, compared Joseph’s care of the Holy Family to the priest’s care of the altar. “The priest, who has most reason to deplore the poverty of his attainments in humility, is humble at least when he comes to consecrate at Mass. For years Joseph lived in the awful sanctity of that which to the priest is but a moment. The little house at Nazareth was as the outspread square of the white corporal. All the words he spoke were almost words of consecration.” He lived perpetually in the real presence. And his life was a commentary on the words of consecration Christ would utter later. As St. Paul VI once preached on this feast day, “This is the secret of the greatness of St. Joseph…: [he] made his life a service, a sacrifice, to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission that is joined to it; [he gave] his total gift of himself, of his life, of his work; having converted his human vocation to domestic love into the superhuman oblation of himself, of his heart and of all his abilities, into the love placed at the service of the Messiah conceived in his home. … One can say, of every saint: ‘to serve through love,” we must attribute to St. Joseph; … serving Christ was his life, serving him in the deepest humility, in the most complete dedication, serving him with love and for love.” As we celebrate this Mass on his Solemnity during the 150th anniversary of the Church’s being placed under his heavenly patronage, we ask him to help us to imitate his Eucharistic way of life, so that serving Christ with love and for love may likewise be of us our life!

The readings for today’s Mass were: