Tuesday, March 19, marks the Feast of St. Joseph, patron saint of the universal Church and Jesus’ earthly father.
Who is St. Joseph?
Pope Francis describes him as “a man who doesn’t speak but obeys, a man of tenderness, a man capable of fulfilling his promises so that they become solid, secure.”
The husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the legal father of Jesus according to Jewish law, Joseph serves as a model of humility and obedience to God’s will. He followed God’s instructions, given by angels in dreams, and took the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife, protected her and Jesus from the child’s birth in Bethlehem through the family’s sojourn in Egypt, and provided for them as a carpenter in Nazareth.
Like Joseph, the Pope says, when “we dream great things, beautiful things, we draw close to God’s dream, the things that God dreams for us.”
This feast, which was celebrated locally as early as the ninth century, became a universal feast in the 16th century. Pope Pius IX named Joseph patron of the universal Church in 1870; he is also the patron saint of carpenters, the dying and workers.
Check your parish bulletins for March 19 Mass celebrations for the Feast of St. Joseph.