The month of March is dedicated to the Head of the Holy Family, good Saint Joseph. Rather than write something of my own for the occasion, I thought I would share a medley of offerings on today’s saint with my readers. In the interests of transparency, I wear many hats, and my “writer hat” has been temporarily placed on its rack in recent days due to other responsibilities absorbing my time.

But God’s Providence is good! Today, an excellent Catholic Action League of Massachusetts newsletter came to me, written by our good friend, Joe Doyle. It is below.

In addition, as I prayed Matins for today’s feast late last night, I thought it would be a good thing to share the wonderful excerpts from Saints Bernard and Jerome that the Roman Church has seen fit to put on the lips and minds of her priests and religious today. Courtesy of the Divinum Officium site, they follow Joe’s piece.

A blessed feast (and month) of the glorious Saint Joseph to you all!

---

The Popes on Saint Joseph
By Joe Doyle (subscribe here)

March 19th is the Feast of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Head of the Holy Family, Confessor, and Patron of the Universal Church.

The Gospel of Saint Matthew tells us that Saint Joseph was “a just man.” The New Testament records no words of Saint Joseph. The Foster Father of Our Savior instructs us and edifies us however, by his example—of profound Faith, humility and resignation, and of perfect obedience to the will of God. 

In Quamquam Prulies, his 1889 Encyclical On Devotion To Saint Joseph, Pope Leo XIII reminds us that “…Joseph was the spouse of Mary and that he was reputed the Father of Jesus Christ. From these sources have sprung his dignity, his holiness, his glory.”

The Holy Father emphasizes again that “…Joseph shines among all mankind by the most august dignity, since by divine will, he was the guardian of the Son of God and reputed as His father among men.”

According to Pope Leo “Fathers of families find in Joseph the best personification of paternal solicitude and vigilance; spouses a perfect example of love, of peace, and of conjugal fidelity; virgins at the same time find in him the model and protector of virginal integrity.”

Devotion to Saint Joseph bears a special significance to the contemporary struggle to protect the sanctity of innocent human life.

In 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II commended the life of children not yet born to the protection of Saint Joseph.

Just as Saint Joseph, upon the instruction of an angel, carried the Christ Child, Innocence Himself, to Egypt to escape the murderous wrath of Herod, let us invoke the intercession of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Unborn, to deliver the innocent children of today from the modern day successors of Herod who pursue, with fiendish zeal, the Luciferian obseession to destroy human life in the womb.

Saint Joseph is the Patron Saint of Canada. Here in New England, the Virgin Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God is the Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Hartford and the Diocese of Manchester.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The Feast of Saint Joseph is, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law, one of ten holydays of obligation in the Universal Church. It is not however, one of the only six days in the United States when attendance at Mass is required under pain of serious sin.

This is not because of any lack of esteem for the role of Saint Joseph in the economy of the Incarnation.

Rather, it relates to particular historical circumstances, specifically, the economic and cultural conditions faced by Catholic immigrants to this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. America then was a laissez faire capitalist society where 72 hour work weeks—12 hour days—were common.

Protestant employers moreover, were usually unsympathetic to Catholic religious practices, and would often dock or fire Catholic workers who showed up late for work on holydays.

As a consequence, Catholic workingmen, like this writer’s grandfather, who emigrated from Galway to Boston in 1906, would, on holydays of obligation, have to rise before 4am so they could attend Mass at 5am, thus ensuring that they would arrive at work on time at 6am.

As a concession, taking into account this hardship, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore decreed in 1884 that there would be only six holydays of obligation in the United States.

---

Here is an excerpt from a sermon in which the Mellifluous Doctor shows us the aptness of that title. He is connecting the dots between the typical Joseph of the Old Testament (the son of Jacob), and the New-Testament antitype, the great Patriarch of the Holy Family.

From the Sermons of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
2nd on Luke i. 26

What and what manner of man the blessed Joseph was, we may gather from that title wherewith, albeit only as a deputy, God deemed him fit to be honoured he was both called, and supposed to be the Father of God. We may gather it from his very name, which, being interpreted, signifieth Increase. Remember likewise that great Patriarch who was sold into Egypt, and know that the Husband of Mary not only received his name, but inherited his purity, and was likened to him in innocence and in grace.

If then, that Joseph that was sold by his brethren through envy, and was brought down to Egypt, was a type of Christ sold by a disciple, and handed over to the Gentiles, the other Joseph flying from the envy of Herod carried Christ into Egypt. That first Joseph kept loyal to his master, and would not carnally know his master’s wife; that second Joseph knew that the Lady, the Mother of his Lord, was a virgin, and he himself remained faithfully virgin toward her. To that first Joseph it was given to know dark things in interpreting of dreams; to the second Joseph it was given in sleep to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

The first Joseph laid by bread, not for himself, but for all people; the second Joseph received into his keeping that Living Bread Which came down from heaven, not for him only, but for the whole world. We cannot doubt but that that Joseph was good and faithful to whom was espoused the Mother of the Saviour. Yea, I say, he was a faithful and wise servant, whom the Lord appointed to be the comfort of His own Mother, the keeper of His own Body, and the only and trusty helper in the Eternal Counsels.

---

The following is from a commentary of the great Doctor of Bibllical Studies. He is commenting on today’s Gospel for the Holy Mass, Matt. 1:18-21.

Homily by St. Jerome, Priest
Book of Commentaries, on Matth. i.

Why was the Lord conceived of an espoused virgin rather than of a free? First, for the sake of the genealogy of Mary, which we have obtained by that of Joseph. Secondly, because she was thus saved from being stoned by the Jews as an adulteress. Thirdly, that Himself and His mother might have a guardian on their journey into Egypt. To these, Ignatius, the martyr of Antioch, has added a fourth reason namely, that the birth might take place unknown to the devil, who would naturally suppose that Mary had conceived by Joseph.

Before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. She was found, that is, by Joseph, but by no one else. He had already almost an husband’s privilege to know all that concerned her. Before they came together. This doth not imply that they ever did come together the Scripture merely showeth the absolute fact that up to this time they had not done so.

Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. If any man be joined to a fornicatress they become one body; and according to the law they that are privy to a crime are thereby guilty. How then can it be that Joseph is described as a just man, at the very time he was compounding the criminality of his espoused? It must have been that he knew her to be pure, and yet understood not the mystery of her pregnancy, but, while he wondered at that which had happened, was willing to hold his peace.

See also: 

• The Virginal Espousals of Saint Joseph and Our Lady, Part I
• The Virginal Espousals of Saint Joseph and Our Lady, Part II