Feast Day: May 1st (today, in fact — Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum!)
The Man Chosen by God
Saint Joseph holds a place in the economy of salvation that no other saint, save the Blessed Virgin Mary herself, can claim: he was chosen by the Eternal Father to be the virginal spouse of the Mother of God and the foster-father of the Incarnate Word. Sacred Scripture, with that characteristic Hebraic restraint, tells us that he was “a just man” (Matt. 1:19) — and in this single phrase, as Saint Jerome and the Fathers observed, the whole sanctity of Joseph is contained. To be justus in the biblical sense is to possess the fullness of the virtues, to walk blamelessly before God.
He was of the royal house of David (Matt. 1:20; Luke 2:4), a tekton — a craftsman, traditionally rendered as carpenter — of Nazareth, that obscure village of which Nathanael once asked, “Can any thing of good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46, Douay-Rheims).
Hidden Life and Sublime Vocation
Scripture records not a single word from the lips of Saint Joseph. His sanctity is one of silence, obedience, and labor. Four times the Gospel tells us he received divine messages in dreams, and four times he obeyed without hesitation: taking Mary into his home, fleeing into Egypt, returning to Israel, and settling in Nazareth (Matt. 1–2). Saint Bernard of Clairvaux marvels at this: “As the Lord has appointed him to be the head and faithful guardian of His most precious treasures, so it behooves us to revere and to invoke him.”
Joseph nourished by the labor of his hands the very Bread that came down from heaven. He taught the carpenter’s craft to Him through whom “all things were made” (John 1:3). He dwelt in chaste virginal communion with her who is Theotokos, the Mother of God — a marriage true and complete, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches in the Summa (III, q. 29), in which the goods of matrimony were perfectly fulfilled though preserved in perpetual virginity.
The Feast of May 1st: Saint Joseph the Worker
The feast we keep today has a particular history. From the Middle Ages, the Church honored the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the third Wednesday after Easter — a feast extended to the universal Church by Pope Pius IX in 1847 and elevated by Saint Pius X. In 1955, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker on May 1st, that the Christian dignity of labor might be set against the materialist and Marxist celebrations of that day. As the Holy Father declared, the Church “raises up before you, O workers, your humble and glorious Patron, the heavenly artisan of Nazareth.”
In him, all who labor find their model: work sanctified by prayer, ordered to God, performed with reverence as a participation in the creative providence of the Father.
Patron of the Universal Church
In 1870, Blessed Pope Pius IX, by the decree Quemadmodum Deus, solemnly proclaimed Saint Joseph the Patron of the Universal Church. As the patriarch Joseph in Egypt was the steward to whom Pharaoh said, “Ite ad Joseph” — “Go to Joseph” (Gen. 41:55) — so the faithful are bidden to go to this New Joseph, set as guardian over the Mystical Body just as he was guardian of the Holy Family.
Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Quamquam Pluries (1889) is the great treatise on his patronage, and remains an inexhaustible source of meditation.
Patron of a Holy Death
Tradition holds — and it is the constant teaching of the spiritual masters, confirmed by the visions of saints such as Saint Teresa of Ávila — that Saint Joseph passed from this life in the arms of Jesus and Mary, before the Public Ministry began. For this reason the Church invokes him as the Patron of a Happy Death, since none could be more blessed than to die thus attended.
Saint Teresa wrote with characteristic vigor: “To other saints the Lord seems to have given grace to succor us in some particular necessity; but to this glorious saint, I know by experience, He has given the grace to help us in all.”
Lessons for Imitation
From Saint Joseph the Christian soul learns several great virtues, woven together as one:
His silence teaches us that sanctity is not measured in words but in fidelity. His obedience to God’s will, instant and complete, rebukes our hesitations. His chastity — the lily ever placed in his hand in sacred art — calls us to purity of heart and body. His labor, sanctified and offered, shows that no honest work is beneath the dignity of a Christian; rather, it is the very means by which we are sanctified in our state of life. His hiddenness is a reproach to our love of recognition.
Saint Josemaría wrote that Joseph teaches us that “to be a saint is not the privilege of a few” — but this had been the constant teaching of the Tradition long before, voiced by Saint Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life: holiness is the duty of every Christian in his proper state.
A Practical Application
On this his feast, consider three practices that the saints have commended:
Pray daily the Litany of Saint Joseph, approved by Saint Pius X, which contains the most beautiful titles ever given him: Splendor of patriarchs, Guardian of the Redeemer, Most chaste, Most prudent, Pillar of families, Hope of the sick, Patron of the dying.
Consecrate your daily labor to him each morning, asking that you may work as he worked — in the presence of Jesus, with reverence, without complaint, as an offering to the Father.
Begin the practice of the Seven Sundays of Saint Joseph, recalling his Seven Sorrows and Seven Joys — an ancient devotion of great fruit, especially for those preparing for death or seeking some particular grace.
A Prayer
The traditional prayer composed by Pope Leo XIII, appointed to be said after the Rosary, especially in the month of October but fitting always:
Ad te, beáte Ioseph, in tribulatióne nostra confúgimus…
To thee, O blessed Joseph, do we have recourse in our tribulation, and having implored the help of thy thrice holy Spouse, we confidently invoke thy patronage also. By that charity wherewith thou wast united to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and by that fatherly affection with which thou didst embrace the Child Jesus, we beseech thee and we humbly pray that thou wouldst look graciously upon the inheritance which Jesus Christ hath purchased by His blood, and assist us in our needs by thy power and strength.
Ite ad Joseph.
If you wish to continue, the Lives of the Saints path opens onto the great Josephite tradition — the writings of Saint Bernardine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Ávila’s chapters in her Life, the True Devotion to Saint Joseph of Saint Peter Julian Eymard, and the encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XII. I would be glad to walk through any of these with you, or to draw you into the Sacred Liturgy path through the proper of today’s feast in the traditional Roman calendar.