You Don't Know St. Joe?
I'm pretty sure you do.
Of all the Biblical figures, St. Joseph has got to be one of the easiest to make jokes about. After all, his life is the perfect setup for a sitcom. He’s a white collar carpenter who marries the perfect woman and they give birth to the most precocious child in history. Hilarity ensues. Catch new episodes of “Oh, St. Joe” Thursday nights on NBC!
One Biblical fun fact that people love to reference around the Feast of St. Joseph is the reality that he is not quoted even once in Scripture. Jokes can fly about that as well. If you lived in a house with two perfect people, you wouldn’t have much to say either!
All of this leads to the stereotype that we don’t know much about St. Joseph. To paraphrase Churchill, St. Joseph is a riddle wrapped in an enigma covered in sawdust. He is the silent guy in the background of the holy card behind his “famous” wife and son.
But in the past few years, I have begun to rely on St. Joseph more heavily as a powerful intercessor for me as a husband and father. The idea of asking for a saint’s intercession is a relatively new concept for me, but one that has provided spiritual reassurance in times of distress, frustration, or other “Dad moments” when patience is thin and crankiness (from me or the kids) runs rampant.
So I reject the notion that we don’t know St. Joe. I recognize him all the time in the ordinary moments of my paternal existence.
St. Joseph is there when my son skins his knee and erupts in shrieks and I scoop him up into my arms for a comforting hug.
St. Joseph is there when I get home from work and four kids run out of the garage to greet me.
St. Joseph is there when the basement is a mess of toys and no one will cooperate with the cleanup effort.
St. Joseph is there when I’m making tough decisions for my family.
St. Joseph is there when my daughter is asking me important questions that require thoughtful answers.
St. Joseph is there when I’m playing catch with my son.
St. Joseph is there when I’m sick or my back hurts or I’m tired but I keep doing the thing anyway.
St. Joseph is there when I’m dropping the kids off at school or handling bedtime or making them breakfast on a Saturday morning.
St. Joseph is there when I’m working late or questioning my life choices or arguing with my wife.
St. Joseph is always there as a model of heroic holiness.
He was a real person, a real husband, and a real father. The fact that he was not “blessed among men” and had all the same proclivities to sin makes him that much more relatable to me and makes his life that much more extraordinary.
We believe Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He had a fully human experience on Earth, which means he didn’t raise himself. He had a father who taught him how to be a man and no doubt made mistakes in that process. What a comfort that men can call upon him in our own times of struggle and rely on the power of his prayers to his son to give us the strength and wisdom we need to carry on in our appointed vocations.
St. Joseph, pray for us! We know you’re there.
P.S. Read more thoughts on St. Joe! I wrote this piece for U.S. Catholic magazine in 2021.
And let's not forget that everytime we encounter St. Joseph in scripture, he is being woken out of a sound sleep by an angel - parent angels might be a little smaller, but we might have some working knowledge of sleepless.nights. Thanks, Matt. Your reflections are great.