Saint Joseph: the Rehabilitation of Piety

On December 8, 2020, Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter Patris Corde announced the year of Saint Joseph for most of the calendar year 2021, which will be completed on December 8, 2021. This announcement took much of the Catholic world by surprise. There were people who were pushing the idea, most notably Fr. Donald M. Calloway, MIC, the author of the very popular book Consecration to St. Joseph. These and quite a few other people were completely delighted by the proclamation of the Holy Father. No matter what one thinks about Pope Francis’ merits and demerits, it seems pretty clear from his Papacy that he is a man with a robust, characteristically Latin form of piety, especially Marian piety.

Piety, of course, in the theological sense, is both a gift of the Holy Spirit and a virtue. It consists in reverencing God lovingly as Father and giving him worship as a result. It is unfortunate that for quite a few people, ‘piety’ does not invoke either the strong civic and religious connotations of ancient Rome or the theological understanding, but rather is used almost as a pejorative noun. This is a shame. Piety is almost then understood as belonging to the realm of superstition and superficial religious belief, rather than as an important support to the mind and sensibility of the individual believer and the body of the Church.

The word piety has fallen on hard times in recent decades, but its importance cannot be denied. I think sometimes for some Priests, the experience of Seminary can harden them against the forms of piety we call ‘popular’, because they are more enthusiastically practiced by the lay faithful than by the clergy. A similar reason may exist for why mysticism has received poor treatment in the contemporary Church: because there is the nagging fear that the practitioners of certain pieties and mysticisms may be one step away from psychological instability at best, and at worst, it is a fig leaf for deeper, more sinister motivations. Over and above this, there is the tragic fact that so few clergy possess a genuine mystical sensibility, and were never even educated to identify legitimate manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians, and in their own souls. The bad example of both Priests and lay people who used piety and mysticism as a tool for their narcissistic exploitation of well-intentioned individuals sticks in the mind, and has led to a deep cynicism. Yet no less of a document as the Directory on the Life and Ministry of Priests, praises all sorts of piety for the Priest, from a deep devotion to the oft-neglected Liturgy of the Hours, to Eucharistic Adoration, and Marian Devotion. Piety from the part of the Priest, when authentic, is usually an attractive quality to the majority of the faithful.

The year of Saint Joseph and its proclamation by the Holy Father has created an interesting phenomenon by reactions to it. Admittedly, it was unfortunate that it was announced without much forewarning, so that the Church might prepare more suitably. The reaction of Priests and faithful worldwide appears to be mixed, and could be linked to what I would half-jokingly call a “Piety Index”; for those people for whom popular piety is very important, the year of Saint Joseph is a wonderful celebration. For those who care less for popular piety, the year of Saint Joseph, even if it is the 150th anniversary of his declaration as Patron of the Universal Church, is almost a strange superfluity.

Saint Joseph without piety and mysticism is a difficult Saint to understand. There are several reasons for this. First, there is such a paucity of Scriptural content regarding his life. He speaks even less than Mary, and seems to disappear from the scene in the Gospels before the public ministry of Our Lord. Still, there are indications from documents even like the Protoevangelion of James of early reverence for Saint Joseph. Yet this document, like a few others, mainly were circulated in the East, and so several feasts, like the Presentation of Mary, were adopted relatively early in the East before they spread to the West. Perhaps that too is part of the difficulty of understanding Saint Joseph: our modern Western disdain for the apocryphal as synonymous with counterfeit or spurious. Yes, scholars know that so much ‘apocryphal’ material is full of legend and embellishment, but a great deal of it also contains collaborative data regarding gaps in the canonical texts. And the ground is shifting in contemporary scholarship. Just to return to the Protoevangelium of James, 19th and 20th century scholar dismissed it as mostly pious legend. But the finds of contemporary archaeology, especially as we know more about the daily life of Jews in the first century, have begun to reveal that the author had far more first-hand knowledge than we recognized previously. Even the scholar and archaeologist Fr. Bargil Pixner was led to make the cautious proclamation that it “was not impossible that some of the content [of the Protoevangelion] was indeed based on the traditions of the Jesus family.” It is from that document that we understand that Joseph was a widower, and that Mary’s uncle Zechariah (St. John the Baptist’s Father) arranged the betrothal between Joseph and Mary. Eusebius of Caesarea in the same vein mentions that Joseph himself had been adopted after the premature death of his own father by one Eli, short for Eliachim, which in Greek is Joachim, or the father of Mary. Since Joachim and Anne only had Mary, and women could not inherit according to Jewish Law, Joachim had to find a son-in-law from the same larger family and formally adopt him.

When we utilize these practical, cultural and historical clues in order to situate St. Joseph as a man in time, we then should not be ashamed then to move to an analysis of his figure based upon Biblical typologies and allegory. Biblical typologies are essential in order to understand the relationships of ideas within the different books of the Bible, let alone the Old and New Testaments. Part of the impoverishment and sterility of Biblical exegesis in the past century has been an overemphasis on the textual minutiae and questions of source, and losing sight of the bigger picture. We ought not to make the same mistake in regard to St. Joseph. St. Joseph, as he is depicted in St. Matthew’s Gospel, is clearly a man much like his namesake, the Patriarch Joseph; he is a man whose dreams are vehicles of divine communication. St. Joseph has a similar exitus-reditus as the Old Testament Joseph. The parallels are deep and rich. St. Joseph flees for his life and that of his family to Egypt, much like Joseph was ceased involuntarily by slavers. St. Joseph travels with the infant King of Kings and his Mother, who is the type of the New Israel. Joseph became the steward of pharaoh, and by his prudent management, was able to save food sufficient so that the people would survive famine. St. Joseph in a similar sense is the steward of his Son, and by his protection and fidelity, he preserved and loved the one whose flesh and blood are food and drink for the life of the world. There are many more analogies we could observe in the stories.

St. Joseph is also the last flowering of the great Biblical Patriarchs. It is a great shame that the word “Patriarchy” has become such a dirty word in contemporary society, but there is nothing wrong with Patriarchy in itself, just like there is nothing wrong with Matriarchy. Both men and women are ‘sources’ (that is what arche means) in their own ways, partially informed by biology, and partially informed (or deformed) by society and culture. Both should be sources of nurturing, working in harmony, for the sake of the children they raise and also the wider culture. St. Joseph is probably the most quiet of the Patriarchs, but it seems fitting that he should guard a sort of reverential silence as the protector of the one who is the Word of the Father, the Wisdom of God Incarnate. Just as the Blessed Virgin likewise defers to her son in all things, without abandoning her role as his earthly mother, so to must have St. Joseph. What a strange, yet beautiful home life it must have been!

All the above reflections are derived from the use of Biblical typology. Catholics by and large are the most Biblically illiterate of the Christian denominations, and it should not surprise us that if most Catholics are ignorant of the Scriptures in terms of the ‘simple’ text, they do not easily comprehend the Biblical typologies. But we have a backdoor to teach this: popular piety. It is by no means as rich as the Scriptures themselves, but it is derived from them, and places the souls of the faithful in the salubrious air of Divine Revelation. Let’s take for one example the exquisite Litany of Saint Joseph, which I especially love to pray, like the Litany of Loreto, in Latin. Calling St. Joseph the “light of Patriarchs” and “renowned offspring of David”, helps to link him with the Old Testament. Likewise, calling him “Spouse of the Mother of God…foster father of the Son of God” reminds us about his role in the Holy Family. From this, the Litany moves to his personal virtues to be imitated, namely his justice, chastity, prudence, strength, obedience, fidelity, patience, and simplicity. Finally, the Litany expounds what are traditionally the areas where his intercession is most powerful, which are: for laborers, families, virgins, the “wretched”, the sick, the dying, the Church, and those who need protection against demons.

Once again I have to make use of Fr. Donald Calloway’s own words regarding Devotion to Saint Joseph, that he feels this is the “time of Joseph“, a providentially destined time during which the faithful will more fully and earnestly appreciate his role in Salvation History, and therefore his power in the spiritual order of things. It has been remarked in the past, not without merit, that the Second Vatican Council’s Liturgical Reform strangely promoted a greater respect for Jews and Judaism, while completely gutting the liturgical commemoration of the Old Testament Prophets and Patriarchs. Concomitant with that, some liturgists, who at times can fall prey to the temptation of believing that they are singularly precocious in terms of historical knowledge, decided to cast doubt, or outright abolish, the commemoration of Saints deemed ‘legendary’ or of dubious historical attestation. I do not deny the importance of reality and history in our faith; after all, we are a religion predicated completely on the actual and historical facts of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord. But at the same time, when scholars begin to denigrate, and finally erase, some of the historically most significant objects of Christian piety, such at St. Barbara or St. Catherine of Alexandria, something has gone awry. St. Joseph arguably has not had an easy time in the contemporary Church. To summarize: he seems too “Old Testament”, most of his miracles and stories about his intercession sound too good to be true to those not inclined to popular piety. He seems to some more like a medieval miracle saint than a historical figure.

But that bifurcation of his identity is more a manifestation of what we have become as modern people, than who St. Joseph is and was. I think also this is a manifestation of our increasingly fatherless society; the silence and distance of St. Joseph from the bulk of the biblical narrative seems to parallel what some people experienced in a cold and distant relationship with their own fathers. But I wager that this is far more a work of eisegesis (‘reading in’ to the figure of St. Joseph) rather than allowing his person and deeds to inform our own assessment of him, and even of fatherhood in general.

In an increasingly materialistic and anti-metaphysical culture, teaching people how to have an affectionate, trusting and close relationship with Christ and the Saints in prayer and in virtue is a tall order. I do believe it is Saint Joseph’s Hour, and I believe he occupies an ideal place to reconcile the tendencies within the contemporary Church. One is the world of popular piety without much anchoring in the data of Divine Revelation, but which should not be despised merely on this account. The other is the world of scholarship and ‘deconstruction’, which, although it has helped purify the practice of superstition and our susceptibility to the abuse of cultic personalities, finds itself without the warmth and fervor which piety is supposed to inculcate.

St. Joseph deserves the attention of all Christians because of his preeminent, albeit muted, role in Salvation History. He is a bridge, much like the Blessed Mother and Our Lord, between so many aspects of the Old and New Testaments, as well as divergent tendencies within the Church herself. A more ardent and real devotion to him would not just help individuals in their spiritual journey, but would provide a great teachable moment to share the importance of devotion to the Saints, the dignity of work, the importance of fatherhood (and manhood in general), and the virtues of family life. St. Joseph may have been largely silent in the Biblical narrative, but he has a lot to say and to share with all men and women today. It is time to let him speak to us.