St. Joseph’s Spiritual Profile

Each year, the solemnity of St Joseph invites me to delve deeper into this living gem of God. I love to call St Joseph gem of God because, as we shall see, he was and still is God’s gem for us in many ways. In order to appreciate this powerful reality in St Joseph, I chose to look at his spiritual identity.

Pope St John Paul II used to say about identity:You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you of who you really are. By this quote this great Pope is teaching us that our identity is not found in the troubling sea of fear, anxiety or the gale force of what others think of us. Our true identity is that we are God’s children. I am pretty sure that St Joseph was so much in touch with this reality. After all, he lived with the Son of God made man. In Jesus he saw God’s paternity as well as his personal sonship, through Jesus, in the Father. However, it is important also to see what others say of who St Joseph is because it helps us appreciate and befriend, more and more, this most trustful friend that can ever exist for us after Jesus and Mary. The saints are so capable in telling us who St Joseph really is. Their reflections, based on their personal experience with this saint, will help us form a spiritual profile of St Joseph.

St Teresa of Avila had marvellous experiences of St Joseph’s most powerful intercession. She confides with you and I: I wish I could persuade everyone to be devoted to the glorious St Joseph, for I have great experience of the blessings which he can obtain from God. I do not remember that I have ever asked anything of him which he has failed to grant. St Teresa kept showing her amazement at St Joseph’s intercession when she said: I am astonished at the great favors which God has bestowed on me through this blessed saint, and at the perils from which he has delivered me, both in body and in soul. Moreover, for St Teresa, St Joseph’s intercession caters for every kind of necessity that exists under the sun. The reason is that since in the world Our Lord was subject to St Joseph, now even in Heaven He is somehow subject to St Joseph’s supplication. She said: To other saints, the Lord seems to have given grace to help us in some of our necessities. But my experience is that St Joseph helps us in them all; also that the Lord wishes to teach us that, as he was himself subject on earth to St. Joseph, so in heaven he now does all that Joseph asks. St Alphonsus Liguori was on the same lines when he said: The Lord, who on earth honored Saint Joseph as a father, will certainly not refuse him anything he asks in heaven. In another wonderful piece of wisdom, this great Napolitan bishop prayed wholeheartedly to St Joseph: My dear St Joseph pray to Jesus for me. Certainly He can never refuse you anything, as He obeyed all your orders while on earth. Tell Him to detach me from all creatures and from myself, to inflame me with His holy love, and then do with me what he pleases.

St André Bessette, lay brother of the Congregation of Holy Cross and great devotee of St Joseph, said that in every situation we are to invoke the Guardian of the Redeemer as well as asking him what he would do were he in our position. He said: When you invoke St Joseph, you don’t have to say much. Say, “if you were in my place, St Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this on my behalf.” Pope Pius XI explains to us why St Joseph’s intercession is extremely powerful. His intercession cannot be but all-powerful. For what could Jesus and Mary refuse to St. Joseph, as he was entirely devoted to them all his life, and to whom they truly owed the means of their earthly existence?

Pope St Paul VI reminds us that St Joseph was capable, by God’s grace of channeling his familial love into a super offering of himself at the service of the Messiah, the Lord of all. Pope Paul VI reflects: Joseph turned his human vocation to domestic love into a superhuman oblation of himself, his heart and all his abilities, a love placed at the service of the Messiah who was growing to maturity in his home. This extraordinary self-offering to the Holy Family made Joseph an ideal candidate for being the patron saint of Christ’s Church. Pope Leo XIII expressed this reflection so well when he wrote: Joseph was in his day the lawful and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family…. It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph’s dignity that, in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ. St Joseph’s intercession helps us to cooperate fully with God’s grace. Blessed Basil Moreau, founder of the Congregation of the Holy Cross tells us: I ask you to obtain from St. Joseph for us all, and especially for me who feels myself most in need of his aid, the grace of not hampering in any way the work which God has been pleased to entrust to us; rather, I ask that we may cooperate in every way with His designs by refusing no sacrifice to His grace.

I would like to solidify this amazing spiritual profile of St Joseph by recalling Pope Francis’ prayer to St Joseph in apostolic letter commemorating the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St Joseph as patron of the universal church, Patris Corde, written on 8 December 2020:

Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.

Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy and courage,
and defend us from every evil. Amen.