We all know St. Joseph as the foster-father of the Son of God and chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary… and of course these are his two most glorious titles. But we sometimes neglect to consider that he was only father and husband because he was first a son… a son of God. Not merely in the sense of having been created by the omnipotent Creator, but being completely and entirely submitted to the will of the Father. As a child is entirely dependent upon his parents and is carried or led by the hand through it’s daily existence, so is the child of God throughout his entire life. And we find in St. Joseph the most extraordinary example of this childlike confidence among mere mortal men.
A simple meditation on the conduct of Saint Joseph in the Gospels puts us all to shame. Time and time again St. Joseph is tested by God. And time and time again St. Joseph gives the same response, immediate and unreserved obedience based on trust and total dependence. Consider a toddler learning to walk. At first, he follows along holding his fathers hand as he’s led to and fro. But at some point, the father will let go and tell the child, “walk to me.”
Trust is a scary thing. And trust in big things is even scarier. We learn from the Gospels that St. Joseph had ample opportunities for trust… The trial of Our Lady’s mysterious motherhood, the poverty in Bethlehem, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the child Jesus in the temple…
What would we have done if we found ourselves in any one of these situations?
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that most of us have quite a bit to learn from St. Joseph. He was chosen as the head of the Holy Family, not because of his own greatness, but because of the greatness of his trust in Divine Providence and his unquestioning submission to the will of his Father in Heaven.
Another key note of St. Joseph is his silence. He never says a word in the Gospels, he’s always listening. He listens, he hears, and he obeys. Like a child, St. Joseph was led by the hand, but at times was asked to take a leap of faith and walk. And walk he did, with the simplicity of a child who knows his Father will never let him fall. This is the action of the man that God chose to be the foster-father of the Son of God and head of the holy family.
Men and especially fathers need to pay close attention to this. To be a good father and husband, you must first be a good son.
St. Joseph, pray for us!
