March 19th, 2024
I’d like to think St. Joseph had some pretty great dad jokes.
“Wood you like to start this project, son?”
“You nailed it!”
Allow me one more…
“We’ll never be board with this one around, huh, Mary?”
Today is the solemnity of St. Joseph, the most chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The verse before the Gospel is Psalm 84:5:
“Blessed are those who dwell in your house, O Lord; they never cease to praise you.”
If those who dwell in the Lord’s house are blessed, then St. Joseph must be a prime example. While little is found in the Gospels about the humble earthly dad of our Lord, it is precisely this lack that points to who he is. In Redemptoris Custos, St. John Paul II speaks of this “aura” as “ a silence that reveals in a special way the inner portrait of the man. The Gospels speak exclusively of what Joseph ‘did.’ Still, they allow us to discover in his ‘actions’—shrouded in silence as they are—an aura of deep contemplation.”
St. Joseph was a man of deep interior life, a life that stemmed from his identity as a son of the Father and flowed into his relationship as foster father of the Son of God. I like to think Jesus learned to go off and pray on mountains by himself by first watching his father, Joseph, go off to pray before starting the work day. St. Joseph was so close to God–literally dwelling in a house with our Lord–his interior life was central to him.
And as St. JPII points out, his life of contemplation surrounds his life of action. The primacy of his interior life led to the vibrancy of his everyday life. His deep relationship with God in prayer necessitated a deep relationship with those around him, especially Jesus and the Blessed Mother.
St. Joseph lived a quiet life, and it was in this silence that he loved and worked radically. What we know of the Holy Family’s life together was marked by great suffering: fleeing persecution, moving to an unknown land, and losing Jesus on pilgrimage. And still, I’d be willing to bet it was marked by great joy: hosting community potlucks, celebrating Jesus’s first craft, and giggling at St. Joseph’s jokes.
In the last two weeks of Lent, how can we imitate St. Joseph’s example of quiet love, prayer, and work so to live with joy even amidst suffering? How can our life of prayer, rooted in our identity as children of the Father, breathe into our life of creativity? How can we allow Jesus to transform our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving into fruitful and abundant life?
Ok, ok, last one:
“It’s such a tree-t to be your dad, Jesus!”
Jesus, please carve a place in our hearts for devotion to your earthly father, that we might learn to live more like him and therefore more like you. St. Joseph, patron of the Universal Church, pray for us.
Zoe Dongas is an actor, musician, and educator based in NYC. She is the secretary for the board of The Catholic Artist Connection.