St. Joseph, the Shadow of the Father

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and in a surprise announcement this morning, Pope Francis also declared it the start of a new “Year of St Joseph” lasting until the Feast of the Immaculate Conception next year. Why inaugurate such a year, and why do it on a major Marian feast day? The pope explains:

After Mary, the Mother of God, no saint is mentioned more frequently in the papal magisterium than Joseph, her spouse. My Predecessors reflected on the message contained in the limited information handed down by the Gospels in order to appreciate more fully his central role in the history of salvation. Blessed Pius IX declared him “Patron of the Catholic Church”,[2] Venerable Pius XII proposed him as “Patron of Workers”[3] and Saint John Paul II as “Guardian of the Redeemer”.[4] Saint Joseph is universally invoked as the “patron of a happy death”.[5]

I hadn’t known that fact about St. Joseph being the second-most cited Saint in the papal magisterium. But I did know that the last 150 years’ worth of popes have pointed us to him continually, and bestowed various honors and titles upon him. And the first of those titles, “Patron of the Catholic Church” was given to St. Joseph on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception back in 1870 by Pope Pius IX, the same pope who had dogmatically declared the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception exactly 16 years earlier. The point seems to be that you can’t understand the story of St. Joseph without talking about Jesus, Mary, and the Church. In his trilogy on Mary, Mark Shea refers to Mary’s life as a “referred life,” by which he means that “the point of the perpetual virginity of Mary, as of the virgin birth, is that – again – the point is not about Mary. It’s about Christ and His Church.” So, too, Joseph’s life is “referred”: to Mary, to the Church, and especially to Jesus.

Pope Francis captures this aspect of St. Joseph when he refers to Jan Dobraczyński’s “evocative image” of Joseph as “the earthly shadow of the heavenly Father.” St. Paul writes in Ephesians 3:14-15 that “I bow my knees before the Patēr (Father), from whom every patria (family) in heaven and on earth is named.” So every parent, and particularly every father, is a sort of “shadow” of the one true Father. He’s the real Father, and the rest of us (both priests and biological fathers) are fathers only analogously. But of course, this is especially and intensely true in the life of St. Joseph, who isn’t the biological father of Jesus. He knows that he’s a sort of earthly “stand-in,” helping to raise a Child who properly belongs to the Father. It’s precisely in that role that he’s such a powerful model to all other fathers, because it’s a lot easier for us to forget that we’re also stand-ins. As Pope Francis explains:

Being a father entails introducing children to life and reality. Not holding them back, being overprotective or possessive, but rather making them capable of deciding for themselves, enjoying freedom and exploring new possibilities. Perhaps for this reason, Joseph is traditionally called a “most chaste” father. That title is not simply a sign of affection, but the summation of an attitude that is the opposite of possessiveness. Chastity is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life. Only when love is chaste, is it truly love. A possessive love ultimately becomes dangerous: it imprisons, constricts and makes for misery. God himself loved humanity with a chaste love; he left us free even to go astray and set ourselves against him. The logic of love is always the logic of freedom, and Joseph knew how to love with extraordinary freedom. He never made himself the centre of things. He did not think of himself, but focused instead on the lives of Mary and Jesus. [….]

Every child is the bearer of a unique mystery that can only be brought to light with the help of a father who respects that child’s freedom. A father who realizes that he is most a father and educator at the point when he becomes “useless”, when he sees that his child has become independent and can walk the paths of life unaccompanied. When he becomes like Joseph, who always knew that his child was not his own but had merely been entrusted to his care. In the end, this is what Jesus would have us understand when he says: “Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9).

There’s a profound spirituality of fatherhood interwoven within this letter: that the role of the earthly father is to protect his family without being overprotective, and even more, to empower his children to live in their God-given freedom. And again: this is a message that both pastors and biological fathers need to heed, because the temptation to quash the Christian freedom of our children (or parishioners) is ever-present… to decide things for others (so that they don’t sin or err or make mistakes), but in a way that inhibits their growth into the people that God desires them to become.

This calling isn’t an easy one. It’s easy enough to say “I want to empower my kids, not control them,” and it’s easy to see that (in general) this approach leads to happier, healthier, and holier adults than kids who grew up either in immoral chaos or under the thumbs of their parents. What’s hard, what’s maddeningly hard, is knowing how to live that out in the particulars of every day. And here, I think we should heed Pope Francis’ reflections on a part of the life of Jesus and Joseph that I never hear anyone really talk about:

As we read the infancy narratives, we may often wonder why God did not act in a more direct and clear way. [….] If at times God seems not to help us, surely this does not mean that we have been abandoned, but instead are being trusted to plan, to be creative, and to find solutions ourselves. [….]

The Gospel does not tell us how long Mary, Joseph and the child remained in Egypt. Yet they certainly needed to eat, to find a home and employment. It does not take much imagination to fill in those details. The Holy Family had to face concrete problems like every other family, like so many of our migrant brothers and sisters who, today too, risk their lives to escape misfortune and hunger. In this regard, I consider Saint Joseph the special patron of all those forced to leave their native lands because of war, hatred, persecution and poverty.

I wish he had spent more time on this, because the point is one that I have never heard preached on. Matt. 2:13-15a says that

Now when [the Magi] had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.

In the middle of the night, Joseph takes his wife and his newborn Son, and they flee the country, heading to Egypt. This wasn’t Joseph’s plan, and he had almost certainly never been to Egypt before. He doesn’t know how long he’s supposed to stay there, or where to settle, or what to do for a living, or whether he can tell anyone, or anything else. God gave him a flash of inspiration in a dream, but only enough light to take the first step of a journey. And then, it was up to him to figure out what to do until the angel should return. God went silent at a moment that Joseph couldn’t have felt was particularly convenient. And so Joseph was left to trust, but to act in the meantime.

Mary is the model of receptivity leading to action: she receives God in the Annunciation, and then she rises and goes to Elizabeth. Joseph shows us something slightly different: receptivity in action, listening to God while acting, waiting on God without waiting around. Here again, I can’t help but think of him as the perfect model for parents, especially for new parents, since the universal experience (no matter how many books you’ve read) is “I don’t know what I’m doing,” and prayerfully hoping that your best guesses aren’t doing any long-term damage.

Finally, if you’re looking for good Advent reading, or want to grow closer to St. Joseph, I’d recommend the pope’s letter. It’s fairly short, pretty straightforward, and insightful.

St. Joseph, pray for us!