St. Joseph's Impact on My Life

My attitude toward St. Joseph has gone through three distinct phases in my life:

1. Apathy and Ignorance:  Largely when I was an atheist
2. Respect and Basic Knowledge:  While I was an Evangelical Protestant and for my first few years as a Catholic.
3. Devotion and Insight:  Increasing since 2003 as a Catholic single man.

Apathy and Ignorance
As an atheist, I think I knew who St. Joseph was, or at least I would have if you had prompted me a little bit:  "You know, husband of Mary, mother of Jesus?"  Oh yeah, that's right.  I never thought much about him because I never considered anything in any religion being true.  I sought to refute Christianity whenever I could, so pondering the life of St. Joseph was something quite beyond my capacity and desire.

Respect and Basic Knowledge
When I became a Christian and put my faith in Jesus Christ, I began to grow in my appreciation for God, for the apostles, and also, to a lesser degree for the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph.  I read the Bible and believed that it was true, so I knew that since Jesus chose Mary to be his mother, and St. Joseph to be his foster-father, I needed to respect them.  However, I was quite fearful of falling into sin by honoring them very much, as I saw Catholics do.

Since the Bible was my main guide for life, I didn't think too much about St. Joseph, because there just isn't very much about him in the Bible.  Here is a brief synopsis of how much St. Joseph is in the Bible:

• St. Joseph is a just man who is betrothed to Mary
• Mary is pregnant, so St. Joseph is going to quietly end their betrothal
• An angel explains to St. Joseph that the baby is Jesus Christ
• St. Joseph is with Mary when Jesus is born and they travel around a bit
• Twelve years go by, Jesus is left in the temple, Joseph and Mary go find him
• Eighteen years go by, Jesus begins his public ministry and St. Joseph is assumed to have died before then (for reasons explained later)
  

That's it!  As an Evangelical Protestant Christian who read the Bible almost everyday, it is no wonder that St. Joseph was not really on my radar screen even though I was now a Christian.  I don't remember any pastors I had talk about him much, besides perhaps some mention during Christmas time when he came up in the Nativity stories.  If God wanted us to know more about him, surely he would have put more into the Bible about him, right?

So I respected St. Joseph as Jesus' foster-father, but I didn't devote much thought to him because I didn't know much about him.

Devotion and Insight
In spite of all of this, God had some plans for me to learn about this man.  Oh yes.

When I converted to Catholicism, I heard a lot more about St. Joseph.  There were often statues of him in the Catholic parishes I went to; usually he was holding the infant Jesus and some kind of flowers in his hands.  There seemed to be some special days on the Church calendar dedicated to him under different titles, and some people clearly were devoted to him.

Upon accepting the Catholic Church's authority, I came to believe in all that the Church taught and proclaimed to be revealed by God.  This included the Communion of Saints, which among other things means we can ask the saints in Heaven to pray for us.  St. Joseph certainly was in Heaven, so I would sometimes ask him to pray for me.  However, I still did not know anything more of his life than I did when I was an Evangelical. 

After a few years, God blessed me with my first Catholic courtship (which means I dated a Catholic girl).  It turns out that she and her family were devoted to St. Joseph, and she pointed out to me that my birthday, March 19th, also was St. Joseph's solemnity.  "Hey, that's pretty cool," I thought.  She gave me a prayer card with St. Joseph's picture on it and a prayer, called the Boy Sweetheart's daily prayer.  Basically it asked St. Joseph to pray for me and direct me in choosing my future wife.  Also it asked him to guide our courtship to be chaste, unselfish, prudent, and joyful, and on the back of the card it had 6 rules for a good Catholic courtship which included things like going to Mass every Sunday and receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, being a gentleman like Jesus, and growing in esteem for the Sacrament of Marriage.   I kept it with me wherever I went and prayed it everyday (and still do).

My girlfriend also gave me a book called The Life of St. Joseph.  It gave a detailed account of his life from birth to death, including the decades he spent with Jesus and Mary in their family's "hidden life" that the Bible spoke so little about.  This book was written by a nun in the 1800's through a private revelation given to her by God.  It was awesome to read, as I began learning so much about St. Joseph that I had never known before.

God graciously brought devotion to St. Joseph into my life during this time as I read this book and asked him to pray for me everyday.  Soon he became as close to me as my patron saint, St. Therese of Lisieux.  I thought often about his life so close to Jesus, teaching him carpentry, living with God himself, who was obedient to him, a human man!  I also meditated with awe on his exalted position as our Blessed Mother's husband.  It became clear to me that God the Father had chosen this man to be his own image on the earth, to mirror his relationship with His Son. 

My girlfriend gave me another gift, as well, a book of favorite prayers to St. Joseph.  Among them was the Prayer for Purity:


I began praying this prayer everyday, for the grace to be pure and grow in the virtue of purity.  And St. Joseph came through!  God fostered in my heart a deeper and deeper appreciation for purity and for how pure St. Joseph was.  Satan hated St. Joseph (and still does) and wanted to draw him into evil to harm Jesus and Mary, and he tried to tempt St. Joseph against holy purity, but God, through a special grace, refused to allow St. Joseph to ever even be tempted against purity.  So awesome was the vocation St. Joseph was given as the husband of Mary, full of grace, and Jesus Christ, who is God himself, that it was flat out disallowed that St. Joseph be tempted against purity.  Satan could not understand how this could be, as he is able to tempt so many man and draw them into evil through lustful temptations.  Sorry, Satan, that's why St. Joseph is known as the Terror of demons!  I regularly ask God, through St. Joseph's powerful intercession, to give me the same grace to be preserved against even the temptation to be impure.  I encourage you to do so, too.

My devotion and love for St. Joseph has grown over these years, and I count on him everyday to pray for me.  The main things I ask his help in are purity and for my future wife.  I lived for a long time in impurity, and I need God's healing grace to transform me into the man he created me to be.  With St. Joseph's help, I know I am becoming that man.  If you are striving to be pure in your life, go to Joseph!  Jesus was obedient to him on earth--how can he refuse him anything in Heaven?


St. Joseph holds lilies in his hands because when he went to the temple in Jerusalem for the choosing of Mary's husband, all the men were given dead branches, and after the priests prayed, St. Joseph's dead branch burst to life with lily blossoms, marking him as chosen by God for Mary. 

St. Joseph, pray for us!