The Bishop's Perspective - St. Joseph, the Unsung Hero of the Church

We are all familiar with the term “unsung hero,” but throughout the last eleven months of this worldwide pandemic, that term has taken on new meaning. We admire all those working on “the front lines,” fulfilling essential services for our local communities, all the while helping the rest of us to stay safe. Among those “unsung heroes” are all those in the medical field — doctors, nurses, EMTs; public safety officials and all “first responders”; educators, parents, as well as our clergy and community/parish volunteers and so many more. As I think about the characteristics of those individuals, we almost can’t help but acknowledge that St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, stands out as the primary example of an unsung hero, as he quietly, yet heroically, cared for the Holy Family.

This past December on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis surprised the Universal Church with his beautiful Apostolic Letter, Patris Corde (With A Father’s Heart), in which he has called the Church to celebrate 2021 as a special “Year of St. Joseph.”

It sometimes feels like St. Joseph is dismissed because the Gospels do not record even one word spoken by him. But it is precisely through his silent example that we are given his model of heroic holiness, as he obediently follows the directions given him by the Angel and willingly goes to great lengths to care for and lovingly protect the Holy Family.

From the first incident involving St. Joseph in the Gospel, he found himself between a rock and a hard place. When he learned that his espoused wife, Mary, was pregnant, “he decided to divorce her quietly” (Mt.1:19), not out of anger, but as an act of mercy and in an effort to save her reputation. Jewish Law dictated that a woman in that circumstance should be stoned to death. But after the Angel told him in a dream to go ahead and “take Mary as your wife because this Child has been conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit ...” (Mt.1:20), he did as he was told. He acted with heroic mercy and great courage. St. Joseph’s actions challenge us to ask ourselves: how willing are we to forgive others, to give them the benefit of the doubt and to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit to do what we might not at first be inclined to do?

As Pope Francis points out, in the same way thatMary did, St. Joseph also submit-ted to God’s holy will with his own “fiat.” The choice he was asked to make was profound-ly challenging and dangerous, but his love for God, and for Mary, gave him the docility to listen to the Angel and the courage to act accordingly. He took Mary as his wife, and, from that moment on, he protected, cared for and loved this Holy Family.

St. Joseph exemplifies God-like fatherhood and is a model for all human fathers. Beyond that, St. Joseph is an example of how we are called to treat others: with dignity, respect and unconditional love.

As Pope Francis writes in Patris Corde,“Our world today needs fathers. It has no use for tyrants who would dominere others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction. Every true vocation is born of the gift of oneself, which is the fruit of mature sacrifice.”

St. Joseph’s life is a message of silent submission to God’s will in all circumstances, which spoke volumes through the actions of his life as a loving husband, a courageous father and a generous and faith-filled man. As Pope Francis reminds us, St. Joseph had the deep and strong faith to “courageously and firmly be proactive” and to “accept life as it is, with all its contradictions, frustrations and disappointments.”

The Holy Father explains further:“Often in life, things happen whose meaning we do not understand. Our first reaction is frequently one of disappointment and rebellion. Joseph set aside his own ideas in order to accept the course of events and, mysterious as they seemed, to embrace them, take responsibility for them and make them part of his own history.”

During this Year of St. Joseph, may we reflect on the strength of his example and how we, too, can be joyful witnesses of Jesus’ love by asking God for the grace to be docile in following God’s will in our lives, as well as through our loving actions and deeds as we respond to our own call to holiness. May St. Joseph, the unsung hero of the Church, watch over us, especially through this ongoing pandemic, and help us to be confident in God’s continued love, abiding presence and guidance of his Holy Spirit throughout our lives.