Over the course of 13-plus centuries, the Roman Canon (what we call Eucharistic Prayer I) remained virtually unchanged and is practically the same prayer that was written during the time of Pope Gregory I with one notable exception—the addition of the name of St. Joseph. On November 13, 1962, Pope John XXIII inserted his name into the prayer, an act that was carried forward into the other three Eucharist Prayers of the Mass of Paul VI and officially completed by Pope Francis in 2013. The recurrence of the number 13 conjures up October 13, 1917, the date of the last apparition at Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun. Just prior to the sun hurling towards the earth, the children, according to Lucia, “beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun. St. Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands.” The message is obvious—Jesus wants to bless the world through St. Joseph—and confirmed when he was added as a direct liturgical intercession. We are entering period of great emphasis on reliance upon the great saint and human father of Jesus.
Next to Our Lady, he is the greatest and most powerful saint in heaven. The time is ripe for this great power to be unleashed upon the Church. To receive all of the blessings that God wants to bestow upon us through the hands of St. Joseph we must first grasp his greatness. This starts with a proper theology of St. Joseph, a Josephology if you will, that puts forth the reasons for his greatness.
There are good reasons for his pre-eminence, reasons that will be easy to grasp once we make clear an important principle. St Thomas said that “an exceptional divine mission calls for a proportional degree of grace.” This principle is most clearly affirmed with Our Lady. All of her greatness, her fullness of grace, her immaculate conception, her glorious assumption and queenship, is because of her predestination to Divine Maternity. She is great because God made her so and He made her so because she was eternally predestined to be linked to the Incarnation of the Son. When God determined to become Incarnate, He also determined who His Mother would be. She is most perfect then because it was God Who is infinitely wise that appointed her and equipped her for her indispensable role in the Incarnation. Jesus could have appointed other Apostles, He could have chosen a different precursor than John the Baptist, but He could not have chosen another mother. She is not alone among men in being tied directly to the Incarnation such that it quite literally was determined to depend upon her. This is where St. Joseph comes in.
St. Joseph was predestined to serve as the earthly father of Jesus Christ. Many theologians hesitate to call him “foster father” precisely because a man becomes a foster father of a child because of some accident, but St. Joseph was eternally predestined and therefore given a father’s heart despite, as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says, nature never making him a father. It was, according to Bossuet, the same hand that gave “Joseph the heart of a father and Jesus the heart of a son.”
The Mission of St. Joseph
Joseph’s mission then is twofold. The first is the one that has most often been attributed to him as being in support of Mary’s maternity. It is this regard that he is often given an “also run” status as though he were merely a figurehead or just tagging along. Probing a little deeper however we are forced to conclude that there is more than initially meets the eye. He is, first and foremost, the protector of Mary and not just in the physical sense. He is also the guardian of both her chastity and perpetual virginity. St. Joseph as validly married to Our Lady had conjugal rights over her. Nevertheless through grace he was able to not only refrain was marital relations, but to be her “most chaste spouse.” Likewise, as head of the Holy Family, he had authority over a sinless wife. In order to exercise that authority God would have given him the grace proper to such a high calling.
The second aspect of his mission is likewise revelatory in that he was also, not only responsible for protecting Our Lord, but also to contribute to His human formation. This mission would have carried with it a proportional amount of grace. He was also in a very real sense the savior of the Savior by protecting Him from harm, especially when Herod sought His life. Like with Our Lady, St. Joseph would have exercised authority over Our Lord requiring that he be not only infallible in his commands, but impeccable in his example.
The Privileges of St. Joseph
Given this exceptional role in the Incarnation, St. Joseph would have been given a relative fullness of grace that enabled him to carry out his mission. This is why many saints and theologians throughout history have posited that he was completely sanctified. When this happened however we can only speculate. We know that it was not at his conception as Pius IX said the Immaculate Conception was a “singular grace” and utterly unique to Our Lady. Some have said it was during the nuptials that he exchanged with Our Lady mostly because that is the last moment at which such a redemptive act on God’s part would have occurred.
In a homily given for the Feast of the Ascension, the aforementioned “Pope of St. Joseph”, John XIII, claimed that that it may be piously believed that St. Joseph was bodily assumed into heaven at the time of our Lord’s ascension. This belief finds it foundation in Matthew’s assertion that at the resurrection of Jesus many saints came forth from their tombs and entered the holy city (c.f. Mt 27:51-53). Reasoning that he being the highest of the saints and thus worthy of a first-fruits share in the Resurrection and Ascension saints such as Bernadine of Siena and St. Francis de Sales have claimed that Joseph indeed lives in heaven with both body and soul united. The latter even went so far as to say that “We can never for a moment doubt that the glorious saint has great influence in heaven with Him Who raised him there in body and soul—a fact which is the more probable because we have no relic of that body left to us here below! Indeed it seems to me that no one can doubt this as a truth, for how could He Who had been so obedient to St. Joseph, all through His life, refuse him this grace?” (quoted in Fr. Donald Calloway, Consecration to St. Joseph).
Building on the logic of St. Francis de Sales of Jesus’ obedience to St. Joseph, we can begin to see why St. Joseph is such a powerful intercessor. That obedience did not cease but remains because Jesus remains forever his son. This power has lain dormant for many centuries, but now is the time for the silent witness of Christ to finally be heard.