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Friends, today we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph.

Every episode of Joseph’s life is a crisis. He discovered that the woman to whom he was betrothed was pregnant. He resolved to divorce her quietly, but then the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream and explained the anomalous pregnancy. So Joseph understood what was happening in the context of God’s providence and took Mary as his wife. 

Next, discovering that the child was in mortal danger, Joseph took mother and baby on a perilous journey to an unknown country. Anyone who has ever been forced to move to a new city knows something of the anxiety that Joseph must have felt. But Joseph went because God had commanded him.

Finally, we hear of Joseph desperately seeking his lost twelve-year-old son. Quietly taking the child home, Joseph once more put aside his human feelings and trusted in the purposes of God.

The little we know about Joseph is that he experienced heartbreak, fear unto death, and a parent’s deepest anxiety. But each time, he read what happened to him as a theo-drama, not an ego-drama. This shift in attitude is what made Joseph the patron of the universal Church.