Jennifer Tan
St. Thomas More & St. Francis de Sales Writing Groups
“When you pray to St. Joseph, be careful about what you ask for, because you’ll most certainly get it!” So said my friend, a staunch devotee of St. Joseph. That was when I first heard of St. Joseph’s intercessory efficacy. However, I remained distant from the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster father of Jesus. It was one of the Akita messages exhorting devotion to St. Joseph that caught my attention. The messages given (1969–1982) by Our Lady and the guardian angel of the visionary, Sister Agnes Sasagawa at Akita, Japan, essentially repeat those given at Fatima more than fifty years earlier. At Akita, the angel specifically mentioned that invoking St. Joseph pleases Jesus and Mary, and asked that St. Joseph be publicly honored, as described in John Haffert’s The Meaning of Akita. Reflecting on St. Joseph’s life, I wonder how I could have overlooked such a great role model and spiritual father.
Besides being the patron of a happy death and the Catholic Church, St. Joseph is invoked by people with various needs, including families, fathers, pregnant women, travelers, immigrants, and workers in general. From biblical accounts, the virtues that struck me most are his trusting abandonment to God’s will and his heroic care of Mary and the baby Jesus.
St. Joseph is an apt model for facing urgent, life-threatening, and uncertain situations. Following an angel’s advice in a dream, he had to flee to another country with his wife and newborn to save the baby’s life. They lived as refugees in an unknown land until it was safe to return home. His faith, obedience, and steadfastness made our salvation possible. Perhaps the closest and most widespread of similar situations in our time was the COVID-19 pandemic. How many among us had felt helpless when a loved one caught the virus, or died from it? Weren’t we at a loss in facing the pandemic in its early days? The pandemic solidified my awareness that we can never be certain where we will be at any point in time. When we leave a place, we can’t be sure of returning. War refugees who have to flee to unknown places for safety and shelter can relate even closer to the Holy Family. In such circumstances, we have much to learn from St. Joseph’s faith in God’s providence, a virtue as relevant in our time as then. As Pope Francis wrote in his apostolic letter Patris Corde (“With a Father’s Love”), “Each of us can discover in Joseph—the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence—an intercessor, a support and a guide in times of trouble.”
St. Joseph’s attitude in saving and providing for the Holy Family shows us how a husband and a father should be. He was totally obedient to God’s will in caring for his family. His charity is evident in his acceptance of Mary, whom he found to be pregnant seemingly out of wedlock, the punishment for which was death. Upon the angel’s advice in a dream, he forewent his rights and took her as his wife, thus saving Mary from death and public disgrace. Even though life was unimaginably difficult after their marriage—the census episode in Bethlehem, the flight to Egypt—he didn’t shy away from his duties as head of his family. He faithfully brought up the child Jesus and observed religious laws and obligations. His life was thrown into disarray, but he showed self-sacrificial love in putting himself totally at the service of his wife and foster child. In saving these two lives, he became instrumental in saving mankind by his role in salvation history. As crises threaten both marriage and the family in our time, St. Joseph’s witness as the head of the Holy Family is more important than ever. He is the image of our Heavenly Father as father.
On reflection, my past hesitance in seeking St. Joseph’s intercession for specific needs could be due to fear of asking for the wrong thing, as my friend had thought she did. However, as St. Joseph protected and brought up Jesus, so can we expect him to love us—the Church—who make up Jesus’ mystical Body. If he obtains for his spiritual children temporal things as my friend attested, how much more would he intercede for our eternal salvation! I could have sought St. Joseph’s intercession more specifically and fervently. Now, for my present circumstance, as if reclaiming lost time, I find myself praying, “Father Joseph, please teach me how to be a good child like you taught Jesus.”