Third Sunday of St. Joseph (2026)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

It’s customary for saints to be outstanding and to become well known for some particular virtue or aspect of their struggle which makes them conspicuous exemplars for the faithful. For example, St. Francis of Assisi is revered for his heroic love of poverty. The holy Curé of Ars is a model of extraordinary priestly service to souls. St. Thomas More is remembered for his devotion to both God and country, but to God first, even at the price of martyrdom.

In the case of St. Joseph, we have only to dwell upon the words of St. Matthew: “Joseph, the husband of Mary.” Here we have the summary of Joseph’s vocation and the setting for his sanctity. With the exception of Jesus, no one ever cared for Our Lady more than St. Joseph did. No one protected her with more vigilance. No one has ever given his life to the Lord with such total generosity as the Holy Patriarch did.

God’s loving providence ordained that Jesus would be born into a human family. Joseph was not only the guardian of Mary; he was also her husband. According to Jewish custom of the time, matrimony involved two distinct ceremonies separated by a period of time: betrothal and the formal wedding. In the ceremony of betrothal, the spouses made a firm promise as regards their future wedding and matrimonial union. The bridegroom would place the rings in the hands of the future bride, and both would receive a blessing. From that moment on, the woman would be known as the wife of so-and-so.

The normal interval between betrothal and the wedding ceremony was about the space of a year. It was within that period that Our Lady received the news of her vocation from the angel Gabriel, and that the Incarnation took place. At the same time, St. Joseph learned about God’s plans through a dream. We’re told in St. Matthew, “Joseph, arising from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife” (Matt. 1:24).

He took Mary as his wife, we’re told by John Paul II, in humble acceptance of the mystery of her maternity. He accepted her along with her Son who would come, who would come to the world in the action of the Holy Spirit. St. Joseph can therefore be compared to Our Lady in his great docility to the will of God as revealed to him by the angel.

The wedding ceremony was the fulfillment of the marital contract entered into at betrothal. It was customary for the bride to be brought to the home of the bridegroom amid great rejoicing. In this manner, the union was validated before the entire community, and therefore her offspring would be recognized as legitimate.

It is of the essence of the marital union that the spouses give their bodies to one another. Because the marriage of Mary and Joseph was an authentic marriage, these reciprocal rights existed in their union. Because of what they had learned from God, by mutual agreement, Mary and Joseph had renounced the exercise of these rights. The denial of them would have been a cause for annulment. St. Augustine says in the case of Joseph and Mary, however, we have something different here, because here we have a case of mutual voluntary renunciation. This understanding, he says, was the fruit of a most refined prayerful environment.

We can get some understanding of this union if we look upon it and try to comprehend it with a clean heart. Joseph became a virgin for the sake of the Virgin. He protected her with great refinement and affection. St. Thomas gives various reasons for the appropriateness of the Virgin’s being united to Joseph in true matrimony. It was appropriate and necessary so that Mary’s pregnancy would not be a cause of scandal among relatives and neighbors. It was useful that Jesus would be born into a human family as an apparently legitimate son, since no one would thus know of the mystery of his supernatural conception. It was helpful that Jesus and Mary would find support for mother and child in their life with St. Joseph. In this way, the arrival of the Messiah would also be hidden from the devil.

With this union, Mary gives due honor both to the state of matrimony and virginity. Our Lady loved Joseph with a deep and pure love. She knew and understood him well, and she wants us to go to him for assistance. Joseph and Mary are the model of husband and wife, the perfect image of total self-giving to God with an undivided heart. They neither apostolic celibacy nor virginity lived in the middle of the world. St. John Paul says virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God not only does not contradict the dignity of marriage, but presupposes it and confirms it. Marriage and virginity or celibacy are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the Covenant of God with his people.

Joseph and Mary were married in Nazareth, and here in this little village, the Word became flesh. In the wedding ceremony, Mary would receive a small dowry as was customary. It would consist of a jewel of modest value, clothing, and furniture. Perhaps she would have received a patrimony of some land. In any event, all this did not add up to very much. But when someone is poor, gifts of little worth take on an enhanced value. Since Joseph was a carpenter, he would have built the best furniture possible for their home. The news of the wedding must have passed from one town to another: Mary has married Joseph the carpenter.

Our Lady wanted these ceremonies to take place even though she had given herself completely to God. Marriage to a man like Joseph gave her security and tranquility. Joseph and Mary allowed themselves to be led by divine inspiration. We can apply to this holy couple the following truth taught by St. Thomas: It’s natural and typical that the just find in all their works inspiration from the Holy Spirit.

God was attentive to the human love between Joseph and Mary. He supplied abundant graces to strengthen that devotion. Joseph eventually came to understand that Our Lady’s child was from the Holy Spirit, and that she was to be the Mother of the Redeemer. As a consequence, he would have loved Our Lady more than ever. One writer said Joseph loved Our Lady not with a brotherly love but with a conjugal love. It was so deep that any carnal relation was made totally superfluous. So refined was it that he became not only a witness of Mary’s virginal purity—virgin before birth, in birth, and after birth as the Church teaches us—but he became its custodian.

God the Father took the greatest care to prepare this virginal family for his only begotten Son. Painters have traditionally depicted Joseph as an elderly man in order to emphasize the perpetual virginity of Mary. But it’s more likely that Joseph was not much older than his wife. You don’t have to wait to be old or lifeless to practice the virtue of chastity. Purity comes from love, and the strength and joy of youth are no obstacle to a noble love. Joseph had a young heart and a young body when he married Mary, when he learned of the mystery of her divine motherhood, when he lived in her company as St. Josemaría said, respecting the integrity God wished to give the world as one more sign that he had come to share the life of his creatures.

We can ask the Holy Patriarch to teach us how to live this kind of love in the circumstances in which God has called us. We want this love that lights up the here and now so that we may perform our ordinary work with joy.

In the Gospels, St. Joseph is repeatedly referred to as a father. Without a doubt, this is how Jesus called the Holy Patriarch in the intimacy of their home in Nazareth. We’re told in St. Luke that Jesus was known in the community as the son of Joseph. Joseph certainly fulfilled the duties corresponding to those of a father in the Holy Family. He gave Jesus his name. He led the Holy Family into Egypt. He decided where they were to live on their return to Palestine. Jesus obeyed Joseph as if he were his natural father. “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them” (Luke 2:51).

Jesus was conceived in a miraculous way by the action of the Holy Spirit. He was born from the virginal womb of Mary according to the divine will. One writer says God wanted to be born within a family, to be raised by a father and mother. Just as God chose Mary to be his mother, God chose Joseph from among all men to be his father. St. Joseph behaved and felt like a father towards Jesus. He had an ardent love for the Son of God and for the Mother of God. This love was even greater than the natural love a natural father may have for his natural son. This is because Joseph cared for Jesus as a son and at the same time worshipped him as his God.

He was greatly moved at the sight of a God who would give himself so generously for the good of mankind. This amazing spectacle caused Joseph to love Jesus in an ever-increasing way. Joseph loved Jesus almost as if he had really begotten him. He looked upon Jesus as a wondrous gift that God had bestowed on him in his ordinary human life. Joseph consecrated his energies, his time, his greatest concern, his care to this gift. He sought no compensation other than the opportunity to give more of himself.

One writer says his love was strong and sweet, tranquil and fervent, emotional and tender. We can think of Joseph with Jesus in his arms, teaching the child songs, watching over his sleep, making him little toys, treating the child with the affection shown by any parent.

Joseph must have been humbled at the awesome thought that the Son of God also wanted to be his son. In our prayer today, we can ask the Holy Patriarch to teach us how to love and cherish Jesus as he himself did.

Popular trust in St. Joseph is seen in the expression “Go to Joseph,” which reminds us of the famine in Egypt when the Egyptians begged Pharaoh for bread. He in turn replied, “Go to Joseph; what he says to you, do” (Gen. 41:55). Pharaoh was referring to Joseph the son of Jacob, who was sold into slavery because of the jealousy of his brothers, who according to the biblical account subsequently became Viceroy of Egypt. As a descendant of David, from whose stock Jesus was to spring according to the promise made to David by the prophet Nathan, and as the spouse of Mary of Nazareth, St. Joseph stands at the crossroads between the Old and New Testaments.

If the first stage of all true interior healing is to accept our personal history and embrace even the things in life that we did not choose, we need now also to add another important element: creative courage. This emerges especially in the way we deal with difficulties. In the face of difficulty, we can either give up and walk away, or somehow engage with it. At times, difficulties bring out resources we did not even think we had.

As we read the infancy narratives, we may often wonder why God did not act in a more direct and clear way. Yet God acts through events and people. Joseph was the man chosen by God to guide the beginnings of the history of redemption. He was the true miracle by which God saves the child and his mother. God acted by trusting in Joseph’s creative courage.

Arriving in Bethlehem and finding no lodging where Mary could give birth, Joseph took a stable and, as best he could, turned it into a welcoming home for the Son of God coming into the world. Faced with imminent danger from Herod, who wanted to kill the child, Joseph was warned once again in a dream to protect the child, and rose in the middle of the night to prepare the flight into Egypt.

A superficial reading of these stories can often give the impression that the world is at the mercy of the strong and mighty, but the good news of the Gospel consists in showing that, for all the arrogance and violence of worldly powers, God always finds a way to carry out his saving plan. So too, our lives may at times seem to be at the mercy of the powerful, but the Gospel shows us what counts. God always finds a way to save us, provided we show the same creative courage as the carpenter of Nazareth, who was able to turn a problem into a possibility by trusting always in divine providence.

If at times God seems not to help us, this doesn’t mean that we’ve been abandoned, but instead are being trusted to plan, to be creative, and to find solutions ourselves. That kind of creative courage was shown by the friends of the paralytic, who lowered him from the roof in order to bring him to Jesus when they couldn’t access him by any other means because of the crowd. Difficulties did not stand in the way of those friends’ boldness and persistence. They were convinced that Jesus could heal the man, and were told “finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus” (Luke 5:19).

They were full of initiative and daring. They vandalized the roof in order to get their friend to Jesus. “And when he saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you’” (Luke 5:20). Jesus recognized the creative faith with which they sought to bring their sick friend to him.

The Gospel doesn’t tell us how long Our Lady and St. Joseph and the child remained in Egypt. But certainly they would have needed to eat, to find a home and employment. It doesn’t take much imagination to fill in those details. The Holy Family had to face concrete problems like every other family, like so many of our migrant brothers and sisters who today risk their lives to escape misfortune and hunger.

We can consider St. Joseph as a special patron of all those forced to leave their native lands because of war, hatred, persecution, or poverty. At the end of every account in which Joseph plays a role, the Gospel tells us that he gets up, takes the child and his mother, and does what God commanded him. Jesus and Our Lady his mother are the most precious treasures of our faith.

In the divine plan of salvation, the Son is inseparable from his mother, from Mary, who advanced, said John Paul, in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son until she stood at the Cross. We should always consider whether we ourselves are protecting Jesus and Mary, for they are mysteriously entrusted to our responsibility, care, and safekeeping.

The Son of the Almighty came into our world in a state of great vulnerability. He needed to be defended, protected, cared for and raised by Joseph. God trusted Joseph, as did Mary, who found in him someone who would not only save her life, but would always provide for her and her child. In this sense, St. Joseph could not be other than the guardian of the Church, because the Church is the continuation of the body of Christ in history, even as Mary’s motherhood is reflected in the motherhood of the Church. In his continued protection of the Church, Joseph continues to protect the child and his mother, and we too, by our love for the Church, continue to love the child and his mother.

That child would go on to say, “As you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). Consequently, every poor, needy, suffering or dying person, every stranger, every prisoner, every infirm person is the child whom Joseph continues to protect. For this reason, St. Joseph is invoked as protector of the unfortunate, the needy, exiles, the afflicted, the poor, and the dying. Consequently, the Church cannot fail to show a special love for the least of our brothers and sisters, for Jesus showed a particular concern for them and personally identified with them. From St. Joseph, we have to learn that same care and responsibility. We have to learn to love the child and his mother, to love the sacraments and charity, to love the Church and the poor. Each of these realities is always the child and his mother.

Joseph does not resign himself passively, but he takes the initiative and he puts his optimism and cheerfulness into play. He can be a great example for us of beginning again in all sorts of situations. He can teach us that we’ll win fighting. He can help us to have a warlike mentality. From his example, we can have the assurance of permanence and perseverance in the hardest of battles without giving in, without getting tired. The obstacles in the course of our life, in our marriage, in our work, in our health, in our finances, the difficulties, the contradictions which without doubt exist, far from disturbing our path towards victory or making us feel nostalgic for some comfort, can make us more—make us stronger and more determined. Those things can lift us up onto a new plane.

St. Augustine liked to say, “There is no soul who works for God who does not grow when faced with difficulties.” The difficulties form part of the reality on which our life is built. We live and work in real situations, not Disneyland. We need to be strong people, sons and daughters of God. We can ask Our Lord in our prayer to help us to take advantage of the big and small challenges of every day, to grow in faith, hope, and love like St. Joseph did.

A Chinese proverb says a gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man made perfect without trials. We have the help of grace. Nothing should be able to shift us from our place in the battle. If at times we can’t see properly, then we should let ourselves be guided by those with the grace of state. If the struggle is uphill, where we don’t abandon the attack, we continue working. The sacrifice must be a holocaust.

We have to try and put that interior toughness into practice: eating everything that’s placed in front of us, teaching children to do the same, realizing as one educationalist in the States says that “no” is also a loving word. Children learn backbone by example. We need to be demanding on ourselves in order to be demanding on them. In work, in detachment, in chastity, in practicing temperance and sobriety in the home in relation to television, or movies, or spending money, or holidays, or luxuries, or comforts.

Courage is simply the willingness to be afraid but to act anyway. In the course of our life, very likely there’s something to which God is calling us, calling us to do that may scare us to death. We can ask St. Joseph that we could have the courage that we need to act anyway.

There are many good reasons, we’re told in The Forge, to honor St. Joseph and to learn from his life. He was a man of strong faith. He earned a living for his family, Jesus and Mary, with his own hard work. He guarded the purity of the Blessed Virgin who was his spouse. He respected, he loved God’s freedom when God made his choice—not only his choice of Our Lady the Virgin as his mother, but also the choice of St. Joseph as his husband, as the husband of Our Lady.

We can finish our prayer turning to Our Lady and ask her that she might help us to be more conscious of St. Joseph as we go about our daily tasks, to live a presence of him, and to truly put that phrase “Go to Joseph” into practice as we move through our ordinary day.

I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW