19 March – Sons of St Joseph
I attended a secondary school which had St Joseph as its patron, and every morning we would sing the school song, declaring our desire to be “sons of St Joseph, valiant and true”. There is arguably no better patron for teenage boys than St Joseph who was foster-father and guardian of the teenage Jesus, and this phrase from my school song indicates two virtues in St Joseph that we would do well to develop and pray for: courage and righteousness.
The virtue of courage, or fortitude, is evident in St Joseph’s life. As St Thomas Aquinas tells us, fortitude is a spiritual bravery that fortifies the person to endure all things, even martyrdom. We see this kind of courage in St Joseph, who was told by the angel “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife” (Matthew 1:20), even if society thought him to be a cuckold. How often we are swayed from doing the right thing because we fear what others think. Without the virtue of fortitude, we lack the valour to endure humiliation, the cross of society’s scorn and rejection.
However, courage is not foolhardiness or rashness: something to which youth is prone. For St Joseph did not stand up to Herod’s murderous wrath but fled with Mary and Jesus into the safety of Egypt, and they remained there until it was safe to return. To be sure, this kind of action took courage and wisdom, but above all it took prudence. Prudence is a key virtue in the Christian moral tradition because it shapes human actions in the concrete situations of human life so that we know how to act well. Prudence, then, is the ability to decide and do what is right and inclined towards God. In the language of the Scriptures, this is righteousness, and St Joseph is thus described in Matthew 1:19.
These virtues can be acquired through practice, but to be a saint they have to be infused, which is to say that they are given by God through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to be truly sons of St Joseph, we have to seek that divine foster-son of St Joseph, who was busy with his heavenly Father’s affairs (Luke 2:49). For it is from Jesus Christ that we receive the grace and virtues that fashion us in the image of Christ, so that we become not just sons of his earthly father St Joseph, but adopted as sons of our Father in heaven.
