St. Joseph

A carpenter in the small Galilean town of Nazareth, Joseph appears in the Gospels almost entirely in silence. He was betrothed to Mary, found her with child, and resolved to divorce her quietly until an angel told him in a dream that the child was the work of the Holy Spirit. He took her into his home.

He named the child Jesus, fled with the family to Egypt to escape Herod’s slaughter, returned to Nazareth, and raised the boy in the trade of his hands. Tradition holds that he died before the public ministry began — held in the arms of Jesus and Mary — which is why he is invoked as patron of a happy death.

Pius IX named him patron of the universal Church in 1870. The Gospels record not a single word of his — only his obedience, again and again, to dreams and to duty.