Saint Joseph
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION REDEMPTORIS CUSTOS
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II ON THE FIGURE AND MISSION OF SAINT JOSEPH IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST AND THE CHURCH
PATRON OF THE CHURCH IN OUR TIME
- In difficult times for the Church, Pius IX, wishing to place her under the special protection of the holy patriarch Joseph, declared him the “Patron of the Catholic Church” [42]. The Pontiff knew that this was not an isolated gesture, because, due to the sublime dignity granted by God to this faithful servant of his, “the Church, after the Blessed Virgin his Spouse, has always held St. Joseph in great honor and showered him with praise, and to him she has turned unceasingly in her distress” [43].
What are the reasons for such confidence? Leo XIII explains them thus: “The reasons why the Blessed Joseph must be considered the special Patron of the Church, and why the Church in turn expects so much from his protection and patronage, arise principally from the fact that he is the husband of Mary and the putative father of Jesus (…). Joseph, in his time, was the legitimate and natural custodian, head, and defender of the Holy Family (…). It is, therefore, appropriate and highly worthy of the Blessed Joseph that, just as he once faithfully protected the family of Nazareth at every turn, so now he should safeguard and defend the Church of Christ with his heavenly patronage” [44].
- This patronage must be invoked and is still necessary for the Church not only as a defense against emerging dangers, but also and above all as an encouragement in her renewed commitment to evangelization in the world and to re-evangelization in those “countries and nations, in which—as I wrote in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici—religion and Christian life were once flourishing” and which “are now subjected to a harsh trial” [45]. To bring the first proclamation of Christ, and to bring it again to where it has been neglected or forgotten, the Church needs a special “power from on high” (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8), a gift certainly of the Spirit of the Lord, yet not disconnected from the intercession and example of her Saints.
- Besides the certainty of his sure protection, the Church also trusts in Joseph's distinguished example; an example that transcends particular states of life and is proposed to the entire Christian Community, whatever the conditions and duties of each of the faithful may be.
- The Church transforms these needs into prayer. And recalling that God entrusted the first mysteries of man’s salvation to the faithful custody of Saint Joseph, she asks him to grant her the ability to collaborate faithfully in the work of salvation, to give her a pure heart, like Saint Joseph, who gave himself entirely to serving the Incarnate Word, and that “by the example and intercession of Saint Joseph, a faithful and obedient servant, we may always live consecrated in justice and holiness” [48].
One hundred years ago, Pope Leo XIII exhorted the Catholic world to pray for the protection of Saint Joseph, Patron of the whole Church. The Encyclical Letter Quamquam pluries referred to that “paternal love” which Joseph “professed for the Child Jesus”; to him, the “provident custodian of the Holy Family,” he commended the “inheritance which Jesus Christ purchased with his blood.” Since then, the Church—as I recalled at the beginning—implores the protection of Saint Joseph by virtue of “that sacred bond which unites him to the Immaculate Virgin Mary,” and entrusts all her concerns and the dangers threatening the human family to him. Even today we have many reasons to pray using the same words of Leo XIII: “Ward off from us, O most loving father, this scourge of error and vice… graciously assist us from heaven in this struggle against the power of darkness…; and as once you saved the life of the Child Jesus from peril of death, so now defend the Holy Church of God from the hostile snares and from all adversity” [49]. Even today there are sufficient reasons to commend all mankind to Saint Joseph.
- I ardently desire that this present commemoration of the figure of Saint Joseph may also renew in us the intensity of the prayer that my Predecessor recommended a century ago be addressed to him. This prayer and the very figure of Joseph acquire a renewed relevance for the Church of our time, in relation to the new Christian Millennium.
The just man, who carried with him the entire heritage of the Old Covenant, has also been introduced into the “beginning” of the new and eternal Covenant in Jesus Christ. May he show us the path of this saving Covenant, already at the threshold of the coming Millennium, during which the “fullness of time,” which belongs to the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, must endure and develop further. May Saint Joseph obtain for the Church and for the world, as well as for each one of us, the blessing of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on August 15, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in the year 1989, the eleventh of my Pontificate.
