Published: 28 July 2016

March 19 commemorates the feast of St. Joseph, the foster father of Christ and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. St. Joseph was of the lineage of David, the greatest king of Israel. He was given the duty of protecting the Holy Family and helping to raise Jesus. When it falls on a Sunday, it's observed the following day.

All that is known of him comes from the Gospels, which pay Joseph a very high compliment: he was a "righteous" man. In the Bible, a person who is "righteous" is one who is completely obedient to the will of God.

Although he was of Davidic descent, his trade as a carpenter shows that he was impoverished. He is also known to have been impoverished because, when he took Jesus to the Temple to be presented to the Lord, he offered "in sacrifice, in accordance with what is prescribed in the Law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons" (Luke 2:24). This type of offering was allowed only for those who could not afford to purchase a lamb.

St. Joseph was a compassionate, caring man. When betrothed to Mary, he discovered she was pregnant. Unaware that Mary was carrying Christ, conceived through the Holy Spirit, and knowing that the child was not his, Joseph planned to divorce Mary according to the law. Concerned for her well-being and fully aware that women accused of adultery could be stoned to death, he "decided to divorce her quietly" (Matthew 1:19).

He was continuously obedient to the instructions given to him by the angel of the Lord. Appearing to him in a dream, the angel told Joseph to take Mary for his wife, for she was pregnant with Jesus. When "Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded" and took Mary into his home (Matthew 1:24). The angel later appeared to him again, telling him to flee with Mary and Jesus to avoid the danger of Herod, who intended to kill Jesus. Joseph immediately rose and departed for Egypt. He then remained in Egypt until the angel of the Lord told him it was safe for them to return to Nazareth.

Because Joseph does not appear in Jesus' public life, at His death or resurrection, it is believed that he died before Jesus entered His public ministry.

He is the patron saint of the universal Church, fathers of families, laborers, especially carpenters, immigrants and of social justice.

The feast of March 19 is the feast of St. Joseph, the Husband of Mary. On May 1 the Church celebrates the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

-- Christopher Lux, intern

Published: 10 March 2024

As Catholic converts around the world enter the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil, here's a look at well-known converts who have had a significant impact on the Catholic church.

St. Augustine of Hippo

The doctor of the church was the son of a pagan father and Christian mother, St. Monica. Augustine was drawn into the heretical Manichean sect as a young man, and it took him years to free himself of the heresy. Much to St. Monica's relief, Augustine fell under the influence of St. Ambrose, who was the bishop of Milan. In Milan, he was baptized. Eventually, Augustine became bishop of Hippo, a city in northern Africa. Among his many writings are "Confessions" and "City of God."

St. John Henry Newman

A former Anglican priest who led the Oxford movement in the 1830s to draw Anglicans to their Catholic roots, Cardinal Newman became Catholic in 1845, when he was 44 years old. The cardinal founded the English community of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" and "Grammar of Assent" are among the theologian's best-known works.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

The first native-born saint of the United States, Mother Seton was a young widow with five children when she joined the Church, over the objections of her Protestant family. In 1808, she arrived in Baltimore and founded the Sisters of Charity one year later. Later, she and her community would settle in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where she founded St. Joseph's Academy and Free School. She was canonized in 1975.

St. Paul

Saul was a zealous persecutor of Christians until his encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9:9-19; 22:3-21; 26:4-23). From that point on, he became a fervent apostle, taking the name Paul and embarking on three great missionary journeys to spread the Good News and authoring at least 13 of the New Testament epistles. So great has Paul's influence been on Christianity that Pope Benedict XVI declared a Year of St. Paul in 2008. That year, the pontiff said this about the apostle's conversion: "St. Paul was not transformed by a thought but by an event, by the irresistible presence of the Risen One whom subsequently he would never be able to doubt, so powerful had been the evidence of the event, of this encounter."

G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton was a noted thinker and prolific author of influential works such as "The Man Who Was Thursday," "Orthodoxy" and "The Everlasting Man," which C.S. Lewis credited for his conversion from atheism to Christianity. A convert from Anglicanism, Chesterton wrote about his understanding of the Catholic Church and how it won him over in "The Catholic Church and Conversion."

Cardinal Francis Arinze

The Nigerian-born, 91-year-old prelate, who headed up the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments for six years until his retirement in 2008, is a convert from traditional African religion who joined the Catholic Church when he was 9. Several years later, his mother and father joined him in the faith. Pope St. John Paul II made him a cardinal in 1985.