St. Joseph

St. Joseph, of the royal house of David, was a carpenter of Nazareth chosen by God to be the husband of the Virgin Mary and the foster father and guardian of Jesus. The Gospels record no word spoken by him, yet they call him a "just man," and they show him obeying the messages of angels with immediate and silent trust: taking Mary into his home, naming the child Jesus, fleeing into Egypt to protect the infant from Herod, and returning to raise him at Nazareth.

Though Scripture gives no dates for his birth or death, tradition holds that he died before the public ministry of Jesus, and because Mary and Jesus would have been at his side, he is honored as the patron of a happy death. Devotion to him grew steadily through Christian history, and in 1870 Blessed Pius IX declared him Patron of the Universal Church. He is also venerated as the patron of workers, fathers, and families, his feasts kept on 19 March and, as St. Joseph the Worker, on 1 May.