Ite ad Joseph
March is the Month of Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church. Elena looks at the importance of Saint Joseph’s patronage of the Universal Church and how we should turn to Saint Joseph in our own spiritual lives.
By Elena Attfield
Joseph's Dream. Rembrandt, 1645. (Public Domain)
The year is 1868. Pope Blessed Pius IX receives another 500 letters urging him to declare Saint Joseph the Patron of the Universal Church. Only, this time, there is a letter from a young priest who, so fervent for the cause, reveals he has promised God the sacrifice of his life in exchange for the title being bestowed upon Saint Joseph. “Fr Lataste will shortly be granted his wish”, the Pope said as he noted the priest’s piety. A year later, after heroic penances made for the cause, Blessed Fr Jean-Joseph Lataste died at the age of 36 and, another year on, in 1870, Saint Joseph was proclaimed Patron of the Universal Church through the decree Quemadmodum Deus.
The story may seem morbid to some, but it reveals just how close Saint Joseph is to our Lord’s Heart, and how much He wishes to make this known — to the extent that He would impassion a man to dedicate his whole earthly life to such a cause. After all, as Saint Alphonsus de Liguori has elucidated, “Everyone must know that, after the Mother of God, Saint Joseph is, of all the saints, the one dearest to God.”
Although we know that, for centuries, invocations of him, the loving foster-father of our Lord and spouse of our Lady, have been scant when compared to the devotion he warrants, instead of mourning this lack, perhaps we should celebrate the providential blessing of his increasing prominence.
In the 1870 decree, Pope Blessed Pius IX went on to say that the case for declaring Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church had been mounted in the most troublesome times, with the Church being “beset by enemies on every side”. We are all too familiar with this ourselves today.
Whether in a part of the world that suffers from persecution or one that suffers from excessive comfort, we yearn for more patronage: a word that is rooted in the Latin patronus meaning ‘protector of clients, defender’ which stems from pater – ‘father’. There could be no more apt creaturely patron to provide further sustenance, protection, and discipline to the Church than the one the Blessed Pope referred to as the “lord and chief” of our Lord’s household and the “guardian of His choicest treasures.”
Now that we know how efficacious Marian devotion is, we can love and make her beloved spouse and protector better loved. As we, the Church militant who are labouring before the Church suffering and the Church triumphant to gain the beatific vision, we cannot possibly obtain too much help to get there. All things work together unto the good of those who trust in God, and the reliance of the members of the Body, on earth or in heaven, on one another has pleased Him to ordain. We can surely count on the one who directed the Incarnate God to His Nativity to reorient us all onto the narrow path.
Though he appeared so ordinary, Saint Joseph acted extraordinarily for God. As a reward for his faithful life, it is said that he shared, in a way, in the Passion of his divine Son, and died of exhaustion from having loved so intensely. The purer the life, the purer the sacrifice and the greater the humility, the closer one is to God. We can only imagine how close this saint must be to God in eternity.
Although we just celebrated the 150th anniversary of Saint Joseph’s patronage, followed by a Year of Saint Joseph, in this new month of Saint Joseph may we not lose momentum; may we honour Fr Lataste and the humble patronus who protects us.
In the Blessed Pope’s words, “go to Joseph!”, for your spiritual gain and that of the whole Church.