Who was St. Joseph?
The Gospels give us very little about Joseph, and the Church has learned to treasure every line. Matthew calls him the son of Jacob; Luke names his father as Heli. He was living in Nazareth when the story opens, though the Catholic Encyclopedia thinks he was probably born in Bethlehem, the city of David. He was betrothed to Mary. When he learned she was with child, he decided to end the engagement quietly rather than expose her, and Matthew calls him a just man for it. An angel spoke to him in a dream, and he took Mary as his wife. He brought her to Bethlehem for the census, where there was no room at the inn. Another dream sent him into Egypt with the child and his mother, ahead of Herod's soldiers. A third brought them back to the land of Israel, and a fourth sent them to Nazareth in Galilee.
After that, the Gospels record one more scene: the loss of the twelve-year-old Jesus on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the days of searching before Mary and Joseph found him in the Temple. Then Joseph disappears from the record. Jesus is still called the carpenter's son in Nazareth, but Joseph himself is never mentioned during the public ministry, and the Encyclopedia takes that silence to mean he had died before it began. The Greek word for his trade, tekton, can mean a craftsman of any kind; tradition, going back to St. Justin, reads it as carpenter.
Nothing certain is known about his death. An apocryphal text, the Story of Joseph the Carpenter, has him die at one hundred and eleven; St. Epiphanius says ninety. The Catholic Encyclopedia sets both aside and says plainly, "we do not know when St. Joseph died," adding only that he probably died and was buried at Nazareth. Vatican News gives the tradition that matters most to the dying: that he died with Jesus and Mary beside him, which is why Catholics call him the protector of the dying.
The Church was slow to give him a feast. His name appears in local Western martyrologies in the ninth and tenth centuries; the first church dedicated to him was built at Bologna in 1129. March 19 entered the Roman Calendar under Sixtus IV (1471–84), and in 1621 Gregory XV made it a holy day of obligation. Today it is a Solemnity.
Why Catholics pray to St. Joseph for work, family, protection and a happy death
Two of Joseph's patronages were given by popes, and Pope Francis lists them at the opening of Patris corde. On December 8, 1870, at the request of bishops from across the world, Pius IX declared him Patron of the Catholic Church in the decree Quemadmodum Deus. Leo XIII, in the encyclical Quamquam pluries of 1889, explained why: Joseph was the husband of Mary and was regarded as the father of Jesus, and the man who guarded that household now guards the Church that grew from it. Leo turned to workers in the same letter, writing that the work of the laborer "is not only not dishonouring" but can be made noble by virtue, and he pointed the poor toward Joseph's example. Pius XII took the next step on May 1, 1955, proposing Joseph as Patron of Workers; the Church keeps that day as the Optional Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker. Francis gave the sixth section of his letter to the same theme, "a working father," a carpenter who "earned an honest living to provide for his family."
The patronage of a happy death was never decreed. Patris corde says Joseph is "universally invoked" under that title, and Vatican News gives the tradition behind it: that he died with Jesus and Mary at his side, which is why it calls him Protector of the Dying. Franciscan Media lists families and fathers among those who claim him. These are traditional patronages, grown from centuries of prayer rather than from a document.
What a Catholic asks of him follows from his life. A man out of work asks the carpenter for a job and for the dignity to keep looking. A father who feels he is failing asks the man who raised a son who was not his own. A family that has to move, or flee, asks the man who took his wife and child into Egypt by night. Someone who is afraid of dying asks for what Joseph had at the end.
How to pray to St. Joseph
Pray to him on any day, but especially on March 19 and May 1. A novena is usually made in the nine days before the March feast. Francis wrote in Patris corde that for more than forty years he had said a prayer to Joseph every day after Lauds, the Church's morning prayer, and that is a good pattern: not a long devotion, but a daily one.
The prayer below is the one Francis describes, taken from a nineteenth-century French prayer book. Say it slowly, then name the situation you are commending to him: the job, the bills, the child, the dying parent. Bring the same intention to Mass and, if there is something you need to put down, to Confession. If the trouble is money or work, talk to the people who can help with it as well: a parish, a credit counselor, a union, a friend who hires. Francis calls Joseph "a creatively courageous father"; he is not a patron for sitting still.
For the dying, his patronage is simple. Ask him to be in the room. Ask that the person you love not be alone, and that the end be peaceful and in the grace of God. Then call the priest.