Joseph's Childhood and Youth

The rite of Circumcision being accomplished and the name bestowed, the offering of the first-born in the Temple would next succeed. That Joseph was a first-born son there can be no doubt. This opinion will hold good whichever of the two views that have been stated concerning his genealogy be the correct one. For if, according to the view with which we do not agree, Jacob married the widow of Heli, who had died without children, Joseph would still be the first-born of this marriage. But we must own to a disinclination to believe that Joseph was the son of a mother who had been the wife of more than one husband. Such a mother scarcely seemed to befit him who was to be the pure spouse of a heavenly virgin and the reputed father of the Son of God Himself. Wherefore, we abide by the opinion that Joseph was the first-born of Jacob and of a young and holy spouse who had never been wedded to any other husband.

That Joseph was a first-born son we desire to establish, because under the ancient law it was esteemed an honor and a privilege to be so; and many advantages were attached to primogeniture. We can, therefore, well understand how when Esau recognized the great loss he had incurred by selling his birthright for such a trifle to his brother, he was filled with consternation and cried aloud for grief.¹ Seeing, then, that primogeniture was an important prerogative, and that Joseph was to sum up in himself all the gifts and privileges of the patriarchs, he must needs have possessed the rights and advantages of a first-born son. This being so, Joseph, as we have said, was taken to Jerusalem to be presented in the Temple, and redeemed according to the prescriptions of the Law.

Jerusalem at that period had already begun to decline. After the profanations, the outrages, and the cruelties perpetrated by the monarchs who inherited the conquests of Alexander the Great in Syria, especially by Antiochus Epiphanes, the heroic resistance of the Machabees had obtained a temporary deliverance, but the Holy City had now virtually fallen under the domination of the Romans, who had appointed as procurator of Judea Antipater, the father of Herod. All who were of the race and family of David would court obscurity and concealment through the fear inspired by their jealous rulers. Nevertheless we may be certain that, although avoiding pomp and display, the pious Jacob and his spouse must have carefully fulfilled all the obligations of the law with respect to the infant Joseph, and have also brought him yearly with them to Jerusalem, as soon as his tender age permitted, for the Paschal solemnity. And with what ecstasy, may we well believe, would this favored child, when kneeling in the Temple, have joined in the exclamation of the Psalmist: “How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! my soul longeth and fainteth for the courts of the Lord”;² and with what difficulty he would have torn himself away from the House of God, where willingly, like the young Samuel, he would have remained to spend his childhood and adolescence in the service and under the instruction of God’s priests!

As time wore on, we may easily suppose that, when the parents of Joseph came up with their son to keep the feasts at Jerusalem, it would be to the house of Joachim they would repair, who at that period must have been already married to Anne, the sister, as we have already stated there is good reason to believe, of Jacob, and therefore the aunt of Joseph. According to the testimony of St. John Damascene, and of a still living tradition, the house of St. Joachim and St. Anne was near the Probatic Pool.³ Here they dwelt for many years, until civil disturbances, probably, compelled their removal to Nazareth, where they had a small patrimony. Antipater had been succeeded in the post of procurator of Judea by Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, but Herod his son, artful and ambitious, by ingratiating himself with the Romans, had himself named Tetrarch by the Senate, and two years later obtained the title of King of Judea, though some time elapsed before he was able to assume his authority. This Herod was (as we have said) the son of Antipater, an Ascalonite by nation, and an idolater. Although Judea had for some time been dependent on Rome and ruled, in fact, by her representatives, nevertheless the scepter had not as yet departed from her. No stranger had been set up as king of the chosen people. Now, this was to be the sign of the approaching advent of the Messias, a thought which, under this new calamity, must have afforded consolation to those souls who were looking for the redemption of Israel; and they could not have been few in number, since the near accomplishment of the prophetic term of weeks, announced in vision to Daniel⁴ as to elapse before the coming of Christ, furnished an additional token that the great Deliverer was at hand. And, indeed, we find that this expectation had reached the ears of the Gentiles and prevailed throughout the East, where it was generally known that the Hebrew people were looking for a King who would restore the glories of their nation.

Great consternation seized on the Jews at the news of the elevation of this foreign and idolatrous usurper to the throne of David. Had they not reason to dread the profanation of their temple, as in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, the cessation of their sacrifices, the destruction of their altars, the dispersion of their priests, besides all the miseries which the conflict of this new ruler with Antigonus was certain to involve? Prayer was their only resource; and we may be sure that among the most fervent suppliants were Jacob and his young son, Joseph; nay, may we not piously believe that when, contrary to expectation, Herod subsequently, not only did not destroy the Temple, but largely reconstructed and adorned it, it was to the intercession of this holy child, who of all the dwellers upon earth at that time was dearest and most pleasing to God, that this happy result was mainly due? Two years after Herod’s exaltation to the kingship of Judea he, with the assistance of the Romans, whose friendship he had bought, marched against Jerusalem, which during five months had to endure all the horrors of a siege; added to which, when its capture was effected, there ensued a fearful slaughter of the inhabitants by the Roman soldiery, enraged at the resistance they had encountered, and by the partisans of Herod within the walls.

Amidst all these dangers and calamities, Providence threw the shield of Its protection over the family of Joseph. But the early life of this great saint is so completely hidden in God that we must be contented to know that so it was, deprived as we are of details which would have possessed so high an interest for us. All we know for certain is that Joseph had to pass all his childhood and youth under the tyrannical rule of a proud, cruel, and jealous king; and hence always in peril, anxiety, and fear of fresh sufferings. History, so often unjust, has accorded to Herod the appellation of Great, simply because he was fortunate in his vices and in the success which his arrogance, his adroit cunning, and his cruelty won for him. Such an epithet ought to be reserved for those who have excelled in noble and signal virtues, whereas Herod was great only in his follies and in his crimes. The massacre of so many innocent babes in Bethlehem after our Lord’s nativity would alone suffice to blacken his memory and render it for ever infamous. But besides this, he was continually staining his hands in blood; priests and laymen alike, princes and high officers in his army, he would order to be executed, sometimes thirty at a time. He murdered his wife, Mariamne, and Alexandra, his sister-in-law, nay, even his own sons Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater, the last of whom he condemned to death only five days before he himself expired. To conciliate the people, however, he gave liberally when the country was desolated by plague and famine; he embellished Jerusalem, and enlarged the Temple; but this did not prevent the Jews from hating him as a tyrant, so that he had to fortify his regal abode and make to himself a citadel of the tower Antonia, which he built and named after his patron, Marcus Antonius. He was frequently accused at Rome both to Antonius and to Augustus, but he knew how to defend himself so dexterously that he returned triumphant to Jerusalem, where he put to death all whom he suspected of having been his accusers.

Under this impious and sanguinary king, then, Joseph had to pass his youth. As a descendant of the royal family of David, he had reason (as we have said) to live in continual apprehension. Jealousy and the fierce thirst of rule stimulated Herod to rid himself of any one who he could so much as suppose might entertain the thought of depriving him of his usurped dominion. But that Divine Providence which had destined Joseph to cooperate in the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God preserved and brought him safe through all the dangers which beset him. His meekness, humility, contempt for all the empty honors of the world, his peaceful temper, his submission to all the requirements of law, and the hidden and obscure life which he led, must have contributed to turn away all suspicion from this scion of the house of David. Accordingly, we do not hear of Herod’s persecuting the family of Jacob, as he did all the partisans of Aristobulus and Hyrcanus. Jacob had one other son besides Joseph, the same, according to the historian Eusebius and others, who is frequently mentioned in the Gospel as Cleophas, or Alpheus, and whose sons are called the brethren of our Lord,⁵ that is, His cousins. So, too, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, who is also called in the first three Gospels the mother of James and Joseph, is styled by St. John the sister of the Mother of Jesus;⁶ not that she was her sister in the literal sense of the term, but her sister-in-law and, indeed (as it is believed), otherwise nearly related to her.

An ancient Oriental tradition, which Isolano has inserted in his work on the Gifts of St. Joseph, records how our saint, when he must have been about twelve years of age, went to Jerusalem, as other youths were wont to do, there to learn science and wisdom from the Priests of the Lord, who were its sole teachers in those times. But however this may be, to render this science and wisdom truly perfect, God reserved for Joseph far more sublime instructors, the Incarnate Word Himself, and her whom the Church invokes under the title of Sedes Sapientiæ, Seat of Wisdom, the Immaculate Virgin. In the school of Jesus and in the society of Mary for some thirty years Joseph must have become eminently perfect in the science of the saints. This consideration may serve to rectify a mistaken notion to be found even among some devout persons who, while esteeming Joseph to have been a very great saint, nevertheless imagine that he was simple and unlettered and endowed with but a slender amount of knowledge. No; Joseph had an exalted intellect, his judgment was profound, his wisdom surpassed that of the wisest among men. “God,” says St. Bernard, “had found in Joseph, as in another David, a man after His own heart, to whom He could securely commit His heart’s closest and most sacred secret; to whom He could manifest the secret and hidden things of His wisdom,⁷ and communicate that great mystery which none of the princes of this world knew.”⁸ How, indeed, could it be otherwise? For, if of the ancient Joseph, who was but the figure of our Joseph, it was said that no one could be found like to him or wiser than he,⁹ what must be said of our saint, who was not merely endowed with wisdom to interpret dreams, but was privileged to learn the secrets of Heaven, and to be admitted to the knowledge of the sublimest truths, revealed to him by angels, nay, taught him by the Son of God Himself and by the august Queen of all the Doctors of the Church?