The Death of Joseph

Holy Scripture does not record the death of Joseph. It simply ceases to mention him. That he died before Jesus entered, at thirty years of age, on His public ministry, has certainly been by far the most general opinion, and there appear to be strong reasons to render it the most probable. Yet there are persons—and persons of erudition too—who entertain the opinion that he may even have lived until after the marriage-feast of Cana. We must own to perceiving no valid reason that can be advanced in support of this view, while there seem to be many against it. First and foremost, we should be inclined to place the general belief or, at the least, persuasion of the great body of the faithful, never to be lightly regarded, who certainly hold that Jesus did not begin His public life until His dear foster-father had died the death of the just, died “in the arms of Jesus and Mary,” as the Litany of St. Joseph expresses it. A second strong reason for sharing this passive traditional view, as it may be called, is that when the time for the close of the Hidden Life had arrived, during which Jesus had been subject to His parents, Joseph’s work would appear to have been finished and his mission ended. Mary had still a work to do on earth, but Joseph had not; the office for which he was chosen seems now to have been completed. Moreover, we cannot imagine Jesus permanently leaving the house at Nazareth while Joseph lived; for, evidently, He removed thence when His public life began, and, so far as He had henceforth any fixed abode, dwelt at Capharnaum, His Mother accompanying Him thither. She is mentioned from time to time, and is an especially prominent figure at the marriage-feast at Cana in Galilee, where her Divine Son worked His first public miracle at her request. Is it conceivable that, if Joseph had still been living, he should have been passed over in marked silence? Marked, we say, because the invitation given to the disciples of Jesus is mentioned as well as His own, and the presence of His Mother. If Joseph’s death had not been previously recorded, no more is it recorded at any subsequent time; any argument founded on the omission is, therefore, worthless. No; Joseph, we believe, had gone, and his unnoticed departure is quite in accordance with all that had preceded concerning him. He passes out of sight when he had accomplished the office with which he had been entrusted.¹

During the years that followed the return to Nazareth Joseph had beheld and, like Mary, must have inwardly pondered the increasing glory of the God-Man. “Jesus,” says the Evangelist, “advanced in wisdom and age and grace with God and men.”² “Grace with men” can only mean “favor”. What wonder if Jesus found favor with men in those days? The human heart is not so corrupt that it cannot admire and value what is lovely and lovable. And truly lovely and lovable was the “Son of the Carpenter”. He set before His neighbors an example, always sure to captivate and win approval, of reverence and duty to His parents; He was kind, compassionate, mild, gentle; as yet He did and said nothing to wound their pride or offend their self-love. He had not begun to reprove, or rebuke, or speak with authority, and so He found grace in their eyes. It was not to last. The expression of advancing in grace with God, whether the word be understood here also as signifying favor, or be taken in the sense of an advance in grace in the usual acceptance of the term, presents the same mystery as do some other few passages of a similar character. The mystery and difficulty spring from the assumption of a human nature by the Eternal Son, a nature henceforth as completely His own as was His Divine Nature. In the favor of the Eternal Father it was not possible that this Divine Son, made Man, could advance. From the first He was His Beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, and He had also the plenitude of grace from the first moment of His conception. As, however, it pleased our Lord not to become incarnate at the full age of man, but to pass through the stages of infancy, childhood, and adolescence, so also He willed to accommodate the manifestation of His grace, wisdom, and power to the natural development to which He had subjected Himself. They underwent no real increase; but the proportion in which it behooved Him to manifest them in connection with His natural growth was capable of increase; and it is in this sense that it was true to say that He advanced in wisdom and in grace. And the same must be understood of the grace, or favor, of His Eternal Father, which was openly manifested at its appointed times and seasons, and in proportion to the exterior manifestation of grace in Jesus. The first special instance recorded is when He was baptized by John. “Heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape as a dove upon Him, and a voice came from Heaven: Thou art My Beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased.”³ The Evangelist then, after giving His age and genealogy, proceeds: “And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the desert”.⁴ St. Matthew, in like manner, after recounting the baptism of Jesus, says: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert”;⁵ and St. Mark, in his parallel account, uses these remarkable words: “And immediately the Spirit drove Him out into the desert”.⁶ But was not Jesus full of the Holy Ghost before His baptism; and had He not always been led by the Spirit of God? Most true, indeed; but it would appear that He now received for manifestation the grace of His mission, which was about to begin, and the public sanction, so to say, and declaration of the favor with which His Eternal Father regarded Him.

But that which Jesus could not Himself receive, a real increase of grace and wisdom, was imparted in abundance to Mary and Joseph, who for so many years drew from the fountain of all grace and sweetness, and drank of that water which He was afterwards to promise to the Samaritan woman, of which whoso drinks he shall never thirst again.⁷ That Mary, from the companionship of her Son, and through her faithful cooperation, was continually receiving an increase in grace and in all spiritual gifts is the general teaching of the Fathers of the Church; and that, next to her, Joseph derived similar fruit we cannot doubt. God had predestined him to partake of these blessings, and had therefore given him the name of Joseph, which signifies increase, a name most appropriate to him (as Albert the Great holds), who in virtue, as regarded himself, his neighbor, and God, received such sublime augmentation.⁸ And, if Joseph profited much in the School of Uncreated Wisdom—that is, Jesus,—he also must have derived much light from the Seat of Wisdom—that is, Mary. If Mary, like a brilliant lamp, illuminated the whole Church (as the same doctor affirms),⁹ how much more must she have enlightened her most beloved spouse, Joseph! The learned Cartagena¹⁰ says that Joseph penetrated with clearest cognition the most hidden secrets of the heart of Mary, which was the depository of the secrets of God. And, along with his increase in wisdom, his increase in grace proceeded. If, as the Scripture says, “the path of the just, as a shining light, goeth forwards, and increaseth even to perfect day,”¹¹ what must have been the meridian splendor of this preeminently just man, who received in such abundance the light of grace from the Author of grace Himself, and from her who is the treasury and channel of all graces! What merits and what copious graces adorned his holy soul during his whole life! says an excellent doctor, Matthias Navæus; and, seeing (as he adds) that after his virginal marriage he, next to Mary, was nearest to the Principle and Source of all grace, it is to be believed (according to the doctrine of St. Thomas) that, next to her, he had a larger participation thereof than all other saints.¹²

But Joseph was also advancing in age, and it is generally supposed that towards the close of his days he suffered much from the infirmities of declining years and from enfeebled strength. That he suffered we need not doubt, but there seems reason to question the opinion that he sank under the natural effects of old age, and with a frame worn out by constant labor. A tradition has been preserved in the Eastern Churches, which always cherished much devotion to our saint, that Joseph never underwent any natural decay of strength. This tradition was committed to writing in an ancient legend, as Isolano asserts, and was translated from Hebrew into Latin in the year 1340. It states that, although Joseph grew old in years, the strength of his body never diminished, nor was his eyesight weakened; not a tooth in his mouth had decayed, nor had his memory failed him in the least, but he retained all his powers, and the unimpaired vigor of his limbs, even as in the days of his youth.¹³ Nor does this seem incredible; nay, we might make bold to say that it is highly probable. Moses, who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, died at the age of a hundred and twenty years, and he would not have died even then except that God would not permit him to bring the people into the promised land on account of his one act of disobedience when he struck the rock:¹⁴ “And Moses, the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, by the command of the Lord; and He buried him in the valley of the land of Moab over against Phogor; and no man hath known of his sepulcher until this present day”. Moses died, not of natural decay, but by the command of the Lord; for we are expressly told, “his eye was not dim, neither were his teeth moved”.¹⁵ Is it, therefore, surprising to learn that he who brought, not Israel, but the Lord of Israel, out of the land of Egypt should have enjoyed the same immunity? It does not follow that Joseph had not felt the fatigues and sufferings of his laborious life, fatigues and sufferings all endured for Jesus. For his greater merit he was not exempted from their natural results, but God sustained him under them, and secretly restored his exhausted strength, that he might be able to begin afresh with “youth renewed like the eagle’s”.¹⁶ Still less does it ensue from this continual bodily renovation that he did not suffer intensely from what has already received a passing allusion, a martyrdom of love. Saints have at times felt the torrents of this love poured into the frail vessels of their earthly bodies as surpassing their powers to support, and have cried out, “Too much, O Lord, too much!” We may well conceive, then, that without miraculous aid the heart of Joseph could never have borne the excess of the love which continually flooded it. Moreover, he is believed to have undergone the martyrdom of dolor in the spirit akin to that which Mary was to sustain at the foot of the Cross, when the sword pierced her soul, as Simeon had foretold;¹⁷ indeed it has been thought that he was allowed to witness interiorly, by anticipation, all the successive stages of the Passion; and in this there is nothing improbable, since it has pleased God to admit many of His saints to a similar participation of His sufferings, by retrospection, in the contemplative state to which He has exalted them; some of them even receiving in their persons the impress of the Sacred Stigmata. Less favor and opportunity of merit could not well be shown to Joseph. Once, on the day of his feast, the Saint appeared to the Venerable Marina de Escobar, and said to her, “The Lord gave me great knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and of prophecy, and I knew all that the Redeemer would have to suffer. The Cross which He had ever before Him from the first moment of His conception, I, too, had present to my mind, which was pierced with it; and thus, while holding this Most Holy Lord in my arms, and often reflecting on all He would have to endure, my tears would pour down upon His sacred garments; at other times, while keeping Him folded in my arms when it was cold, I would warm His Sacred Hands by breathing on them.” What a sweet picture we have here of the compassion of Joseph, so that we may say of him what we say of Mary, that he was a martyr, and more than a martyr, because he suffered in the spirit the torments which Christ suffered in His Sacred Body; for, although Joseph was not present at the Passion of our Lord, being already dead, nevertheless he had been tormented beforehand by His stripes and His thorns, by the buffets, contempt, and ignominy He was to endure, by His cruel Nails and agonizing Cross. His love was the measure of his grief, and, since the love which he bore to the Redeemer was, next to that of Mary, the greatest—for no natural father ever loved an only son as Joseph loved Jesus—so also, next to her sorrows, must rank those of her holy spouse. Well, therefore, may we believe that it required no less than a continual miracle to support him under this inward martyrdom.

Towards the close of his days, when God was about to call his holy soul from earth, He may have first diminished and then entirely withdrawn the miraculous support He had so long secretly supplied to enable the Saint to endure his fatigues and, still more, his consuming charity; and God having thus ceased to allow this elixir of life, as we may term it, to repair the inroads made on Joseph’s strength, the result would be a state of languor and of drooping powers which, though different in its cause, would be sufficiently similar in some of its effects to what a natural and internal fever might have produced; and this would account for the belief already alluded to, that Joseph suffered much from growing infirmities before his death. But this holy man did not really die either of natural infirmities or from natural fever. His fever was that of divine love, and his weakness was that of a frame unable to bear the excess of that love. That Joseph died of the love of God was the opinion of St. Francis de Sales. “A saint,” he says, “who had loved so much during his life could not die save of love; and, having completed the office for which he had been destined, it only remained for him to say to the Eternal Father, ‘I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do’; and to the Son, ‘O my Child, as Thy Heavenly Father placed Thy Body in my hands on the day when Thou camest into the world, so now, in this day of my departure from the world, I place my soul in Thine’. Such, I conceive, was the death of this great Patriarch.”¹⁸ We may add that the holy Doctor, Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori, considered this belief of St. Francis de Sales, that Joseph died of the pure love of God, as most reasonable.¹⁹ Here we have the decided opinion of two holy Doctors of the Church, and we may therefore safely adopt it as our own.

That Jesus and Mary lovingly tended and comforted Joseph on his bed of death, there never has been doubt. Hence holy Joseph is considered by all Catholics as the tutelary saint of the dying, and is constantly invoked to obtain for them a happy death. St. Bernardine of Siena says that it is certainly to be piously believed that at the death of Joseph both Jesus and Mary were present. What consolations, illuminations, and revelations of eternal good things must not the dying Saint have then received from his holy spouse and from the most loving and compassionate Son of God, Christ Jesus!²⁰ “To know,” says the seraphic St. Leonard of Port Maurice, “that Joseph was truly great, as he was just, greater still as a spouse, and, above all, great as a father, it suffices to behold him in the arms of Jesus and Mary rendering up his soul to his Creator. See Joseph lying upon a poor pallet, Jesus on one side, Mary on the other, and, above, countless bands of angels, archangels, seraphim, all in readiness devoutly to receive this holy soul. O my God, who can ever tell the outpouring of affection at that last parting of Joseph from his sweet Jesus and Mary! What thanks, what protestations, what supplications, what excuses, does this holy old man offer in his extremity! His eyes speak, his heart speaks, his tongue only is silent; but his very silence speaks.”²¹ Well, therefore, may Holy Church, contemplating Joseph dying, thus sing: “O happy beyond measure, O blessed beyond measure, are you, at whose side in your last hour watched Jesus and Mary with aspect serene”.²² But the Lord willed to give to His dear father a signal favor for his consolation before the hour of his departure. While Joseph, supported by the tender hands of Jesus and Mary, lay on his poor couch in an ecstasy of love, lo! he was raised to so sublime a rapture as to taste by anticipation the joys of the blessed in Heaven, and beheld the Divine Essence, the Face of God, His glory, which Moses in vain requested to see.²³ Maria d’Agreda says that this rapture lasted twenty-four hours.²⁴ That he should have had this marvelous favor conceded to him, which holy Doctors have believed was more than once, if not often, bestowed on Mary, is far from incredible. If we are to accept the revelations of saints, Joseph had frequently (as already noticed) seen Jesus transfigured and invested with a glorious light, as the three Apostles afterwards beheld Him on Thabor. In thus manifesting Himself to them, one, at least, of our Savior’s reasons seems to have been to prepare them to endure the sight of the ignominy and sufferings of His Passion. May not, then, this surpassing vision of the Face of God have been accorded to Joseph, not only as a reward for his parental care and love, but to soften to him the pains of the last passage?

The Blessed Trinity appointed Joseph to be their ambassador to the Fathers in Limbo, to announce to them the Incarnation and coming of the Son of God, of which mystery he had been the ocular witness and in which he had taken so large a part. If, then, John the Baptist was the Precursor of Jesus on earth, Joseph was to be His Precursor to the souls detained in Limbo and anxiously looking out for their release. Joseph, returning to himself, said to Jesus, “Now I die happy, hoping that Thou wilt soon come to deliver us”.²⁵ It was his Nunc Dimittis. Isidoro Isolano, the devout collector of so many Oriental traditions and legends,²⁶ says that Jesus held the hand of Joseph in His for long hours, and blessed his body, that it might not see corruption, a pledge of the glory which He reserved for it. No evil spirit dared to disturb his peace. And so this great saint patiently and happily expired, Michael and Gabriel bearing his pure and holy soul to the bosom of Abraham. Jesus closed his eyes with His own hand. The friends and near relations of the saint washed and anointed his body with precious ointments, according to the Jewish custom, and from amongst the multitude of angels in attendance the Lord commanded two to clothe him in a white robe. They remained reverently watching the body. Isolano says that he died at Nazareth. If so, it would be likely that the whole city (as he relates) would follow their holy townsman to his grave. Calmet also believes that he died at Nazareth, but tradition points to Jerusalem as, at any rate, the place of his sepulture. He may probably have gone up with Jesus and Mary to celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, the Pasch, which was always kept at the full moon following the 14th, and died on the 19th of March, as the Roman Church appears to hold.²⁷ The Venerable Bede, quoted by the Continuators of the Bollandists, considers that it was probably by divine disposition that his death occurred at that season of the year, in order that, according to his desire, he might be buried with his ancestors. He adds that two sepulchers, devoid of all ornament, were pointed out in the Valley of Josaphat, the one being that of the holy old man, Simeon, who took the Infant Jesus in his arms, and prophesied concerning Him, the other that of the just Joseph. Some critics, however, have disputed its vicinity to that of Simeon, and Bollandus believes that the other tomb alluded to might be that of Joseph surnamed the Just, proposed with Matthias for the Apostolate. But any way we may rely on the tradition, attested by Bede and adopted by the Bollandists, that the now empty tomb of Joseph was in the Valley of Josaphat, a tradition which still prevails at the present day. St. Jerome, indeed, was of opinion that his sepulcher was included within the limits of the garden of Gethsemani, and that it was not without a mystery that Jesus made choice of that spot for prayer, especially on the night of His agony. Possibly He desired to engage us to seek to have Joseph near us when we are in our last agony, and hence to enjoy the consolation of his patronage at that dread hour.