The Paternity of Joseph

Joseph’s virtue was sublime and exceptional; therefore was it subjected to a great and singular trial. But, as he heroically surmounted this trial, so God was pleased, not only to console him, but to exalt him to a dignity of extraordinary glory. What this glory was which the Ever-Blessed Trinity conceded to Joseph we learn from the Evangelist. He tells us that when Joseph had risen from his sleep he faithfully fulfilled the mandate of the angel, that is, the command of God by the mouth of His angel, namely, to recognize as his true spouse her who had conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, and was about to bring forth a son to whom he should give the name of Jesus. In this command all the Three Divine Persons concurred. The Son, who was to be born of Mary, had no earthly father. It belonged to His Heavenly Father to confer upon Him His name: that is the father’s office and right; and the Eternal Father transferred this right to Joseph, willing that in His place he should impose on Him the name of Jesus, and, in doing so, He constituted him His representative in all a father’s rights, and expressly confided to his paternal care His Only-Begotten Son. Jesus, the Son of God, who was to be born of the Virgin Mary, willed that she should be joined in marriage and live with a virgin spouse, so that men should not repute His birth as illegitimate; and He willed to recognize this virgin spouse as His father in affection, adoption, government and education, and to be constantly obedient and subject to him. The Holy Ghost, who had operated the incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of Mary, willed that to Joseph this His spouse should be entirely confided. He was to be the zealous guardian of her virginity, her guide, her aid, her support, and her inseparable companion through all the vicissitudes of life. And where, apart from the Divine Maternity, can so great a dignity be found upon earth as that which was conferred on Joseph by the Three Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity?

We will here pause awhile to reflect on this high dignity, for the paternity of Joseph is a mystery which deserves our deepest consideration. We may view the announcement of the angel to Joseph as the counterpart, so to say, of the Annunciation. Mary then became the Mother of God. Jesus was to be truly born of her, and to be Flesh of her flesh. In the vision which came to Joseph he was appointed to be—though not in the way of generation—the father in a peculiar and ineffable manner of the Eternal Son. It is important, then, in estimating the glory of Joseph, to consider that it is not sufficient to suppose that he was only held to be the father of Jesus in popular credence, for there was a sense in which he was truly what he was called. This august dignity which was conferred upon him was, as has been observed, altogether singular and incomparable. Although inferior to that of the Blessed Virgin, inasmuch as she conceived in her womb and brought forth the Son of God, and was therefore His Mother according to the flesh, and more entirely His parent in that regard than any earthly parent ever was of her child, nevertheless, in its lower degree, Joseph’s dignity of father of Jesus stands alone; and his title pointed to a reality, and did not merely serve to conceal from view (as, however, it also did) the fact of the Incarnation. The Gospel language and the testimony of Mary are significant tokens of this truth, which has been dwelt upon and commented by several Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

If Joseph had been the father of Jesus only in the estimation of others, it would have been a great honor to him, and this honor is undeniably his; but we should take a restricted view of the dignity bestowed upon him if we did not believe that this title had moreover a true and real signification belonging to it. God does not give a mere name. His word is creative, and imparts a corresponding reality. Among those eminent interpreters of Scripture who have treated of the paternity of Joseph St. Augustine must be numbered as expressly asserting his claim to be called the father of a God-made-Man. The devout Abbot Rupert is of opinion that Joseph’s supereminent faith constituted a sufficient title to that appellation. Observing that St. Augustine holds that the Blessed Virgin was in a certain manner Mother of the Savior even before the Incarnation, and that it would have availed her nothing to conceive the Son of God in her chaste womb if she had not first conceived Him by the brilliant light of faith, it appears to him that St. Joseph’s paternity may be established on the excellence of his faith, which conferred greater honor on it than the ordinary mode of generation could have imparted. As Abraham by faith¹ became father of his race, so faith produced in Joseph a still more wonderful paternity. The learned Bishop of Christopolis, Jacob Valentia, in his Treatise on the Magnificat, makes some very striking remarks on the character of the paternity of Joseph, who, he affirms, was in a singular manner the spiritual father of the Messias. That illustrious prelate gives us to understand that St. Joseph concurred as an exemplary cause, or model, in the production of the Sacred Humanity. He says that the Holy Spirit in preparing the body to which the Divine Word was to unite Himself observed the temperament, the disposition, the inclinations of Joseph. He attended to his beauty, to his form, to his physiognomy, to copy it when organizing the body of the Savior; and, indeed, this resemblance seemed fitting in order to corroborate the popular opinion that the son of Mary was also the son of Joseph. The Eternal Father begat His Son by the sole knowledge of Himself. The Blessed Trinity contemplated Itself to reproduce Its living image in the creation of our souls. The body of the first Adam, Tertullian says,² was molded by God as a model of the Humanity of the Second Adam, whom in the course of ages He designed to bring into the world. But when the Holy Spirit formed the Body and created the Soul of Jesus He contented Himself with looking at Joseph, that the one and the other might be perfectly alike. If, then, our saint cooperated as an ideal cause in the production of the Humanity of the Divine Word, may we not believe, with the learned Bishop, that Joseph was His father after a spiritual and most singular manner? That we have a right to believe as much is unquestionable, since it is the general doctrine of the Fathers and Theologians of the Church that Joseph is the father of the Savior on most assured titles; and that, with the exception of generation, there is nothing which can be attributed to any man worthy of the name of father which was not preeminently possessed by him.³ We need not, then, fear believing too much or holding exaggerated notions concerning a mystery which probably far surpasses our unaided intellects fully to conceive.

But we have by no means exhausted the subject. We will look at it from another point of view, which confers no less honor on our saint. Jesus Himself elected Joseph to be His father, and always treated him as such. This, too, is the teaching of the holy Fathers. We find, for instance, St. John Damascene declaring that Jesus raised Joseph to the glorious dignity of His father by a special election and privileged adoption;⁴ and St. Epiphanius also saying that no one can deny that Joseph is the father of the Son of God, adding that the origin of this paternity was the love of this same Son, who adopted him for His father. St. Bernard in later days echoes the same sentiment.⁵ Of all the sons of men, the Savior alone had the power to choose His own father. With other men this was impossible; they were incapable of choice before they existed, and could therefore give no preference to one man more than to another. Even Jesus Christ Himself, as Son of God, did not elect His Eternal Father, not only because His generation was necessary, but also because He in no way preceded His own eternal generation, and therefore exercised no deliberation or choice concerning Him who begat Him from all eternity. But this same Divine Savior could, without doubt, designate the father whom as Son of Man He was to acknowledge, because, as the Word of God, He preceded him, and there was nothing to constrain Him to prefer one man to be His father more than another. On the cross He adopted St. John the Evangelist for His brother; but long before He had honored St. Joseph by adopting him for His father. The adoption of John was made at the death of the Savior, the adoption of Joseph had already been made in the first instant of His life. If it was, as we have said, a high honor to Joseph to be chosen as the spouse of Mary and accepted by her, what must we say of the dignity conferred on him in being chosen by the Son of God Himself to be His father? And, as he was truly the spouse of Mary, not merely such in name, so was he also by adoption the true father of Jesus. Jesus in adopting him made him His father supernaturally, and this belief is surely more honorable to the Savior than to suppose that every time He gave him that endearing name it was one empty of any true signification. No; the paternity of Joseph was a real paternity, and, albeit in a mysterious and spiritual sense, had a reality far surpassing that of any ordinary father.

And how often, and with what affection, in the course of the well-nigh thirty years during which Jesus lived with Joseph, did He not pronounce that sweet name! It seems most probable that the first time the Incarnate Word spoke it was to say “father and mother,” according to the prophecy of Isaias,⁶ and to imitate little ones in all His ways. Be this as it may, how often must the Divine Infant have called Joseph father! How often, embracing him and, after the manner of children, clasping and clinging to his neck, must He not have said, “O father, My dear father!” The angels know how often, for the words of the Savior would be duly counted by those blessed spirits. Again, the very fact of Jesus having so often during His public ministry called Himself the “Son of man,” is not perhaps without a peculiar meaning as regards Joseph’s paternity. The learned Cardinal Toleto⁷ has drawn attention to this, and says that, making use of a general term significant of both sexes, He would show that, although His Mother alone had conceived Him, nevertheless He wished all the world to know that He recognized Himself as the son of Joseph; and, as often as He honored him with the name of father, He conferred upon him the right to be truly so called. The words of God, as we have said, are effective and creative: “He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created”.⁸ That which Omnipotence pronounces is simultaneously accomplished. When, therefore, God names Joseph His father He makes him so. A word of the Most High had sufficed to draw a whole universe from the abyss of nothingness, and this word had so much power, St. Ambrose says, that its execution did not follow, but accompanied it. In like manner, the Son of God needed but a word for the subsistence of a new quality in Joseph, that of father, in the possession of which he was manifestly placed by the mere fact that Jesus called him father. As St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great teach, God, both in the Old and the New Testament, speaks by acts as well as by words. That Jesus treated Joseph as His father for so many years—no son having ever shown so much respect and obedience to his parent—is in itself a striking proof of the true paternity of Joseph. The acts of the Son of God are not less significant than were those of patriarchs and prophets; hence we have every reason to affirm, with Cardinal Cajetan, that Jesus Himself teaches us that He is verily the son of Joseph. But on this subject, His marvelous subjection to Joseph, we shall have more to say hereafter.

St. Augustine, speaking of our saint, says that he owed the august title of father of Jesus, and consequently the Savior’s choice of him, to that which in other men is incompatible with paternity, namely, his extraordinary love of virginity and his study to perfect it in himself. And, in effect, if Mary’s virginal purity inclined and drew the Son of God, as St. Bernard says, to abide in her chaste womb, it is highly probable that this same virtue, which flourished so sweetly in the breast of Joseph, moved the Savior to choose him for His father. But He alone knows the motives of His choice; one thing we know, as St. Jerome says, that there was in him such a fund of merit that nothing more was needed to cause him to be preferred to all other men.

We must now take a glance at his title to paternity founded on his espousals with Mary. Jesus was the virginal fruit of a virginal marriage, for Joseph was the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus. It was not as when a woman takes a second husband, and her children by the former marriage call him father because he is legally such. Every one understands this practice, in which a claim to real paternity is neither made nor implied. But Joseph was the husband of Mary, not only of whom Jesus was born, but when He was born, and also at the time of His conception. Jesus was not only born of a virgin but, as Scripture expressly states, of “a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph”.⁹ If it had so pleased God, the Annunciation and the Divine Conception might have taken place a day or two before the Espousals, for the marriage of Joseph and Mary would have equally served in that case to shield her honor, but no; the virgin Mother was to have a husband, and that husband was Joseph.

We are so accustomed to the brief words of the Scripture narrative that we are apt not to take sufficient pains to fathom their deep import; yet their very briefness bespeaks their depth. None are superfluous or casual. All have their meaning, and, not seldom, several meanings. Now, we may notice that the Evangelists, while taking marked care to state that the Incarnate Word was divinely conceived, so that man had no part in His generation, which was the sole work of the Holy Ghost, speak also of Joseph in terms and give him a position hardly to be accounted for or fully understood unless we hold his paternity in a true and special sense of its own. Joseph was father of the Savior because of his holy marriage with the glorious Virgin, for, according to the opinion of the Abbot Rupert, it was impossible for him to be the husband of Mary without being the father of Jesus. “If,” he says, “he is the husband of Mary, then he is the father of the Lord.”¹⁰ Many centuries ago, St. Augustine, that strenuous defender of the paternity of Joseph, availed himself of the same reason to justify the language of Scripture in calling him the father of the Son of God: “Whence is he called father but because he is the husband of Mary?”¹¹

This great doctor of the Church further strengthens his opinion by an argument which, if it was not put forth by one of his high authority, would be deemed perhaps by some to make too arrogant a claim on behalf of our saint. Yet it would not be easy to confute it. He says that Jesus might be called the son of David, even if the Blessed Virgin had not been descended, as, in fact, she was, from that great king; for it was sufficient that the Savior was truly the son of Joseph for him to be incontestably recognized as the son of David. For if David can justly claim the august title of father of the Messias, because Joseph connects him with Him—and that so it is the genealogy of Joseph given by St. Matthew testifies—it is easy to infer that this same saint may be also justly held by all men, and declared without fear of error, to be the father of Jesus. Such is the doctrine of St. Augustine, which, before him, was taught by Origen,¹² who, though not so high an authority as the great Bishop of Hippo, records at least the opinion of very early times.

Perhaps sufficient attention has not been paid to the witness which the New Testament genealogies give in favor of St. Joseph’s substantial claims. They are often regarded in the light, if not of a difficulty, yet of something needing explanation. Why, it is asked, is it Joseph’s genealogy which is given? The object being to prove the Savior’s descent, according to the flesh, from David, it was surely Mary’s, not Joseph’s, genealogy which was needed. Moreover, Joseph’s descent is introduced in these clear and formal terms: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David”; and ends by saying: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus”.¹³ Now, it is true that a satisfactory explanation has been given, as has already been noticed, namely, that the Hebrews were not in the habit of tracing genealogies on the female side, and that Mary, being near of kin to Joseph and of the house of David, was included in the same descent. Besides which, the genealogy given by St. Luke is by some interpreters, though not by all, considered (as was pointed out) to be Mary’s, Heli being identified with Joachim, her father; but any way, the significant fact remains that the name of Joseph here also, where the descent is traced upwards, heads—as in St. Matthew’s Gospel, where it is traced downwards, it closes—the genealogy of our Lord; both being therefore, on the face of them, designed to establish His title to being the son of David through Joseph, whose natural descent from that king is given by St. Matthew, as his legal is given by St. Luke. St. Matthew, after recording this genealogy, immediately proceeds to state how the generation of Jesus was the work of the Holy Ghost; and St. Luke, by his expression, “Being (as it was supposed) the Son of Joseph, who was of Heli,” incidentally declares the same; namely, that Joseph had no part in the generation of the Son of God. Hence we find the two Evangelists, while clearly asserting that Jesus was not the son of Joseph by natural generation, at the same time giving testimony to his being his son in another sense, by connecting His right to the title of son of David with the husband of His Blessed Virgin Mother.

The Virgin belonged to Joseph by marriage, and, if we are to credit the pious and learned Chancellor of the University of Paris, Gerson—who preached, not merely without rebuke, but with commendation, of the lofty privileges of our saint before the Council of Constance—the Holy Spirit would not take the small portion of the blood of the most pure Virgin needed to form within her the Body of the Divine Word, without Joseph’s implied consent; so that the Word in assuming a portion of the substance of our Lady appropriated what, in a manner, depended on Joseph, inasmuch as He united Himself to the flesh of her over whom this great saint had rights; and thus, in becoming the son of Mary, He became also, in a certain sense, the son of Joseph, for He was not the son simply of a virgin, but of a virgin married to Joseph. “Joseph was His father by generation, not his own, but of Mary, his wife.” These are Gerson’s words; and it is in the same sense that the strong expressions of some doctors in past times must be interpreted; such as the following of Antonio Perez, Bishop of Urgel, in his commentary on St. Matthew: “Joseph obtained the right of a father to Christ, in that He was bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, to wit, of Mary his spouse”; and those of the learned Paschal Rathbert, Abbot of Corbie, who lived in the middle of the eighth century, when he said that the Savior belonged to Joseph even according to the flesh.¹⁴ We might also quote as an authority the Venerable Bede, who, apparently following St. Augustine, judges that Joseph, in virtue of his marriage, has the same title to be called the father of Jesus as he has to be called the husband of Mary.¹⁵ And, as it is the incontestable doctrine of the Church that Joseph was the true husband of Mary, it must be inferred that he thereby justly merited also the title of father of Jesus. And would it not seem that God, by not allowing the conception of His Son to precede Mary’s marriage, designed to give Joseph an authentic title to that name, that all men might be able to say, as does the learned Tostatus, that “Christ was the offspring of the marriage of Mary and Joseph”;¹⁶ and, as the learned Bishop of Christopolis affirms, that He was “born of this sacred, virginal, and inviolate marriage”?¹⁷ It was God’s will, in short, that it might rightly be maintained that the Savior was, not only the “Blessed Fruit” of Mary’s chaste womb, but, as St. Thomas observes, and, before him, St. Augustine, the fruit of the alliance of Joseph and Mary, and at the same time the son of both the one and the other.

We have still to make some allusion to Mary’s own transfer of a share in her rights to Joseph; for, according to many theologians, Mary may be said to have had the rights, not only of a mother, but, in the absence of any human parent on the other side, of a father also. Yet that she fully conceded his share in these rights to Joseph, so far as they belonged to her, there can be no doubt. We have only to refer to the words she addressed to her Divine Son after finding Him in the Temple: “Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing,”¹⁸ giving Joseph the first place. She does not say, “My spouse and I,” or “Thy servant, Joseph, and I,” but “Thy father and I”. And the Evangelist himself adopts our Lady’s language, and speaks of them both as the parents of Jesus,¹⁹ as if their claims in that respect were on an equality. But upon this remarkable incident we shall not here further dwell, as we shall have occasion to recur to it in the course of the narrative.

In conclusion, it must be added that (as Gerson observes) the Holy Ghost substituted Joseph in His place to be Mary’s visible spouse. It is an undoubted doctrine of the Fathers of the Church that the Virgin was the spouse of the Holy Ghost, and, as that Adorable Spirit heretofore, brooding over the waters, imparted fecundity to them, so also by an operation wholly divine He caused Mary to conceive. Being, however, Himself invisible, He gave her in His stead a visible spouse, who should accompany her everywhere and render her faithful service. It was as when the Savior on ascending into Heaven withdrew His visible presence from the Church, His spouse; He appointed Peter as His Vicar in the care and government of that Church, investing him with all His powers and making him His personal representative; and, even as Peter, in his quality of Vicar of Christ, could call the Church his spouse and her children his children, who, on their part, also gave him, and still give, his successors the name of father—Papa—so also the Holy Ghost invested Joseph with His authority and rights, and taught the Evangelists, as we have seen, to call him father of Jesus, and record his genealogy, not that of his spouse, Mary.

There is a further reflection which must naturally suggest itself to every one who ardently desires to see St. Joseph honored and exalted. While Jesus remained on earth He was believed and reputed to be the son of Joseph. Now, though the Divinity of our Lord was fully known only to a chosen few, all men regarded Him as a great prophet mighty in word and work, and there was even a widely spread expectation that He would prove to be the promised Messias, the inheritor of David’s throne, the people more than once desiring to take Him by force and make Him their king. Can we think that the Savior would allow Joseph to lose any portion of the honor which at one time thus accrued to him from his paternity? His very name signifies increase; how, then, could he suffer diminution? But more than this: while on earth, dwelling in the humble house of Nazareth, Jesus called Joseph father, and treated him lovingly as such; and now that He is sitting in glory at the right hand of His Eternal Father, together with His Mother, the crowned Queen of heaven and earth, and Joseph, too, clothed in his glorified body, as it is piously believed—for how could it be otherwise?—can we imagine that our dear Lord, who on His exaltation turns to Mary and calls her mother, has ceased to address Joseph with the endearing name of father? If so it could be, then would it follow that to our great Patriarch and Patron earth proffered a glory and a blessing which Heaven denies him. But this is not so. God’s gifts are real, not nominal gifts; and they are, moreover, as we are told, “without repentance”.²⁰ He does not give and then take away. He increases, He develops, He causes to fructify, but He never resumes, as though it were a mere loan, what He has once conferred; nay, even that which is entrusted to us as such, the talents which we receive to trade withal until His coming, He makes ours on the day of reckoning, with increase and recompense incalculable. And shall not Joseph, who served Him so tenderly and faithfully as His father on earth during thirty years, enjoy for ever, in eternal bliss, the dignity which during his mortal life, spent in poverty and obscurity, had exalted him far above any man who ever had lived or ever should live—his Paternity?