Joseph of Jacob, Saint Joseph

Drawing of Joseph by Lorenzo Ferri According to the indications of Maria Valtorta. Source: documentary collection of the Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation.

Joseph, the husband of Mary, is of royal descent. He is the second and last son of Jacob, himself the son of Mathan and grandson of Eleazar. Nothing else is known about his family except his older brother, Alpheus, and his descendants.

Portrait

"Joseph is a handsome man, in the prime of life. He would be at most thirty-five years old. His dark chestnut hair and beard of the same color frame a regular Face with gentle eyes, brown, almost black. The forehead is broad and smooth, the nose small, slightly curved, the cheeks round with rosy cheekbones. He is not very tall, but robust and well made."

Thus he is about 15 to 20 years older than his wife Mary. Their "legal marriage," the first partial step of marriage as experienced today, takes place at the Temple of Jerusalem. It is the occasion for Maria Valtorta to describe in detail the festive clothes of the two betrothed.

In another vision, Maria Valtorta sees him roughly the same height as the Virgin Mary: he would therefore be about 1.65 m tall.

Jesus and Mary speak of Joseph

Mary: "At first, he was only a just man of his time. Then, through successive stages, he became the just man of the Christian era. He acquired faith in the Christ and calmly surrendered to this faith."          

Jesus: "Beloved Father of the earth, as you were loved by God, God the Father from the heights of Heaven, God the Son, who became Savior on earth!"

"He toiled at work to provide me with bread and nourishing Food. He had for Me the tenderness of a true mother. I learned from him — and no pupil ever had a better teacher — all that makes a child a man and a man who must earn his bread."

"Wasn't Joseph at Golgotha? Do you think he is not among the co-redeemers? Truly, I tell you, he was the first among them and for that he is great in the eyes of God. Great by sacrifice, patience, constancy, faith. What greater faith than that of the one who believed without seeing the miracles of the Messiah?"        

According to Jesus, he used to say when something painful weighed on the Holy Family :

"Let us lift our spirit. We look again at God's gaze and we will forget that it is the men who give us the pain, and let us do all that is painful as if it were the Most High who presented it to us. In this way we will sanctify even the smallest things, and God will love us."

His life

He was probably born in Bethlehem in Judah and left it very early. Later, when it was time to register in his hometown, there was no longer any house or person he recognized.

Alpheus, Joseph's older brother, had four sons: "the brothers of the Lord." The wives of two of them are "the sisters of the Lord."        

Joseph worked as a carpenter, a trade he initiated his son into. This job allowed Joseph to support the holy Family during their travels in the early years: in Bethlehem where he stayed about a year following the census, and in Matharaea in Egypt where he stayed for four years.      

Drawing of Joseph dying by Lorenzo Ferri According to the indications of Maria Valtorta. Source: documentary collection of the Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation.

Maria Valtorta mentions a screwdriver in his workshop. This anachronistic word is explained by the poverty of technical vocabulary available to the seer. At the time of the Christ, the carpenter's tools looked a great deal like contemporary tools: Maria Valtorta most likely describes a chisel (wood chisel for drilling mortises).

His death

At his death, "(Mary) had devoted thirty years of a faithful life to him." From this, it is deduced that Jesus was 28 years old at that time, Mary 44, and Joseph about 63/64 years old. Death occurs two years before the beginning of Jesus' public life.  

Joseph had a painful death, "but he was resigned." Jesus gave him Peace by reciting appropriate Psalms during his agony: Psalm 15 (16),1-11; Psalm 83 (84),1-10; Psalm 84 (85),1-13; Psalm 131 (132),1-18; Psalm 111 (112),1-6; Psalm 90 (91),1-16.

It is from Joseph that Jesus learned about certain episodes of his childhood. Joseph is joined in this by the Virgin Mary and by Alphaeus of Sarah, a long-time neighbor friend of the Family.

The chastity of Joseph

Joseph had consecrated himself to God and did not aspire to marriage. He confesses it to his fiancée Mary when his staff miraculously blooms, designating him as chosen by God:

"I am a nazirite and I obeyed the summons because it came from the High Priest, not out of desire for marriage."

This life in virginity, mutually accepted, leads to a separate life in Nazareth. Joseph's little eagerness to celebrate the Weddings arouses the surprise of the Family and neighbors:

"Joseph delayed the Weddings as much as possible, and no one ever understood how suddenly he decided on cohabitation before the fixed time. And also, when it was known that you were a mother, how Nazareth marveled at his contained joy!..." said to the Virgin Mary, Mary of Clopas her sister-in-law.

The Annunciation and Joseph's dream hastened the Weddings, then cohabitation in chastity. The marriage had originally been planned for Mary's 16th birthday. This married life in virginity, sometimes hard to understand, is explained by Jesus:

"Joseph of Nazareth was a just. Only to him could the Lily of God (Mary) be entrusted. An Angel, in his Soul as in his body, he loved her as the Angels of God love. The immensity of this powerful love … will be understood by few people on earth."      

This life in chastity establishes an authentic love:

"Those who think that Mary's love for her husband was rather lukewarm, because between them there was only a union of spirits, are mistaken, comments Jesus. Mary intensely loved her Joseph. She had devoted thirty years of a faithful life to him. He was for Her: a father, a husband, a brother, a friend, a protector."

Joseph's passion

When Joseph became aware of Mary's pregnancy, a true passion began for him: the spouses had only celebrated the first stage of their marriage, thus not yet cohabiting and Mary was a virgin consecrated for life to God. Joseph decided to quietly repudiate Mary. However, the angel appears to him in a dream to reveal who Jesus is and by whom he was conceived.

"My Joseph also had his Passion. And it began in Jerusalem when he realized my condition, and it lasted days just like for Jesus and for me. And spiritually it was no less painful. It is only by the holiness of Joseph, my husband, that it remained in such a dignified and secret form that it passed little known through the centuries. (...)

Who could truly describe the pain of Joseph, his thoughts, the disturbance of his affections? Like a small boat caught in a great storm, he found himself in a whirlwind of opposing ideas, reflections more painful and more cruel than one another. In appearance, he was a man betrayed by his Woman. He saw his good reputation and the esteem of the world collapse because of her, he already saw himself pointed at and the object of the compassion of the country. He saw the love and esteem he had for me fall dead before the evidence of the fact.   

Here his holiness shines even more than mine, and I testify to it with my love as a wife, because I want you to love him, my Joseph, this wise and prudent man, patient and good, who is not a stranger to the mystery of Redemption, to which he was intimately linked, because he used his pain and himself for it, saving the Savior at the price of his sacrifice and by his great holiness.          

If he had been less holy, he would have acted humanly by denouncing me as an adulteress to have me stoned and perish with the fruit of my sin. If he had been less holy, God would not have given him the light to guide him through such a trial. But Joseph was holy. His spirit, all purity, lived in God. The charity in him was ardent and strong. And through his charity, he saved you, the Savior, both by not denouncing me to the elders, and by promptly obeying to take Jesus to Egypt."

His name

ףיוס (Joseph).

Joseph (Iosseph - Iehosseph) means "May God add!" Historical reference: the eleventh son of Jacob whom he had by Rachel. This favored son was sold by his brothers and became Pharaoh's steward.

Where is he mentioned in the work?

In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

Mary’s childhood: EMV 9 EMV 12 EMV 13 EMV 13 EMV 14

The Nativity cycle: EMV 18 EMV 19 EMV 20 EMV 20 EMV 22 EMV 22 EMV 25 EMV 25 EMV 26 EMV 26 EMV 27 EMV 28 EMV 29 EMV 29 EMV 30 EMV 31 EMV 31 EMV 32 EMV 34 EMV 34 EMV 35 EMV 35 EMV 36 EMV 36

Jesus’ youth: EMV 37 EMV 37 EMV 38 EMV 39 EMV 40 EMV 41 EMV 42 EMV 42 EMV 43.  

EMV 44 EMV 44 EMV 73 EMV 99 EMV 136.      

EMV 173 EMV 196 EMV 199 EMV 207.  

EMV 259.

EMV 560 EMV 577.

EMV 596.  

EMV 642.

In the The Notebooks of 1944

The portrait of Saint Joseph in Paradise, in the vision of January 10, 1944

"I see Saint Joseph (near the corner where the manger is). He is not very tall, roughly the same height as Mary. Sturdy. He has graying, curly, short hair, and a square-cut beard. His nose is long and fine, aquiline. His cheeks are hollowed by two wrinkles starting from the corners of the nose and descending to be lost on the side of the mouth, in the beard. His eyes are black and seem very good. I find in him the good loving look of my father. His entire Face is good, thoughtful without being melancholic, noble, but with such an expression of kindness! He is dressed in a bluish-purple tunic like the petals of certain periwinkles and wears a camel-hair colored cloak. Jesus shows him to me saying: "Here is the patron of all the just."

Learn more about this character

Excerpts from the Dictionary of Gospel Characters, According to Maria Valtorta (Mgr René Laurentin, François-Michel Debroise, Jean-François Lavère, Éditions Salvator, 2012):

Saint Joseph is celebrated on July 20 in the East and March 19 in the West.  

His Worship began in the East with "The History of Joseph the Carpenter," a 4th-century Coptic apocryphal text. The work became very popular in the 5th century and greatly influenced iconography.      

In the 2nd century, the Protoevangelium of James presented Joseph as a widower who already had children from a first marriage. This notion was taken up by successive apocrypha, such as the Pseudo-Matthew at the end of the 6th century and the Book of the Nativity of Mary in the 9th century.

Seers like Marie d'Agréda (17th century), Anne-Catherine Emmerich (19th century), and Maria Valtorta break with this tradition: Joseph was about thirty-three years old and had never been married. His vow of chastity is confirmed by these seers, but only implicitly for Anne-Catherine Emmerich.

Several traditions place his death around 60 years old, whereas "The History of Joseph the Carpenter," the already mentioned apocryphon, placed it at 110 years.

In "Joseph of Nazareth"

"Joseph of Nazareth"

In 2019, the Maria Valtorta Heir Foundation published a selection of texts drawn from the work of Maria Valtorta chosen by Claudia Vecchiarelli on "Joseph of Nazareth," supplemented by two encyclicals about him.

The painful death of Joseph According to Maria d'Agréda (1602-1665)

"Saint Joseph had been afflicted by illnesses and pains for eight years [...] During the nine days preceding the death of Saint Joseph, the Son and the Mother attended him day and night, [...] The entire life of the happiest of men, Saint Joseph, was sixty years and a few days. Indeed, he married the most pure Mary at thirty-three years old, and lived a little more than twenty-seven years with her; and when the holy spouse died, our august Queen was about forty-one years and six months old, since [...] she was married to Saint Joseph at the age of fourteen, which, added to the twenty-seven years they lived together, makes forty-one years, plus the time that passed from September 8 to the happy death of the most holy spouse. (in "The Mystic City of God").

The one in whom the Father was best reflected

Father Joseph-Marie Verlinde, published at mariedenazareth.com March 15, 2012:

After Mary, Saint Joseph is undoubtedly the greatest saint in heaven. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus wrote of him: "The Lord gathered in Joseph, as in a sun, all that the saints have together of light and splendor."  

Throughout the history of the Church, from Saint Irenaeus, Saint Ephrem, Saint Basil to Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Vincent de Paul, through Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard and many others, how much inspiration drawn from the humble carpenter who became the shadow of the Father by virtue of his Mission in the mystery of the Incarnation! And the popes are not the last to sing the glory of Saint Joseph!        

For just as Mary continues, at the heart of the Church, her maternal ministry of birthing the New Man, so Saint Joseph continues to watch over the growth of the Mystical Body of the One on whom he received paternal authority.        

Why not follow the example of the "good Pope John XXIII" who simply confessed: "'Saint Joseph, I love him very much, so much so that I cannot begin my day, nor end it, without my first and last thought being for him.'"