Stone & Incense Search
Start hereCurious, or no faithEvangelical, Pentecostal or ProtestantFrom another faithSomeone I love is CatholicBecoming CatholicI was Catholic once Today in the ChurchLibraryHard questionsVoices of the revivalTake the next stepAboutSources & methodSupport the site
The saints

St. Joseph

The quiet carpenter who never says a word in the Gospels, and raised the Son of God.

Feast: 19 March · 1st century BC to 1st century AD · The early Church · Nazareth and Bethlehem

Read the story 1 min read
Painting of St. Joseph, white-bearded, holding the infant Jesus in his arms.

Guido Reni, 1620. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Joseph

Nazareth, Galilee

Not one sentence spoken by Joseph is recorded in the Gospels.1

What we have instead is what he did, again and again, the moment God asked.1

He found out his fiancée was pregnant, and the child was not his.

Patron of fathers1; families1; carpenters1; Canada, Belgium and China1

01St. Joseph

A just man

Joseph was engaged to Mary, a young woman of Nazareth, and he is called a just man.2

When he learned she was with child, he planned to end the engagement quietly, so she would not be shamed.2

An angel told him in a dream to take Mary as his wife, and he did exactly that.3

02St. Joseph

The man who got up

Warned again in a dream, he took Mary and the baby and fled by night to Egypt.4

He taught Jesus his trade, and people in Nazareth knew Jesus as the carpenter’s son.5

The Gospels do not tell us when he died, and the Church has long seen him as the patron of a happy death, dying in the arms of Jesus and Mary.1

Live it this week

Do the next right thing tonight

Joseph never gave a speech; he just got up and did what God asked. Think of one thing you already know you should do (call your mom, fix the leak, apologize) and do it today, before you can overthink it.

Notes

How we know · 5 sources for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org
  2. Matthew 1:19, World English Bible. read the chapter
  3. Matthew 1:24, World English Bible. read the chapter
  4. Matthew 2:14, World English Bible. read the chapter
  5. Matthew 13:55, World English Bible. read the chapter

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.