Josephology: The Theological Study of Saint Joseph

Josephology is the branch of Catholic theology that studies systematically the person, the mission, and the cult of Saint Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and the legal father of Jesus. Just as Mariology is the theology of Mary, Josephology is the theology of Saint Joseph: it investigates his election, his marriage to the Mother of God, his fatherhood over the incarnate Word, his holiness, and his patronage over the universal Church. This is not a matter of isolated devotion, but of a theological discipline with its own sources – Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the papal Magisterium – and with a precise place in the edifice of faith, between Christology and Mariology. This page is the pillar that organizes the Josephology section of Locus Mariologicus.

What Josephology Is

The foundation of Josephology is biblical, and here a principle of method applies: Scripture says little about Joseph, but that little is decisive. Matthew 1-2, Luke 1-2, the sayings at Nazareth about the “carpenter’s son” (Mt 13:55), and the episode in the Temple (Lk 2:41-52) form a revealed corpus sufficient for a complete theological profile. On that scriptural foundation rise the patristic, liturgical, magisterial, and spiritual floors of the discipline: without biblical Josephology, everything else would hang in the air.

The dogmatic point of support is Joseph’s unique insertion into the mystery of the Incarnation. Saint John Paul II formulated it precisely in the apostolic exhortation Redemptoris custos:

It was precisely in this mystery that Joseph of Nazareth “shared” as no other human person did, with the exception of Mary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word. He shared in this mystery simultaneously with Mary, involved in the reality of the same salvific event, and he was the guardian of the same love. (Redemptoris custos, n. 1)

Francis confirmed the weight of this fact in the apostolic letter Patris corde: “After Mary, the Mother of God, no saint occupies as much space in the papal Magisterium as Joseph, her spouse” (Patris corde, prologue). Josephology is the scientific organization of this fact. Joseph is not an extra in the nativity scene: he is, with Mary, the guardian of the mystery of God made man.

A Brief History of the Discipline

The foundations are patristic. Redemptoris custos recalls that it is above all in the Annunciation to Joseph (Mt 1:20-21) that “the central nucleus of the biblical truth about Saint Joseph” is contained, the moment of his existence to which the Fathers of the Church refer in particular (RC 2). The same exhortation recalls that Saint Teresa of Jesus, the great reformer of the contemplative Carmel, became a promoter of the renewal of the cult of Saint Joseph in the West (RC 25).

The modern Magisterium built the doctrinal body of the discipline in datable stages. On December 8, 1870, by the decree Quemadmodum Deus of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, Pius IX solemnly declared Joseph patron of the Catholic Church and raised his feast of March 19 to a double rite of the first class. John Paul II sums up the gesture: “In difficult times for the Church, Pius IX, wishing to entrust her to the special protection of the Holy Patriarch Joseph, declared him ‘Patron of the Catholic Church’” (RC 28). In 1889, Leo XIII dedicated to him the encyclical Quamquam pluries, which grounds the whole dignity of Joseph in two sources, his marriage to Mary and his fatherhood over Jesus: “De estas fuentes ha manado su dignidad, su santidad, su gloria” (QP 3, official Spanish version). In 1909, the Apostolic See approved the litany of Saint Joseph. In 1989, on the centenary of Quamquam pluries, John Paul II published Redemptoris custos, the most complete doctrinal synthesis on the saint. On December 8, 2020, on the 150th anniversary of the patronage, Francis published Patris corde and convoked a jubilee year dedicated to Saint Joseph. In 2021, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments added seven new invocations to the litany, among them Custos Redemptoris, Serve Christi, and Minister salutis, the last of these taken from Saint John Chrysostom.

There is, therefore, no Josephology apart from the Magisterium: the documents from Pius IX to Francis form the discipline’s corpus of reference and trace out its program of research. It is to them that the articles in this section constantly return.

The Major Themes of Josephology

The Fatherhood of Joseph

This is the central theme. Joseph did not beget Jesus, and yet his fatherhood is not a pious fiction. Redemptoris custos is categorical:

In it, Joseph is the father: his fatherhood, however, is not only “apparent,” or merely “substitute”; rather, it is fully endowed with the authenticity of human fatherhood, with the authenticity of the paternal mission in the family. (Redemptoris custos, n. 21)

The Catechism takes up this fact by calling Joseph the “legal father” of Jesus and by teaching that the Son’s submission to Mary and Joseph “was the perfect fulfillment of the fourth commandment” (CCC 532). Giving the name of Jesus (Mt 1:21, 25) is an effective exercise of that fatherhood, which binds the whole hidden life of the Savior to Joseph’s custody.

The Marriage to Mary

Fatherhood does not hover in the air: “As can be deduced from the Gospel texts, the marriage to Mary is the juridical basis of Joseph’s fatherhood. It was in order to ensure fatherly protection for Jesus that God chose Joseph as Mary’s spouse” (RC 7). Jewish betrothal already conferred on Mary the full condition of wife, so that Joseph is a true husband and a true legal father from before they lived together. The figure of Joseph is inexplicable outside that spousal relationship.

The Patronage over the Church

Leo XIII argues that the house of Nazareth, which Joseph governed with a father’s authority, contained within itself the nascent Church, and that for this reason it is fitting that he should now protect the Church of Christ with his heavenly patronage (QP 3). This is the theological reason for the title proclaimed by Pius IX in 1870 and celebrated by Francis in 2020.

The Cult of Saint Joseph

The liturgy and piety translate the doctrine: the solemnity of March 19, the memorial of the Worker of Nazareth, the litany approved in 1909 and expanded in 2021, the invocation of Joseph as patron of a happy death (CCC 1014), and the practices of consecration. Here Josephology finds its most popular terrain, which it has the duty to purify and to ground.

Reading Guide: The Fifteen Articles of the Series

The Locus Mariologicus Josephology series unfolds each of these themes in an article of its own. Here is the annotated map:

• Who Saint Joseph was: the biblical and historical profile of the carpenter of Nazareth, the starting point of the whole study.
• The betrothal of Mary and Joseph: Jewish betrothal and the true marriage that grounds the whole dignity of Joseph.
• The fatherhood of Saint Joseph: why Joseph is the true father of Jesus without being his biological father.
• The dreams of Saint Joseph: the nocturnal revelations of Matthew 1-2 and the theology of the obedience of faith.
• The silence of Saint Joseph: not one word of his was recorded in the Gospels, and that silence has “a special eloquence” (RC 17).
• Saint Joseph the Worker: human work brought close to the mystery of redemption from the workshop of Nazareth (RC 22).
• Sleeping Saint Joseph: the devotional image of the saint who listens to God in sleep, and its biblical foundation.
• Redemptoris custos: a reading guide to John Paul II’s exhortation (1989), the magna carta of modern Josephology.
• Patris corde: the seven facets of a father’s heart according to Francis (2020).
• Saint Joseph patron of the Church: from the decree Quemadmodum Deus (1870) to the present day.
• The passing of Saint Joseph: the death of Joseph between Jesus and Mary, and the patronage of a happy death.
• Consecration to Saint Joseph: the history, foundation, and practice of filial entrustment to the holy patriarch.
• Litany of Saint Joseph: the invocations of 1909 and the seven added in 2021, explained one by one.
• Go to Joseph: the typology of the patriarch Joseph of Egypt (Gen 41:55) applied to the spouse of Mary.
• Prayers to Saint Joseph: the principal prayers of the tradition, with text and commentary.

For an overview in the form of a dictionary entry, see also the encyclopedic article on Saint Joseph.

Josephology and Mariology

In an institute of Mariology, the question is unavoidable: why study Joseph? Because one does not reach Mary without passing through her spouse, nor Joseph without passing through his wife. “Together with Mary, Joseph is the first guardian of this divine mystery” (RC 5), and his response to the angel, a “most pure ‘obedience of faith’” (RC 4), mirrors Mary’s readiness at the Annunciation. Joseph’s fatherhood presupposes the divine motherhood of the Theotokos, his chaste marriage guards the perpetual virginity of Mary, and together with Jesus the two of them form the Holy Family, the original cell of the Church. The two disciplines are sisters: Mariology is the older and the more developed, Josephology the younger, but the method is the same, to read a concrete person within the one mystery of Christ.

May this pillar serve as a doorway. John Paul II desired that Saint Joseph become “for everyone a singular teacher in the service of Christ’s salvific mission” (RC 32). To study Joseph with rigor is a way of obeying him.

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