Saint Joseph: a Patron Saint of Those Who Struggle to be Contented

John Everett Millais, "Christ in the House of His Parents" (oil on canvas, 1849–50)

It’s an odd fact of church history that the man who became Jesus’ earthly father has been largely ignored in our sermons, omitted from the usual lists of "heroes of the faith," and relegated to the shadows in much of the great art that Christians have produced over the centuries.

He's the actor who gets the bit part in the drama of redemption, but whom the audience will never be able to recall once the play is done, despite the fact that he played his bit part brilliantly.

He's the dismissable figure in the typical nativity painting and the personality who vanishes into the margins of the great choral works of sacred music.

Yet though he performs no great miracle and though he achieves no heroic status in the pages of Holy Scripture, he deserves both our attention and our admiration.

Why?

At the very least because he is one of the myriad faithful quiet ones who fills our pews, of whom people might typically say, in perhaps dismissive fashion, “He leaves no shadow,” because he always seems to find himself in the proverbial shadows, stage right to the really “exciting things of consequence.”

At work in the “Mérode Altarpiece” (1420s), attributed to Robert Campin and his workshop

He's the one people call "simple” but who is wise in earthy ways, but whose wisdom may seem un-spectacular to the sophisticated or may fail to speak to the urgent “need of the age.”

He’s one of those rare persons who fulfills the words of 1 Thessalonians 4:11, the one who makes it his ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind his own business, and to work with his hands—and, as far as we can tell, always happily so.

He’s the silent but loyal husband to Mary, who does not expose her to disgrace and who does as the angel of the Lord commanded him, despite the many whispers of his neighbors and the sideways glances of his co-workers.

He’s the surrogate father to the Second Person of the Trinity, but who teaches his one-of-a-kind son both carpentry and faithfulness to Torah, things that his adopted child needed to learn in order to fulfill his adult calling.

He is also the one who, like his young wife, lets go of every dream that he ever had about the life that he had imagined for himself.

Georges de La Tour, "Joseph the Carpenter" (oil on canvas, 1642)

In the 15th century, preachers and spiritual writers began to turn their attention to Joseph. He is presented around this time, in the “lives of saints,” as a devoted young husband and father, an example for workers, a patron for the dying, and a protector of pilgrims and immigrants.

It’s a really beautiful picture, I find, one that invests him with the personal dignity and historical “heft” that he rightly deserves.

He deserves our admiration, moreover, because he's the one who models for us, I suggest, a contented life.

He’s the biblical character who craves no continuous praise or attention. He’s the one who steals no thunder from his fellow characters in the theater of the Incarnation. He’s the one who has learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, but not, I imagine, without struggle.

It's always easy, of course, to write such words about contentment. I’ve written about them before. I’ve preached them, and I have commended them to friends and family. But, as plenty of us know from firsthand experience, it is infinitely difficult to live out such words.

As God is my witness, I truly want to be content. I really do. But I'm not actually good at it. I keep seeing things around me that tempt me to become impossibly discontented, with my relationships, with my work, with the opportunities that seem to be denied or perpetually out of reach.

As with all temptations to doubt the goodness of God, it is objectively an illogical temptation. An empirical test would amply verify that goodness surrounds me on every side. And yet I still succumb to the temptation, more often than I wish to acknowledge even to myself, and I get caught in a subjective eddy of discontentment.

But Saint Joseph encourages my heart to keep trying again in this season of Advent. He offers himself to me as a companion on the road of my humdrum labors and the seemingly unfair and often unpredictable twists and turns that mark my path.

He offers himself to me as a gentle reminder that the life that I had originally imagined for myself may not be the life that truly satisfies, even if it is a God-given path that involves a great deal of pain and disappointment.

He offers himself to me as a source of inspiration to make it my ambition, rather than only a half-hearted intention, to lead a quiet life, to mind my business, and to work with my hands.

For all these ways in which Joseph offers himself to me, and perhaps to you as well, as a patron saint of the contented, I am truly and sincerely grateful.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, "Holy Family with Bird" (c. 1650)