St Joseph

St Joseph – 19 March 

God our Father,
who from the family of your servant David
raised up Joseph the carpenter
to be the guardian of your incarnate Son
and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
give us grace to follow him
in faithful obedience to your commands;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

We know that Joseph was a carpenter: a working man, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55).
The family was not rich. When he took Jesus to the Temple he offered the sacrifice: a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, (Luke 2:24).

However Joseph was of a royal lineage. Luke and Matthew give different details of Joseph’s genealogy
but they both note his descent from king David (Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38)
and the angel who first tells Joseph about Jesus greets him as ‘son of David,’ a royal title (Matthew 1. 20)