St. Joseph is a quiet saint. For my first several years as a Catholic, his March 19 feast day passed by without my acknowledgment. This wasn’t fair or just on my part because he’d definitely been around in my life. But, like Mary, his brief appearance in Scripture and near-silence left more to the imagination than I was ready to spend on him. Other male saints—like St. John the Apostle, St. Thomas More, St. Isaac Jogues—captured my attention with their accolades and heroism. St. Joseph was just too quiet to notice.
Yet, like Mary, Joseph’s silence in Scripture, coupled with His faithful obedience to God, offer rich food for meditation. As I grow more deeply in my own vocation—where I will not live a life of big heroics like John, Thomas, or Isaac, love them as I do—my attention has turned more and more towards the Holy Family to find the heart of this interior life that spends itself physically in the home, mostly unseen.
Of St. Joseph’s silence, Pope Benedict XVI wrote it is “a silence woven of constant prayer, a prayer of blessing of the Lord, of the adoration of his holy will and of unreserved entrustment to his providence.” In one homily I heard years ago at a local parish, the priest pointed out that Joseph was so prayerful, he could listen to God in his sleep. Pope Benedict XVI also wrote, “Let us allow ourselves to be ‘filled’ with St Joseph’s silence! In a world that is often too noisy, that encourages neither recollection nor listening to God’s voice, we are in such deep need of it.”
It’s so difficult to find actual, physical silence anywhere, particularly in a home. When I had my first baby, there was so much silence that it made me uncomfortable. Whenever she was asleep, I enjoyed the first several minutes of quiet, but wasn’t sure what to do with myself after that; I was so unaccustomed to silence that it made me agitated. Now, with so much to do and so much activity in the house, I would know exactly what to do with that hour of silence.
But there is a silence of the heart that I am praying for the grace to develop, that stillness spoken of in the psalms, the stillness that Jesus asked of the disciples on the stormy sea. Ideally, one would start the day with prayer or Mass, and I used to have such high expectations—a Rosary! Liturgy of the Hours! Wake-up at 4:00 and pray on my knees! Yeah, that never happened. I have settled for a brief morning offering. It orients my heart and mind towards God in a simple, straightforward moment. Evening prayer has gone the same way: I’ve settled for a brief examination, a brief list of gratitude—and honestly, sometimes it’s just a “Glory Be” beside my bed before collapsing.
It’s the middle of the day that needs so much work. When life doesn’t happen the way I want it to, even simple daily tasks, I get agitated and that stillness is disrupted: if I don’t eat breakfast soon enough, if I have to clean up spilt milky cereal, if my little ones won’t occupy themselves long enough for me to help another child with division, if my toddler is screaming for food while I’m making dinner… the list is generous. If I fail to pray throughout the day—and these are little prayers, little cries and thank-you’s to God—then I grow more and more disgruntled and agitated, and instead of silence, I have a litany of complaints turning over in my head.
The Holy Family couldn’t have been without those daily annoyances. As a carpenter, Joseph must have dealt with the messy business of getting paid, jobs taking longer than anticipated, dissatisfied customers. And like every family, I’m sure they dealt with not having enough food on the table, illness, the circulating village gossip. But they weren’t somber puritans either—they were friendly, generous neighbors who partook in the feasts and festivals of the year. I’m certain they danced. Yet, in all this, they maintained peace and a still readiness before God. I hunger and pray for that.