Ever wonder what happened to St. Joseph? How did the carpenter-father of Jesus and husband of Mary die? It is not, I must confess, a fact over which I have lost much sleep. It was, nevertheless, surprising to discover upon research that the last time Joseph is mentioned in the Bible is when he travels to Jerusalem with his wife and his 12-year-old son to observe the great festival of Passover, and their son goes missing. "My
child, why have you done this to us?" asks Mary when she finally finds her son praying in the temple after a three-day search. "See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you." Seemingly unfazed, Jesus replies: "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
That Joseph is never mentioned again in the Bible and that he is not present at the crucifixion of his son alongside his wife has led some to believe that he likely died before Jesus even began his public ministry. If his father had been at the foot of the cross, the thinking goes among some, why would Jesus have commended his mother and John to care for one another?
In The History of Joseph the Carpenter—a Greek text of dubious origin believed to be composed in Byzantine Egypt near the end of the sixth century—a detailed account is given of Joseph's death at 111-years-old, comforted by Mary, his 19-year-old son Jesus, and the archangels Michael and Gabriel. And so a tradition developed that because such holy people accompanied Joseph as he was drawing his last
breaths, he must have had a good and peace-filled death. By the 17th century, this scene of the death of Jesus' father began to appear in art, and devotion grew to St. Joseph, the patron saint of a good death.
The death of Joseph when his son was just coming to maturity, however uncertain the facts, bring me to consider the children who grieve; those who are abandoned at an early age by their parents and left to mourn the parents they never had, and those who are orphaned as children, losing mother, father or both.
The absence of an account of the death of Joseph in the gospels, however uncertain the facts, also reminds me of those who die alone each year, older people whose families abandon them to the care of a nursing home, those who died in hospitals of complications related to Covid-19 and the many who die on the streets, whose death remains anonymous and whose bodies go forever unclaimed.
For your reflection:
While it is good to remember the dead whom we have loved, it is equally right and just for us to pray in this month for all who have died, who were never mourned and for whose death no one ever prayed. Pray for them today and throughout November; that they, like Jesus and Mary, may now be at peace in their loving Father's house.
