St. Joseph’s two feast days celebrate different facets of the great saint

Catholics who celebrated the March 19 Solemnity of St. Joseph may wonder why the Church’s calendar commemorates him again just 42 days later, with an optional memorial May 1, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

The two feast days, which have distinct origins, honor different sides of the man God chose to care for Mary and Jesus and raise Jesus to manhood, said Father Gary Caster, author of “Joseph, the Man Who Raised Jesus” (Franciscan Media, 2013) and the parochial vicar of three parishes in Ottawa, Illinois.

In this Year of St. Joseph, when Pope Francis is bringing the saint out from the shadows cast by the light of Jesus and Mary, Father Caster said, the saint’s feast days continue to reflect his role as Jesus’ earthly father, patron of the dying and the Universal Church, as well as his work as a carpenter and teacher of Jesus.

“There’s nothing insignificant or accidental about this man,” Father Caster said. “St. Joseph is a great example of coming to understand how significant each one of us is with what God is asking us to do and how he’s asking us to do it.”

As early as the fourth century, St. Joseph was commemorated by Catholics who worshipped with the traditions of the Eastern Church. He was referred to as “nutritor Domini,” meaning “guardian of the Lord.” His March 19 feast day became universal in the Church in the 16^th century.

Four centuries later, as May 1 was celebrated in communist countries as “International Worker’s Day,” Pope Pius XII honored St. Joseph as a manual worker by establishing an optional memorial — to St. Joseph the Worker — in 1955, to acknowledge the value of human labor.

Honoring St. Joseph the Worker is “a fitting contrast to the devaluation of human dignity through the Marxist ideology of communism,” Father Caster said.

While reflecting on St. Joseph’s two feast days, Bishop Kevin Vann of the Diocese of Orange in Garden Grove, California, said in a 2016 column in the diocese’s Orange County Catholic newspaper that he was struck by the fact there is a “bridge” that joins the seasons of Lent and Easter together — the two feasts of St. Joseph. Even without a fixed day on the calendar for Easter, March 19 always falls in Lent, and May 1 always falls in the Easter season, before Pentecost.

Father Caster echoed the bishop’s observation.

“Joseph did not live to see the tragic end of his son or the triumph of his son on Easter Sunday, (but) he certainly had a vantage point for both that is beautifully articulated by the Church having those two feast days in the Lenten and Easter seasons,” Father Caster said.

To gain a greater understanding of St. Joseph, Father Caster recommended Catholics focus on prayers said in the feast days’ Masses, especially the collect, or the priest’s prayer directly before the Mass’ readings, and the closing prayers. Scripture readings from the Mass and other books about St. Joseph also help fill out the great saint.

St. Joseph “wasn’t a pawn in the Father’s plan of redemption,” Father Caster said. “He’s an essential part of that, and whatever we can do to help people see that and understand it better is a benefit to them. Because a lot of times we might think, ‘Well, I’m not that important.’ It’s not true, because each one of us is important.”