God the Father loves you. He loves you so much that he sent his Son into the world to save you. But saving you is not all the Father sent his Son to do for you. He sent his Son to save you and make you a child of God. Through Jesus, you are able to have a filial relationship with God the Father. Through Jesus, you can cry out, “Abba, Father!”

To be a child of God is why you were created; it’s the very purpose for which you exist. And there is only one way to the Father: Jesus Christ (see Jn 14:6). Only Jesus has the power to take you to the Father. Yet, in God’s merciful love, St. Joseph plays a very important role in your spiritual growth and journey to the Father.

CONSECRATION TO ST. JOSEPH WILL INCREASE THE PRESENCE OF THE FATHER IN YOUR LIFE. We learn this truth from the life of Jesus himself. When the Heavenly Father sent his Son into the world to save us and make us his children, he selected one saint to represent him on earth: St. Joseph. Jesus, in living under the roof of St. Joseph and being his Son, gave us a personal example of total entrustment to St. Joseph. Jesus loved, obeyed, and imitated his earthly father. Saint Joseph is the only man that Jesus ever called father; Jesus delighted in being known as the “son of Joseph” (see Jn 6:42). We, too, should consider it an honor to be his children. If, according to the plans of the Father, Jesus needed St. Joseph, how much more do we need him, too!

THE FATHERHOOD OF ST. JOSEPH INCREASED THE PRESENCE OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER IN THE LIFE OF JESUS.

Now, to be clear, St. Joseph is not God. He cannot add anything to the divine and eternal communion existing between God the Father and God the Son. Nor can St. Joseph improve the ability of Jesus, as a Divine Person, to perpetually behold the presence of his Heavenly Father. Rather, St. Joseph was chosen to stand in the place of the Heavenly Father according to the demands of Jesus’ human nature.

God the Father doesn’t have a human nature. Every time Jesus saw St. Joseph, heard him speak, watched him work, or witnessed his chaste love for Mary, the humanity of Jesus witnessed a perfect reflection of the Heavenly Father.

God chose to make Joseph his most tangible image on earth, the depository of all the rights of his divine paternity, the husband of that noble Virgin who is Mistress of angels and men.

— Blessed William Joseph Chaminade

WHAT THE HEAVENLY FATHER DID FOR JESUS, HE WANTSTO DO FOR YOU. God the Father wants you to entrust yourself to the loving paternal care of St. Joseph in a manner similar to God’s entrustment of the human nature of Jesus to St. Joseph. God planned these entrustments, both of Jesus to St. Joseph and of the members of the Church to St. Joseph, from all eternity; they were not done haphazardly. Saint Joseph is the shadow of the Heavenly Father. He was the image and reflection of the Father for Jesus. God the Father wants you to accept St. Joseph as your spiritual father as well. Jesus is the one in whom we see most perfectly the image of the mercy and love of his heavenly Father (as he said: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” [Jn 14:9]), but Jesus also wants to share with us the one who was for him the earthly image of his heavenly Father.

This holy man [St. Joseph] had such towering dignity and glory that the Eternal Father most generously bestowed on him a likeness of his own primacy.

— St. Bernardine of Siena

Read “Our Spiritual Father”

Pray the Litany of St. Joseph

“Used with permission of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Stockbridge, MA USA.”