Like Wife, Like Husband
Karin Howard
USA

In older representations of the nativity, Joseph rarely enjoys great press. Frequently he stands or sits apart from mother and child, a useful handyman at most. Some scenes show him brooding, his mind in suspense, lack of conviction written all over his face. There are also pictures where he simply sleeps the sleep of the just.

The scant attention given him by early Fathers and Doctors of the Church may have influenced his marginal position. Saint Augustine and other thinkers wrote of Saint Joseph, but his mention is sparse. The tide turned slowly. The reflection about his dignity and holiness began to flower in Medieval times. The seventeenth, and again the nineteenth centuries, were the golden age of a sometimes enthusiastic devotion to the third person of the Holy Family. He rightly deserves respect and affection. A connoisseur once simply defined him: "Like wife, like husband."

A new appreciation of Saint Joseph at the end of this century casts him in the role of the solicitous husband and father figure. In an attempt to redefine the division of labor within the Holy Family, he is now the one who holds the baby and rocks him to sleep.