Has Devotion to St. Joseph Supplanted Devotion to St. John the Baptist?
Nowadays, it would be fair to say that the common opinion among Catholics is that St. Joseph is the greatest saint after the Blessed Virgin Mary. When it becomes apparent upon study that, in the history of the Church both Eastern and Western, devotion to St. John the Baptist vastly, almost infinitely, exceeded devotion to St. Joseph until modern times, and that liturgically he still has a much larger role — he is mentioned nine times in each celebration of the classical Roman rite,1 compared to zero or one mention of Joseph,2 and he has, at least on the traditional calendar, more feastdays than Joseph has, as also have the Archangels — one develops a burning desire to understand why so much emphasis was placed on John the Baptist, and relatively little on Joseph?
First, it might be noted that the insertion of Saint Joseph into the first list of saints in the Roman Canon by John XXIII in 1962 is problematic for several reasons.3 From a textual point of view, it disturbs the harmony of the Canon, as both lists of saints already had a “leader,” namely Our Lady in the first list and the Baptist in the second list, followed by two equal groups — a symmetry thrown off by the addition of Joseph; and he is the only one in the first list to whom martyrdom is not attributed. (There are two in that list who are not “red” martyrs, namely Our Lady and St. John the Evangelist. However, Our Lady is considered to have suffered a spiritual death during the Passion that was greater than any physical martyrdom4; and St. John was boiled in a cauldron at the Latin Gate but escaped unharmed, so he too is considered to have given a martyr’s witness.)5
More importantly, this change to the venerable Canon after many centuries of perfect stability was seen at the time by liturgical progressives as a breach with the fabric of tradition, a sign that “hey, anything can be changed — as long as the pope wills it!” In short: it played into the same growing hyperpapalism that enabled Pius X, Pius XII, and Paul VI to make deep and radical changes to inherited liturgical forms of 500, 1,000, or 1,500 years’ duration (or more), and encouraged the future members of the Consilium to allow nothing to restrain their reformatory audacity.6
Let no one misunderstand me. I love St. Joseph and pray to him daily. Not only is there nothing wrong with venerating him publicly, there would be something wrong if we did not venerate him publicly. Here’s a perpetual novena that I have been praying to him for a long while now:
O glorious St. Joseph, spouse of Mary, grant, we beseech thee, thy paternal protection through the Heart of Jesus Christ. O thou whose great power reaches out to all our needs, rendering for us possible that which is impossible, deign to look upon the concerns of thy children with thy fatherly countenance. In the troubles and sorrows that afflict us we have confident recourse to thee. Take under thy loving protection these important and difficult endeavors, the causes of our worries, and dispose of their success to the glory of God and to the benefit of his faithful servants. Amen.
The problem consists, rather, in making the Canon of the Mass bend to enthusiastic bishops or trendy liturgists. Joseph had never been mentioned in this most solemn of prayers, and we can’t say that the Holy Spirit, by willing or at least permitting this “lacuna,” intended him any disrespect, or caused any lack of the honor due to him as the foster-father of Jesus.
If anything, it seems more in keeping with Joseph’s hidden sanctity that he should be a light that shines out gradually from behind the constellation of the more famous or at least more frequently commemorated saints, a man who is content to be in the background rather than claiming the foreground. St. John Henry Newman describes this paradox:
There were Saints nearer to our Lord than either Martyrs or Apostles; but, as if these sacred persons were immersed and lost in the effulgence of His glory, and because they did not manifest themselves, when in the body, in external works separate from Him, it happened that for a long while they were less dwelt upon…. St. Joseph furnishes the most striking instance of this remark; here is the clearest of instances of the distinction between doctrine and devotion…. A Saint of Scripture, the foster-father of our Lord, he was an object of the universal and absolute faith of the Christian world from the first, yet the devotion to him is comparatively of late date. When once it began, men seemed surprised that it had not been thought of before; and now, they hold him next to the Blessed Virgin in their religious affection and veneration.7
Note that, for Newman, it is right for Joseph to be held dear and greatly venerated. Yet this honor does not necessitate revising the immemorial and venerable Order of Mass to reflect our developing devotions. When we parachute him (or any other favorite saint — or favorite cause of any description) into the Canon, we are letting our devotional preferences or theological opinions shape the heart of the inherited liturgy. And this we should resist doing. Recently at this Substack I quoted the incisive words of liturgist Bernard Botte in 1953:
We should be grateful to the people of the Middle Ages for having preserved the Canon in its purity and for not having allowed their personal effusions or theological ideas to pass into it. One can imagine the complete mess we would have today if each generation had been permitted to remake the Canon to the measure of their theological controversies or novel forms of piety. We can only hope for a continuing imitation of the good sense of these people, who had their own theological ideas but who understood that the Canon was not their playground. In their eyes, it was the expression of a venerable tradition, and they felt that it could not be touched without opening the door to every sort of abuse.8
As if to prove Botte right, once the Canon was “touched” in 1962, the floodgates were opened to “every sort of abuse.” Only a few years later, the Canon was modified by the stripping away of gestures and formulas, the insertion of a faux “memorial acclamation,” the optionalizing of saints, and more, while entirely new Eucharistic Prayers were drawn up by a committee of so-called experts — among them, the selfsame Botte and Louis Bouyer, who met at a Trastevere café to finish up EP II9 — and then inserted into Paul VI’s missal, with the practical effect of thrusting the Roman Canon into the outer darkness.
How different was the attitude attributed to the late-nineteenth-century Pope Pius IX who, according to a much-related story, was presented with a show of support for inserting the name of Joseph into the Canon and who responded, shaking his head: “I cannot do that; I am only the Pope.” Would that all of his successors had maintained this attitude of sober humility and religious veneration!
The Holy Patriarch St. Joseph is a great saint indeed; but is he the greatest saint after Our Lady? That is the popular perception among Catholics today, but it is not the traditional view.
The words of Our Lord are unequivocal: “Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Mt 11:11) — that is how St. Matthew puts it.10 Both John and Joseph belonged to the old dispensation, the old covenant, that was yielding to the New with the coming of Our Lord. Both of them had to go to the limbo of the Fathers and be liberated on Holy Saturday by the descent of Christ into the upper part of hell. Yet of those born of women — and leaving in a class by herself the Virgin Mary — none is greater than John.
This is certainly the traditional view of the Catholic Church, as can be seen in her liturgy of all times, whose lex orandi manifests the lex credendi. Even more recently, in 1911, “the rubrics which accompany the Bull Divino Afflatu of Pius X establish the following order among the feasts:
The feasts of the Lord,
of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
of the Angels,
of St. John the Baptist,
of St. Joseph,
of the holy Apostles.”
Note the order: Joseph before the Apostles, but after the Baptist.
Indeed, it is fitting that John stands between, on the one hand, the Queen of Angels and the host of angels who surpass him, and, on the other hand, the rest of the saints whom he surpasses, for, according to Fr. Bouyer:
In the absolutely unique human personality of John the Baptist, the ecclesial ministry of humanity was directly joined with that of the angels. The Baptist was . . . himself a “messenger,” an angel in the flesh [as it were], set apart to wander the desert as the greatest “Friend of the Bridegroom,” totally possessed by the Holy Spirit and sent to purify “the temple of the world by emptying it of all idols, through the example of a life freed from earthly detachments.”11
Now, there are in circulation a number of pious beliefs about Joseph, such as that he was also immaculately conceived. But pious beliefs do not always stand up to scrutiny: for example, many seem to think that Our Lord appeared to His Mother after His resurrection, but the witness of Scripture points in a different direction: He first visited Mary Magdalene, and, although others are mentioned as having been graced with his company, no visit to His Mother is ever recorded. A stronger case can be made that it belonged to the perfection of Our Lady’s faith that she did not need to see Him risen because her faith in His foretold triumph over death had never wavered even once: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (See Lk 1:45: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”) No one was more blessed than Our Lady, whose faith was perfect. Seeing the risen Lord would only have reduced her spiritual stature and her merit. She was never sundered from her son in the love of charity that transcends all earthly bonds, unlike the other disciples who abandoned Him and needed to be forgiven, consoled, and instructed. She was rewarded for her sublime perfection by being taken up, body and soul, into the glory of heaven, where her vision of her glorified Son is greater than that of any angel or saint.
Nor is it particularly decisive that this or that private revelation may say this or that about St. Joseph. Such accounts of mystical experiences can certainly be enriching for meditation but they remain no more than private revelations — not guaranteed to be true in every detail, even when they are not contrary to faith or morals. In fact, they cannot be true in every detail because they sometimes contradict one another, as anyone knows who has spent time comparing such mystics as Ven. Mary of Agreda and Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich (both of whom I admire and venerate).
But what about the other half of the words of the Lord — when he said, concerning His Precursor, as Matthew has it, “yet he that is the lesser [or least] in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”? (Mt 11:11), or, in Luke’s Gospel, “he that is the lesser in the kingdom of God, is greater than he” (Lk 7:28), namely, the Baptist?
Some have foolishly said this saying refers to any baptized Christian, claiming that our righteousness in Christ is greater than that of the Old Covenant saints. But that cannot be the case. John’s explicit faith in Christ already gave him access to that righteousness, and, as we see from the Church’s liturgical practice, John’s holiness is held up as greater even than that of the Apostles! Indeed, the first public revelation of the Trinity took place when John baptized Jesus in the Jordan. Just as the Mother of Jesus initiated the “countdown” to His hour by obtaining the first public miracle of her Son at the wedding-feast of Cana, so did the Forerunner of Jesus, the “friend of the bridegroom,” inaugurate the revelation of the inner life of God by baptizing Jesus in the name of sinful humanity.
Rather, as the Church’s Common Doctor St. Thomas Aquinas explains, the saying “he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” can mean, first, the least of the blessed spirits enjoying the beatific vision; for those who are already “in the kingdom of heaven” have attained greater perfection than any wayfarer who still walks by faith, as was John at the time Jesus said these words; second, since Christ Himself is the substance of the kingdom of God now come upon earth, Christ is “the lesser” in the order of time, as younger and subsequent to John’s activity, but “the greater” in the order of being. That fits in well with the scene of the baptism in the Jordan, when the one who is greater allows Himself to be ceremonially cleansed by the one who is lesser.
One last point. John Paul II reminded us to “breathe with both lungs”: we are supposed to get to know, learn from, and hold in honor the teaching and practice of the apostolic churches of the East. And yet, modern liturgists seem almost obsessed with dismantling and discarding everything in the West that bears the slightest resemblance to the Eastern Divine Liturgy. I have commented on this psychological disease numerous times; no need to dwell on it here.
What do we see when we look eastward? A Christian East positively delirious in its veneration of St. John the Baptist. Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox celebrate not just two feasts of the Precursor, as in the West, but six feasts: his conception on September 23, his birth on June 24, his beheading on August 29, his all-around awesomeness on January 7 (the “Synaxis of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John”), the first and second findings of the relic of the head of the Baptist on February 24, and the third finding of his head on May 25. The over-the-top liturgical texts used in the East for these feastdays are worth a glance or a listen.
In contrast, there is no feastday of St. Joseph at all in most Eastern liturgical calendars. The closest thing is a group commemoration of King David, St. Joseph, and St. James the brother of the Lord on the Sunday after the Nativity (following the tenth-century Typikon of the Monastery of St. Sabas).12
Perhaps most strikingly, every time one enters a Byzantine church and gazes upon the iconostasis or barrier of icons separating the sanctuary from the nave, one will see a row of icons that include, most prominently, Christ on one side of the Beautiful Gates and the Theotokos or Holy Mother of God on the other, and next to them in order, St. John the Baptist, St. Nicholas, the patron saint of the church, one or more evangelists, and so forth. The very architecture of the church and its imagery present to us the hierarchy of the saints—the same kind of hierarchy we see in the Roman Canon’s double list of saints.
As noble as St. Joseph is, his icon rarely appears even in the most extravagant Eastern cathedral. He remains silent and hidden, just as we see him in Scripture.
So then, has devotion to St. Joseph supplanted devotion to the “greatest born of woman,” St. John the Baptist? I think it would be too simplistic to put it this way. Instead, it seems to me for complex reasons, devotion to the Baptist diminished in modern times, while simultaneously (but not causally) devotion to St. Joseph increased. It seems likely that the popularity of devotions rises and falls over long periods of time according to subtle changes in the Christian psyche. It could have something to do with the fierceness, wildness, and uncompromising zeal of St. John, which perhaps lack appeal to the modern psyche, whereas the comforting, fatherly, protective, and domestic presence of St. Joseph very much appeals to us. The family hearth is more relatable than the wilderness, a guiding parent than a thundering prophet, an ancient than an anchorite; a faithful layman who dies in his bed surrounded by Jesus and Mary speaks to us in a way that a giver of rebukes, cast into jail and beheaded, may not do.
To achieve more certainty, one would need to do an exhaustive research into the early modern period and following centuries, analyzing devotional publications, church dedications, statuary, homiletics, and more. It is a project far beyond my abilities, but I hope to have shown that it is a most worthwhile inquiry, for theological reasons no less than for cultural ones.
See my article “The Prominence of St John the Baptist in the Old Roman Rite.”
That is, depending on whether you are looking at the pre-1962 or the 1962 missal, since it took more than sixteen centuries for his name to be included in the anaphora used in the West, and it is still absent in the Eastern anaphoras. The “anaphora” is the Eucharistic Prayer. The Roman Canon is the anaphora of the Latin West. The Christian East has many anaphoras but their use is strictly governed by custom. Never, prior to the rite of Paul VI, do you have a selection of anaphoras totally at the free choice of the celebrant.
Traditional Catholics place a strong emphasis on the Roman Canon as an essential quality of the Roman Rite, something that enters into its very definition. Where you have the Roman Canon as the singular and necessary anaphora, you are dealing for sure with one of the Western or Latin Rites of the Church; certainly when you have the Roman Rite, you always have the Roman Canon. If this Canon is not present or if it is merely optional, you may have a valid Mass (provided all conditions are met), but you do not have the Roman Rite in any but a 30,000-foot sense of the term.
See the texts for September 15’s feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
See the Martyrology entry for May 6.
The Roman psalter supplanted by Pius X was about 1,500 years old; some of the aspects of Holy Week modified by Pius XII were 1,000 years old; the prayers at the foot of the altar were in the Roman Missal for about 500 years when Paul VI removed them. Of course many other examples can be given.
Newman, Letter to Pusey.
“Histoire des prières de l’ordinaire de la messe,” in B. Botte/C. Mohrmann, eds., L’ordinaire de la messe. Texte critique, traduction et études (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1953), 27. For those who wish to read more about this subject, I recommend (without a blanket endorsement) Carol Byrne’s article “St. Joseph in the Canon: An Innovation to Break Tradition.” Fr David Friel takes a relaxed, irenic approach in his article “Adding Joseph to the Eucharistic Prayers.”
St. Luke has: “I say to you: Amongst those that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist” (Luk 7:28).
Keith Lemna, Apocalypse of Wisdom, 389. The internal quotations are from Bouyer’s writings.
In an article called “St. Joseph in the East,” Kyle Washut points out: “The Syriac tradition observes a feast of the Revelation to St. Joseph on the Second Sunday before Christmas, so, while offering a slightly different emphasis it agrees with the the Byzantine tradition in making St. Joseph’s feasts part of the Nativity season. The only exceptions are the ancient Coptic Church, which celebrates Joseph’s flight into Egypt, and the Melkites, who have two feasts for him, comparable to the Western calendar. “From here, the Coptic Church would eventually develop an entire liturgical office for St. Joseph. The office, and implicitly the ranking of St. Joseph himself, is placed in the following order: first the office for the Theotokos, then that of the Angels, then that of John the Baptist, then St. Joseph, then the Apostles and subsequent saints. This ranking is testimony to a tradition seemingly referenced even by St. Thomas Aquinas in the West (Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 11 q. 2 a. 4 ad 2) which sees John the Baptist above all other men, but just after the Angels, in accordance with Christ’s words in Matthew 11, 11. Nevertheless, devotion to St. Joseph does not seem especially active in the current Coptic Church.”
Another thing to think about, regarding St. Joseph’s insertion to the Canon: there had been 40 Saints in the Canon for centuries. 40 is obviously a round, biblical number (numerologically, one could think of 10 commandments x 4 Evangelists). Now, with St. Joseph, there are 41. It reminds me of the Holy Rosary: 150 Hail Marys "doing duty" for 150 Psalms. With Pope John Paul II's additional mysteries, there are 200 Hail Marys and gone is the “poor man’s Psalter.”
A reader sent me a very interesting passage from the little-known Doctor of the Church, St. Lawrence of Brindisi:
"The parents of John the Baptist are also said to be just, but with that legal justice: 'Both were just in the eyes of God, observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly:' (Luke 1:6) but this is not perfect justice. Perfect justice consists in perfect faith, for 'the just man lives by faith.' (Hebrews 10:38) Zechariah, however, was not perfect in his faith, for he did not believe the angel who announced the birth of John to him. The old man Simeon is also said to be just, but it is not an unqualified justice, for Scripture adds: 'and devout' or 'God-fearing.' (Luke 2:25) Perfect justice, however, is based on love and charity, not on fear, for 'perfect love drives out fear.' (1 John 4:18) So Joseph alone is called just or righteous without qualification: 'Joseph her husband... was a righteous man.'
It is not without good reason that Joseph is called just and the first of all to be called so without qualification. Justice takes its origin from predestination: 'Those he predestined, he also called and... justified.' (Romans 8:30) However, since there are very many who are predestined, to avoid confusion in this multitude, there is need for some order among them. Accordingly, the high priest who served in the place of God for the people, wore the twelve precious stones engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel on his chest over his heart arranged in four orderly rows, as a sign of order among the predestined of God. Paul very clearly teaches us that Christ is predestined: 'Predestined as Son of God,' (Romans 1:4, Vulgate) and predestined to be the first of all those predestined: 'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.' (Colossians 1:15) 'Those he foreknew he also predestined; It in written of me at the beginning of the scroll.' (Romans 8:29; Hebrews 10:7) Christ, of course, is nor predestined as God but as man and as the Son of Mary and, therefore, the Virgin Mary is predestined together with Christ. Christ is the first predestined of all creation; the Virgin Mary is second. But Christ is also predestined to be the Son of Mary espoused to Joseph. Accordingly, Joseph, her husband, is also predestined along with Mary, his wife. This is what the Gospel is telling us today when it says: 'When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph.' (Matthew 1:18)
Do you see the order of these three persons? Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Jesus holds the first place in predestination, Mary the second and, so it seems to me, without any doubt, Joseph the third. He is, therefore, rightly called just, for if that star is the brighter and more resplendent which is closer to the sun, the fountain of all light, then since Christ is the Sun of Justice, that saint is endowed with the more perfect holiness who is closer to Christ. The Virgin Mary, accordingly, is the holiest of all the saints and angels, because she is closest to Christ. After Mary, who is closer to Christ than Joseph? She is his mother, but he is his father. Though not his natural father, Joseph still was his legal father. Though not his father by generation, he was his father in his upbringing, his care, and the affection of his heart. It seems to me, therefore, that Joseph is clearly that holiest of all the saints, holier than the patriarchs, than the prophets, than the apostles, than all the other saints. The objection cannot be raised that the Lord said of John the Baptist: 'Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.' (Matthew 11:11) Just as this cannot be understood to mean that John is even holier than Christ or the Blessed Virgin, so it cannot be understood in reference to blessed Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and the father of Christ, for just as husband and wife are one flesh, so too Joseph and Mary were one heart, one soul, one spirit. And as in that first marriage God created Eve to be like Adam, so in this second marriage he made Joseph to be like the Blessed Virgin in holiness and justice.
As that former Joseph was the beloved of his father, so this Joseph is the beloved of God. If God, as I firmly believe, so sanctified all the patriarchs because the Messiah was to be born from them, and sanctified all the prophets to foretell mysteries concerning the Messiah, and sanctified Jeremiah in the womb, and filled John the Baptist with the Holy Spirit to be the herald of the Messiah, and above all sanctified the Blessed Virgin to be the mother of Christ, why would he not also sanctify Joseph, the father of Christ? Now if holiness consists in grace and grace consists in charity, and charity consists in faith in Christ and love for Christ, who of all the saints after the Blessed Virgin had a greater love for Christ than Joseph?
Moreover, if that tunic that Jacob had made for Joseph was also a mark of honor and dignity, then I ask, what greater honor, what greater dignity could God confer on this blessed man? He made him the true husband of Mary, the Queen of the world, the Queen of the angels, the true mother of the Son of God, true God, and made him the true father of Christ by adoption, upbringing, and the love of his whole heart and, even more, his legal father."
This long quotation is from his Sermon for St. Joseph in his Feastday Sermons (pages 537-538), which can be purchased at https://www.mediahouse.online/product/saint-lawrence-of-brindisi-11-feastday-sermons/
My response:
I agree this is quite an excellent series of arguments from fittingness. But they are not decisive to my mind, only suggestive. One could, with similar logic, begin to make arguments about the hierarchy of various saints on the basis of their importance in the life of Christ or the life of the Church, e.g., St. Thomas is holier than all other theologians, or St. John than all the other apostles, or St. Joachim than any of the patriarchs because he was the grandfather of Christ, etc. Do you see what I mean? It's a sort of snowball effect. I suppose my main hesitation is that the earlier tradition didn't merely assume John was the greatest saint after Our Lady, they enacted it in the liturgy, and they defended it theologically. This makes Lawrence kind of the "odd man out," though I fully acknowledge he's a doctor of the Church.