Novena to St. Joseph
(March 10-18, 2026)
Introduction
The theme for this year's novena is Joseph's David ancestry which secured the messianic credentials of Jesus via his conferral of paternity on the Lord via adoption making him both the "son of Joseph" (cf. Lk 4:22, Jn 6:42) and the "son of David" (cf. Mt 1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30-31, 21:9, 15, Mk 10:47-48, Lk 18:38-39). As will be seen from the included Scripture quotes this identity of Jesus is found in all strata of the New Testament. The meditations are taken from the sermons of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627 – 1704) a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his preaching. He was widely considered one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a masterly French stylist. The format of the novena follows the usual pattern.
Day 1
Scripture: Luke 1:26-33
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Meditation
If the name of trustee is a mark of honor and testifies to probity; if, in order to confide a trust, we choose the one whose virtue is most assured, whose fidelity is most proven, and finally, the one who is the most intimate and most confidential of our friends, then how shall we measure the glory of Saint Joseph? God made him the trustee not only of blessed Mary, whose angelic purity made her so acceptable in his eyes, but still more of his own Son, the sole object of his delight and the unique hope of our salvation. Saint Joseph he made the trustee of the common treasure of God and man: the person of Jesus Christ. What eloquence could equal the grandeur and majesty of this title? He cannot be rightly praised without the assistance of grace. Grace will help me to plumb so deep a mystery….
The first of the treasures committed to his trust—the first, that is, in the order of time—was the holy virginity of Mary, which he had to preserve inviolate under the sacred veil of marriage, and which he always religiously protected as a sacred trust. The second and the more imposing was the person of Jesus Christ, whom the heavenly Father placed in his hands so that he might serve as the earthly father of the holy child. The third you will find most admirable, if I am able to explain it to you clearly. To understand it, we must realize that a secret is a kind of treasure. To betray the secret of a friend is to violate the sanctity of trust. The law says that if you spread abroad the secret of a testament that I confide in you, I may then take action against you for your lapse as trustee. The reason for this is plain: a secret is a kind of trust. From this you will easily comprehend that Joseph was the trustee of the eternal Father because God told him his secret. Which secret? The marvelous secret of the Incarnation of his Son. God’s plan was not to reveal Jesus Christ to the world before his hour had come. Saint Joseph was chosen not only to keep the secret, but even to conceal it. Thus, we read in the Gospel that, with Mary, he marveled at all that was said of the Savior, but we do not read that he spoke, because the eternal Father revealed the mystery to him in secret and under the obligation of silence. Saint Bernard explained: “God desired to entrust to his faithfulness the most sacred secret of his heart.”
How precious you are to God, O peerless Joseph, for to you he confided his three great treasures: the virginity of Mary, the person of his only-begotten Son, and the secret of all his mystery.
Memorare to Saint Joseph
Musical Selection
Collect
Day 2
Scripture: Luke 2:1-5
Now in those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. 2 This was the first enrollment made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to enroll themselves, everyone to his own city. 4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to David’s city, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 to enroll himself with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him as wife, being pregnant.
Meditation
The man whose heart is in accord with God’s makes no display, nor does God choose him for his appearance or by listening to the voice of the people. When Samuel was sent to the house of Jesse to find David — the first to have merited such praise — the great man destined by God for the world’s most glorious throne was not known even to his family. He was not thought of while his older brothers were being brought before the prophet. Yet God, who does not judge as man does, secretly warned Samuel not to regard their great stature or hardy countenance. And so, rejecting those who had been put forward in the world, he bid to approach the one who had been sent to watch the sheep, and pouring the oil of royalty upon his head, he left his parents astonished to have so little known the son chosen by God for such an extraordinary advantage.
A similar design of Divine Providence allows us to apply what was said of David to Joseph, the son of David.
The time had come when God sought a man after his own heart in order to place in his hands what was dearest to him: the person of his only-begotten Son, the integrity of his holy mother, the salvation of mankind, the treasure of heaven and earth. He overlooks Jerusalem and the other famous towns and rests his gaze upon Nazareth, and from this unknown hamlet chooses an unknown man, a poor craftsman, Joseph, and entrusts to him a work that would not bring shame to the highest order of angels, so that we might understand that the man after God’s own heart must be sought in the heart and is made worthy by his hidden virtues.
Memorare to Saint Joseph
Collect
Day 3
Scripture: Matthew 1:18-21
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was like this: After his mother, Mary, was engaged to Joseph, before they came together, she was found pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, intended to put her away secretly. 20 But when he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to yourself Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 She shall give birth to a son. You shall name him Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.”
Meditation
Our Lord Jesus Christ, having come to die and to sacrifice himself, wished to do so completely: and so he was not content to die a natural death, nor the most cruel and violent death, but he wished to add to that a civic and political death. And as this civic death came by two means, both by infamy and by being forgotten, he wished to suffer both of them. A victim of human pride, he wished to sacrifice himself by all sorts of humiliations, and he gave his first thirty years to that death of being forgotten. To die with Jesus Christ, we must die this death, so that we might say with St. Paul: “The world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).
The world is dead to us when we leave it. But this is not enough; in order to arrive at perfection we must be dead to it and it must leave us, that is to say that we should place ourselves in such a condition that we no longer please the world, that it holds us for dead, and that it no longer takes us to belong to its parties and intrigues, nor even to its conversations. This is the high perfection of Christianity, and it is here that one finds life, because here one learns to enjoy God, who does not live in the whirlwind or in the tumult of the world, but in the peace and solitude of retirement.
Joseph was dead in this way. He was buried with Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin, and he was not at all troubled by a death which enabled him to live with his Savior. On the contrary, he feared nothing more than that the noise and the life of the world would come to disturb his hidden and interior repose. It is an admirable mystery.
Memorare to Saint Joseph
Collect