Go to Joseph

How to be a husband and father

Many men today complain that they haven’t had a model for being a good husband and father. Because they haven’t seen a man doing these duties well, they feel lost. But St. Joseph is our model and example, and this article explains how you can learn from him to grow in virtue.

Prepare yourself

Even before he was espoused to Mary, Joseph was a virtuous man — ‘a just man,’ as Scripture tells us (Matthew 1:19). Marriage is a high calling, and a man must prepare himself for it and all its responsibilities. Train hard, fight easy. Chastity, for example, is exactly the same virtue before and after marriage. A man who makes a habit of giving way to lust before marriage is shaping his character in a way that will make marriage difficult. If he can’t control himself around women when he’s single, he won’t be able to when he’s married either.

Caution then confidence

At first, Joseph didn’t understand God’s plan for him. He was not just uncertain but afraid. After making up his mind, however, he set all doubts aside. He didn’t let them disturb him or fret about uncertainties regarding his future. With patience, he lived peacefully, showing great forebearance, cheerfulness and bearing Mary’s burdens and sharing her interests. And this confidence — being all in on his marriage and mission — came from his coherence as a man. He’d made his move.

Money isn’t your master

Joseph was incredibly wealthy and of high royal ancestry — a descendant of the great King David, no less. Yet he lived a life of poverty, humility and hardship. Instead of being overly anxious about earthly treasure, he wisely preferred the unseen eternal treasures not of this world. In a world that makes many young men feel they need to be millionaires to have successful marriages, Joseph’s decision to walk away from a fortune is instructive. The idea that money makes masculinity has actually been one of the main methods of emasculating modern men.

Offer your children to God

As the head of his family, Joseph showed us the importance of offering our children to God. We have to raise them with the goal of getting them to heaven. Being more preoccupied with their physical health or worldly success is disordered. It often even damages them spritually. What they need is for us to train them through teaching and especially with our example.

Stay awake

When King Herod was planning to kill Jesus, Joseph acted promptly, showing his great prudence and courage in the flight into Egypt. He understood that his family had been committed to his care by God, and he acted accordingly. The guardian of the Holy Family was awake to the dangers threatening them, but many husbands expose their wives and children to physical and spiritual danger through complacency or carelessness.

It’s not about you

When at age twelve Jesus waas lost for three days in Jerusalem, Joseph was worried and sad. But Jesus had a higher duty to perform: obedience to the will of God. Respecting Jesus’s personal obligations to God, Joseph knew he wasn’t the main character in the story of his family — the head of the family, yes, but not the main character.

Your authority is for their benefit

Despite being God, Jesus was ‘subject’ to Joseph while living with him. Joseph exercised authority over Jesus because it was his duty to. A husband’s authority in his family is delegated to him by God for his family’s benefit. If you don’t provide for and protect your wife and children morally, you fail them. Your passivity doesn’t just harm your masculinity. It harms your family.

Be cheerful

Joseph was the sole provider of the Holy Family. As a carpenter, he had hard work and meager earnings. But he didn’t shirk the hard work, begrudge it or allow it to put him in a bad mood at home. He did his duty cheerfully because his love made it easy. And by not spending money foolishly he was able to give his family everything they needed. By contrast, the world typically tells men to neglect their families in the pursuit of conveniences and luxuries that only spoil when they’re finally achieved.

Pray for a good death

Joseph died at Nazareth before Jesus entered upon His public life. Jesus and Mary were with him, ministering to him in his last hours. And just like his life, his death is also our model and our example. As Bishop Challoner wrote,

“The great business of our whole life is to secure this happy eternity; and nothing else can secure it but a good death. This is the necessary gate, through which we must pass to eternal life: if we think of arriving at it by any other way, we shall miss the road. A good death, then, must be the study and business of our whole life: our whole life ought to be a preparation for it.”