Our parish has one of the largest Sleeping St. Joseph statues in the world.  Illuminated at night and located next to the Holy Family Picnic area on our beautiful parish grounds, our Sleeping St. Joseph monument serves both as a token of our love for our parish’s patron saint and as a reminder of what he has done and is capable of doing for the Church and all people.  St. Joseph does not speak in the Gospels, but he dreams of heaven and acts decisively according to God’s divine plan.  St Joseph’s dreams are painted on the walls around our Sleeping St. Joseph monument.

In Mathew’s Gospel, God speaks to St. Joseph in four dreams.  In the first dream, an angel tells him to bring Mary into his home as his wife, because the child was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (Mathew 1:20-21).  Putting his faith in God, Joseph took Mary as his wife.  

After the birth of Jesus, in a second dream an angel tells Joseph to leave Bethlehem and flee with his family to Egypt because Herod wanted to hurt them (Mathew 2:13).  And so Joseph took mother and baby on a perilous journey to an unknown country.  Joseph must have felt great anxiety.  But Joseph went because God had commanded him.  

In a third dream, an angel tells Joseph to return from exile in Egypt to the land of Israel (Mathew 2:19-20).  Joseph and the Holy Family uproot themselves again and make the arduous journey back home.

And in his fourth dream, Joseph is asked to go instead to the town of Nazareth in Galilee and make it his home to fulfill the prophecy that Jesus would be called a Nazorean (Mathew 2:22). 

Our parish will have a second  Sleeping St. Joseph statue inside the Mission Blvd entry vestibule of our renovated church.  Both statues were funded by generous donations.  Together with our Mission church, named in 1797 at its founding in honor of St. Joseph (“La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarch San Jose”), and our St. Joseph shrine near Mission Blvd, the statues of Sleeping St. Joseph establish our parish as a devotional destination for our patron saint. 

Patron and Protector of the Universal Church

St. Joseph is the patron saint and protector of the Universal Church and patron saint of families, fathers, expectant mothers, travelers, immigrants, house sellers and buyers, craftsmen, engineers and working people, among others.

So many people love St. Joseph!  He faced a number of seemingly hopeless situations, and he always triumphed over them. When he discovered that Mary, his betrothed, was pregnant with a child not his own, should he accept her and bring up her child as his own? How would the villagers react to such a scandal? Joseph chose the harder path and took Mary into his home. Or think of how he undertook the census journey to Bethlehem with a very pregnant wife, or of the challenge of raising Jesus to embrace His calling as the Messiah.  Or when, not long after Jesus’s birth,  King Herod sent his men to kill every baby boy in Bethlehem, and Joseph had to flee with Mary and Jesus.  How could they evade trained soldiers?  Would he find enough work in Egypt to support his family?  In each situation, the odds always seemed stacked against him, but Joseph placed his faith in the Lord and found the grace to stand firm.

That’s the Power of faith: it can sustain us and fill us with hope, no matter what we are facing. Financial hardship, family infighting, racial prejudice, chronic illness, you name it. We’ve all faced, or are facing now, situations that appear hopeless.  We’ve all faced, or are facing now, the temptation to give up. So thank God for this poor, silent carpenter from Nazareth. Thank God for his witness of deep trust in the Lord. May we all follow in his footsteps and, through his intercession, find the grace to continue hoping against hope.  “St. Joseph, watchful guardian of the Holy Family, teach me to live in unwavering hope!”

Pope Francis

In 2015, during his trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis popularized the image of St. Joseph lying on his side, fast asleep.   “I like St. Joseph very much. He’s a strong man of silence.  On my desk, I have an image of St. Joseph sleeping.  Even when he is asleep, he looks after the Church.  Yes!  We know that he does that,” Pope Francis said, “So when I have a problem, a difficulty, I write a little note and I put it underneath Sleeping St. Joseph, so that he can dream about it!  In other words, I tell him: ‘Pray for this problem!’”

Certainly St. Joseph knows how to rest peacefully with God!  He rests with trust in God’s divine plan and acts with divine inspiration.  We can learn from him how to refrain from anxiety in the middle of our busy lives and work hard according to God’s plan, and not run the risk of being busy with things that do not matter much eternally.  Pope Francis says the way St. Joseph responded to his dreams — by rising and doing as God had asked — shows St. Joseph was a man who was willing to immediately do the will of God. “Those precious moments of repose, of resting with the Lord in prayer, are moments we might wish to prolong. But like St. Joseph, once we have heard God’s voice, we must rise from our slumber; we must get up and act.”