Instead of being a man incapable of loving, he must have been on fire with love. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, in his book The World’s First Love, posited: “Joseph was probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined, the kind of man one sees … working at a carpenter’s bench. Joseph as the young man who could provide for his family and also as the good masculine example and image of human fatherhood for Jesus. Joseph walking 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for the census, or walking from Bethlehem to Egypt to flee the wrath of King Herod. Joseph had to be an elderly widower to resolve the supposed brother/sister relationship question.Īlso, I personally cannot imagine an elderly St. In sum, there is no need to think that St. James the Greater and John were the sons of Zebedee with a mother other than our Blessed Mother Mary (Mt 20:20 ff). Judas, and by extension Simon, were the sons of James (not either of the apostles) (Lk 6:16). James the Less and Joses were the sons of Mary the wife of Clopas (Mk 15:40, Jn 19:25), and James the Less was specifically identified as “the son of Alphaeus” (Lk 6:15) here “Clopas” and “Alphaeus” are names traditionally said to identify the same man, just as “Jude” and “Thaddeus” refer to the same apostle, i.e., St. Note that the James here is James the Less, the bishop of Jerusalem. Mark, other gospel passages clarify the relationships between Jesus and James, Joses, Judas and Simon. Joachim would not have named two daughters “Mary” instead, the “sister” used here denotes a cousin relationship.Īlso, regarding the citation from the Gospel of St. For example, in the Gospel, Mary of Clopas is called “the sister” of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The same understanding is true for the word sister. Note also that in Hebrew and Aramaic, no special word existed for cousin, nephew, half-brother or step-brother so they used the word “brother” or a circumlocution, such as in the case of a cousin, “the son of the brother of my father.” However, adelphos does not just mean a blood brother born of the same parents but also a half-brother, a step-brother or even another male relationship, like a cousin or a nephew. In the original text of the Gospel, the Greek word “adelphos”, meaning “brother,” is used. The “elderly widower” argument is not needed if one understands the meaning of brother. Mark, we read, “Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, a brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters our neighbors here?” (Mk 6:3).
Joseph who had other children would explain the Gospel references to “the brothers and sisters of the Lord.” These brothers and sisters would really then be Jesus’ half-brothers and half-sisters, but only by law, not by blood since Joseph was not the natural father of Our Lord. Surely his libido would have quelled long ago. Unlike a virile young man, an old man past his prime would not be tempted to have conjugal relations with a much younger woman. This speculation sought to solve two issues:įirst, Mary is the ever-virgin mother of our Savior, and therefore, she and St. Joseph as an elderly man arises from a “speculation” in the Eastern churches that he was an elderly widower who had other children before he married Mary. Joseph and the Boy Jesus” and Bartolome Murillo’s “The Holy Family” depict a young man with the child Jesus. Joseph and the Child” depicts a gray-haired elderly man holding baby Jesus, whereas Jose de Ribera’s “St. Joseph’s age when he was betrothed to our Blessed Mother Mary and when Christ was born. The simple answer is that we do not have any record of St.
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