Josephology Sidebar: St. Joseph's Defunct Octave

While March 19 was the only feast day given for St. Joseph in the West since the 10th century, P. Pius IX saw fit to add an extended celebration that would not consistently fall within the season of Lent. On September 10, 1847, he added a solemn octave of the "Patronage of St. Joseph" starting as a double feast of the second class to be celebrated a few Wednesdays after Easter. It was eventually raised into a first class feast in 1870. This feast and its accompanying octave remained in place until P. Pius XII replaced it in 1955 with the feast of "St. Joseph the Worker."

The breviary readings for these feast days can still be found at the Divinum Officium site. Unlike the rather banal readings for the Pacellian feast, the 19th-century feast's readings are quite interesting and are drawn mainly from typological Old Testament passages about the Hebrew patriarch Joseph, ruler of Egypt. This octave begins today for those using the pre-Pacellian missal.

It is interesting how difficult it has been for new Josephite feasts to stick in the Roman missal. Pacelli's own feast was demoted a mere fourteen years later in the 1969 revisions to an optional memorial, and John XIII's 1962 insertion of Joseph's name into the canon was similarly lost in the tide of aggiornamento. Will P. Francis' reinsertion of St. Joseph into the Novus Ordo eucharistic prayers result in a similar deletion within a few decades?

Introduction: Series on St. Joseph

Mosaic of St. Joseph from the chapel of John VII in
the original St. Peter's Basilica

Were this not Lent, we could speak of today as a "vigil" of the traditional feast of St. Joseph, foster-parent of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For this marvelous place he occupied in the Divine plan for salvation, Joseph is remembered in the liturgy of the Roman Church on March 19th. St. Joseph for the longest time stood in the background of salvation history and the Church's theology. Why, then, did the Church see an unmitigated upsurge in devotion to St. Joseph?

We cannot deny devotion to St. Joseph multiplied many fold in the 19th and 20th centuries, often at the behest of Rome and Spanish bishops devoted to the Holy Family. Not all examples of devotion to Joseph are created equal. In the Roman rite, St. Joseph was added to the Suffrages of Lauds and Vespers. Pius IX declared him "Patron of the Universal Church" and gave him a feast day under this title affixed to the third Sunday after Pascha. Although a new feast, it was an excellent feast based on the typology of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph of Egypt. The Mattins readings are from Genesis and the antiphons recall the exile into Egypt of Joseph, his belated calling to the Lord, his longing to the Pharaoh, and, in the case of the New Testament Joseph, his return from Egypt. This rich feast had to die so Joe the Communist could live (and unionize!).

New churches often sported side altars and shrines based on the Holy Family devotion rather than ancient or local saints. The main altar and tabernacle graced the center of the church flanked to the left by an altar or shrine to the Virgin and a twin to the right for St. Joseph. Art began to depict Joseph, contrary to tradition, as a virile young man with a receding hairline. Books like The Life and Glories of St. Joseph by Fr. Edward Healy Thompson sprang up positing that St. Joseph was immaculately conceived and a greater saint than John the Baptist(!). As with most devotions and traditions, recent or ancient, interest in St. Joseph ended in the 1960s, aside from a few traditionalist communities where he remains a figure.

To tell us more the fascinating arc of St. Joseph and his place in the Church's history is our first additional contributor under the new format. His pseudonym "J" tells us precious little about him, but worry not, for his Traddiness has vetted J. He is a Catholic in Texas, a parishioner at the FSSP church in the area, a literatus with a strong passion for good literature, a healthy cynic, and a pipe-smoker. He intends to post his first article tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Joe the Communist & Bad Wine

Last night I attended a small dinner gathering and got to chatting with a like-minded fellow about a range of things from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies to hobbits. Somehow we came upon the topic of S. Ioseph Opifex, the feast of "Joseph the Worker," or, as more adept people have called it, Joe the Communist. The discussant, who attends Mass at the local FSSP parish featured in a previous post, recounted a feeble attempt to pray the 1962 Lauds on a day that happened to be May 1st. He had to quit, so he told me, before even finishing the psalms because the antiphons were so remarkably bad. Here are the Lauds antiphons for the displaced feast of Ss. Philip & James and then the antiphons for the Apostles' Red Replacement:

• Lord, show us the Father, * and it sufficeth us. Alleluia.
• Philip, * He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Alleluia.
• Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me * Philip, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Alleluia.
• If ye had known Me ye should have known My Father also, * and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
• If ye love Me, * keep My commandments. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

The new feast:

• God, maker of the world, * has stationed man to dress and keep the earth, alleluia.
• Christ, the Son of God, * deigned to work with his hands, alleluia.
• The craftsman, * holy Joseph, faithfully exercising his trade, shines forth as a marvellous example of work, alleluia.
• Faithful servant, * and prudent, whom the Lord hath appointed over his family, alleluia.
• O Joseph, holy workman, * defend our work, alleluia.

When I told the same fellow what the Mattins lessons were for the new feast his reaction was one of understandable incredulity. Here is the fifth lesson

"The same Pontiff supplied a new proof of the Church's solicitude for labor organization, when, upon the occasion of a convention of workingmen held in Rome on the first of May in the year 1955, he took the opportunity of speaking to a large multitude gathered in the square before St. Peter's Basilica, and commended most highly the instruction of workingmen. For in our day it is of prime importance that the workers be properly imbued with Christian doctrine in order that they may avoid the widespread errors concerning the nature of society and economic matters. Moreover, such instruction is needed that they might have a correct knowledge of the moral order established by God as it effects the rights and duties of workers, and which the Church discloses and interprets, so that by partaking in the needed reforms they might work more effectively toward their realization. For Christ was the first one to promulgate in the world those principles which he delivered to the Church and which still stand unchangeable and most valid for the solution of these problems."

My night ended with a horrific viticultural experience. Older American readers may remember Paul Masson commercials featuring Orson Welles, the film maker who produced the greatest movie ever made at age 25 and whose career only declined from there. Welles was often inebriated during commercials, but revealed in an interview he never drank Paul Masson wine. Clearly he was bringing his own stuff. The motto for Paul Masson wine was "We will serve no wine before its time." Out of morbid curiosity a friend just had to buy a bottle jug. 

He poured me a quarter of an inch of this so-called wine in a tumbler. I smelled it. The scent was like that of very, very ripe apples. The sugar and fruitiness overwhelmed me. I gave it a swish and found it had no body of any kind. The scent, on a closer sniff, was positively pungent. I then put the liquid in my mouth where it committed first degree assault on my taste buds. I then spat it into the sink, which is when this experience became even worse. This so-called wine leaves an aftertaste I have only encountered with one other product, Robitussin cough medicine. When was this wine's time?

Editing was able to salvage this from the above takes: