There’s a fourth-century prayer to St. Joseph that concludes, “St. Joseph, I never weary contemplating you with Jesus asleep in your arms. I dare not approach while he reposes near your heart. Press him close in my name and kiss his fine head for me, and ask him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for us.” It’s a tender image, and the ancient sentiment resonates today: Joseph as protector, even to death.
Death will come for us all, so how does one prepare for what the Church has long called “a happy death” — a death in friendship with the Lord, with hope of eternal life? St. Joseph, known as the patron of a happy death, is our guide. First, we can imitate St. Joseph’s love and faithfulness to God’s will in his daily life. Second, we can cultivate the sacramental life of grace through daily prayer and detachment from sin. Third, we can practice devotions that dispose us to a happy death.
St. Joseph has become perhaps the Church’s best-known figure associated with a happy death. There’s a pious tradition that St. Joseph must have died in the arms and care of his beloved Jesus and Mary, whom he’d given his life to day by day, moment by moment. It’s hard to imagine a better death than his, but we can accept our death with the same trust, in the merciful love of Jesus and the motherly intercession and care of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Joseph’s privileged role that God willed for him was to care for and raise Jesus, and be the most chaste spouse of the immaculate Virgin Mary. God the Father granted Joseph the holiness and perfection needed to fulfill his will in the simplicity of his ordinary daily life, as husband and father. It was especially St. Joseph’s perfect abandonment to God’s will for him that made him the greatest saint after Our Lady, and the secret to a happy death for us is the same. The example of St. Joseph reveals the best preparation for a happy death is a well-lived life. That consists of being faithful to God’s will revealed in his Commandments, handed down to us through the Church, her teachings and revealed in the duties of the present moment.
Pope Benedict XV said sanctity consists in the conformity to God’s will, expressed in a constant and exact fulfillment of the duties of our state of life. This is the life St. Joseph led. That is truly exciting – holiness is attainable! That is not to say holiness is easy, but the means to holiness is provided right there in front of us in the present moment if we recognize it in faith as St. Joseph did. Holiness consists in doing God’s will and in the perfection of charity — they are inseparable. With the help of grace, we can become saints. That said, Jesus reminds us that becoming a saint (his disciple) requires that we “die to self” for the love of God. We live out this “martyrdom” day to day, moment to moment in acts of faith and selfless love: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12).
We cannot imitate St. Joseph and prepare for a happy death unless we also live the sacramental life of grace: holy Eucharist, monthly confession, daily silent prayer from the heart and renunciation and detachment from worldly attachments. As St. Teresa of Avila said, detachment means not paying attention to what doesn’t lead us to God.
Finally, the Church offers us devotions and prayers that help ensure a happy death. The apostolic pardon remits all temporal punishment (purgatory) and is imparted by the priest when death is imminent. The First Friday devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus promises the grace of final penitence. The First Saturday devotion to Our Lady promises graces necessary for salvation at death. The Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary, recited daily, promise her visible help at the moment of death. Practicing these devotions and many others leads us to conformity to God’s will and cultivates the sacramental life of grace and prayer through the Eucharist and confession.
Let us pray that St. Joseph will intercede for us, that we will be prepared for and experience a happy death.
Deacon Gannon is the director of the Institute for Ongoing Clergy Formation at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul.
