March 19 was observed as the day of Saint Joseph in parts of the Latin West by the close of the Middle Ages, and Pope Sixtus IV placed it in the calendar of the Roman Church in the fifteenth century. Devotion grew steadily afterward: in 1870 Blessed Pope Pius IX declared Joseph Patron of the Universal Church, Pope Pius XII instituted the memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker on May 1 in 1955, Saint John XXIII inserted his name into the Roman Canon, and in 2013 Pope Francis extended that mention to all the Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Missal. Pope Francis devoted the apostolic letter Patris corde to him in 2020. As a solemnity the day is celebrated with white vestments, the Gloria, and the Creed, even though it falls within Lent, when the Gloria is otherwise omitted. The Missal provides its own prayers and a proper preface honoring Joseph as the faithful and prudent servant set over the Lord's household. The first reading recalls the promise made to the house of David, and the Gospel is either Matthew's account of the angel's word to Joseph in a dream or Luke's account of the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple. Because a solemnity may not displace a Sunday of Lent or the days of Holy Week, the celebration is transferred whenever March 19 falls on one of those days; local calendars published each year indicate the transferred date. In the United States March 19 is not a holy day of obligation, though many parishes keep it with unusual warmth. Popular piety surrounds the day with customs of long standing: the Saint Joseph's table or altar of the Sicilian tradition, at which food is blessed and given to the poor; the seven Sundays of Saint Joseph observed before the solemnity; and prayers commending workers, fathers, and the dying to his protection. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy commends such practices when they lead the faithful back to the liturgy rather than away from it.

Solemnity

solemnity

Lent

March 19

solemnity