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Joseph’s angelic salutation



Wednesdays for many Catholics are dedicated to devotion to St Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster-father of our Lord, Jesus. I’ve been trying to grow my devotion to Joseph by asking for his intercession throughout the day, but a lot of the St Joseph prayers I’ve found are longer, not easily memorized, and often a bit … effusive.

Looking for something more like the Angelic Salutation of Mary, aka the “Hail Mary,” I turned to Scripture (what little there is about Joseph) to compose something comparable without sounding totally derivative (it’s admittedly a little derivative…). 

Joseph has his own Angelic Salutation “Joseph, son of David” (Matthew 1:20) during a dream and in later dreams he is repeatedly called to “Rise” (Mt 2:13, 20) which I made part of the petition. That Joseph names Jesus (Mt 1:21, 25), the name above all other names  (Phil 2:9) strikes me as key to Joseph’s identity in addition to his betrothal to Mary. “Shadow of the Father” applied to Joseph, I first encountered with Stratford Caldecott (“The Chivalry of Saint Joseph” https://archive.secondspring.co.uk/articles/scaldecott26.htm).

Hail Joseph, son of David,  
just and chaste husband of Mary,
Foster father of the son you named, Jesus.

Holy Joseph, shadow of the Father,
As you protected Mother and Son,
Rise and watch over us sinners,
Now and until our happy death.

I’m going to give this a try on Wednesdays and see how it goes. Thursdays, dedicated to Eucharistic Devotion, I start working on memorizing the Spiritual Communion prayer.


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