The Holy Week Shadows of St. Joseph: Palm Sunday

National Catholic Register, 28 March 2021

In his apostolic letter for the beginning of the Year of St. Joseph, Pope Francis cites Polish author Jan Dobraczyński. The Holy Father explains that his novel, The Shadow of the Father, “uses the evocative image of a shadow to define Joseph. In his relationship to Jesus, Joseph was the earthly shadow of the heavenly Father: he watched over him and protected him, never leaving him to go his own way.” (Patris Corde 7)

Nevertheless, Joseph is not present in the Lord’s public life. Yet we might find St. Joseph during Holy Week, if we allow ourselves to imagine where his “shadow” may have fell upon Jesus in those most sacred days.

 Palm Sunday

Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come! Hosanna in the highest! (Mark 11:9-10).

The crowds who hail Jesus with their palm branches welcome him to Jerusalem as the “son of David” (Matthew 21:9). They recognize in Jesus, at least on this day, the one who will fulfil the prophecy that the prophet Nathan had given to King David: And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever (2 Samuel 7:16).

If the Blessed Mother was in the crowd that day, she would have remembered what the Archangel Gabriel had told her in Nazareth about the son that she would conceive: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:32-33).

Mary herself is introduced to us first as “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David” (Luke 1:27).

Jesus is the son of David, of the royal house of Israel’s greatest king. It is of greatest importance. For us today, knowing what we know, we think of Jesus fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah, that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14). But Jesus’ contemporaries, not knowing of the virginal conception, considering him to be “Joseph’s son” (Luke 4:22), would have had in mind the prophecy that the House of David would be restored. 

At the time of Jesus, under Roman occupation, with vassal kings installed by the faraway emperor, the return of the Son of David did not appear imminent to the children of Israel. Then Jesus appeared, teaching them with authority, not like their own scribes (Matthew 7:29), working astonishing miracles and claiming authority even over the Sabbath (Mark 2:28) and the Temple (John 2:19). 

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