By Stephen P. White.

But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, May 1st at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the coming conclave to choose the successor to Pope Francis, as well as other issues in Rome this week and in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.

Now for today's column...

Today, May 1, the Church celebrates St. Joseph the Worker. It is often remarked of Joseph that Scripture records none of his words. While it is true that no direct word of Joseph's is recorded in Scripture, it is from Joseph's own lips that the name of Jesus, the name announced privately to Mary and in a dream to Joseph, is first announced publicly among the people of Israel: "And he [Joseph] named him Jesus." (Matthew 1:25)

Joseph, as we know, was not the natural father of Jesus. But Joseph, on behalf of the God-child's true Father, gave him the name by which the world would know him: Jesus. And it was in the home of Joseph that the Incarnate Word practiced obedience: "He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart."

The obedience of Jesus, of course, is manifest most perfectly in his obedience to the will of the Father, "becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross," as St. Paul writes to the Philippians. And because of this, "God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name."

The symmetry here is beautiful and shows how the fatherhood of Joseph, though not natural fatherhood, is an imitation of the fatherhood of God. The Father bestows on the obedient Son, conceived in the flesh through the Holy Spirit, the name which is above every name. Joseph gives to Jesus, conceived through the Spirit, his name and the Christ child is obedient to him.

Joseph's fatherhood was thus caught up in - caught between, we might say - the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is given the grace to experience, in a human way, the love of the Trinity, as it were, "from within."

No one is a father as God is Father, as the Catechism reminds us, but it is precisely the fatherhood of God that stands as the fundamental reference for understanding all fatherhood.

St. Joseph was not the natural father of Jesus, but his fatherhood was true fatherhood - not merely in imitation of natural fatherhood (and therefore, by analogy, to the generative fatherhood of God) but by direct reference to the Fatherhood of God by whom we are all, through baptism, made adopted sons and daughters of the Father.

Emphasizing the true fatherhood of Joseph is not only important for understanding his relationship to Jesus, but for understanding our relationship, through Christ, to God the Father. Because we have been adopted by God through baptism and the Holy Spirit, we can pray as Jesus taught us, to "Our Father."

St. Paul makes this point explicitly in his letter to the Romans:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Being adopted sons and daughters of God makes us co-heirs with Christ. This divine filiation makes possible our divination. The Catechism sums this up, citing in turn Scripture (2 Peter), St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, and St. Thomas Aquinas:

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine s...