St. Joseph Experienced the Greatest Holy Hours in History
“St. Joseph was the first adorer,” St. Peter Julian Eymard recounts in his book The Month of St. Joseph. “Have confidence, strong confidence in him. Take him as the patron and model of your adoration.”
Indisputably, St. Joseph is the epitome of Eucharistic devotion.
Being the quintessential example of devotion to Our Lord, St. Joseph naturally becomes the perfect model of Eucharistic devotion to follow, especially during the National Eucharistic Revival.
St. Joseph’s name is remembered in the Eucharistic Prayer at every Mass, and he has long been closely tied to the Eucharist.
Theologian, author and professor Scott Hahn explains the foundation this way: “St. Joseph was, with Mary, the first to take up the practice of perpetual adoration. He was with Jesus, loving him, all the time — at home, in the workshop, in the synagogue, on the road. He teaches us to live in the presence of God at all times, and he shows us how to pray when we are in the Eucharistic presence of Our Lord.”
St. Joseph models and teaches us Eucharistic adoration in many ways, expounded Father Jeffrey Kirby, the pastor of Our Lady of Grace parish in Indian Land, South Carolina, and the host of the daily devotional podcast Morning Offering With Father Kirby. “Joseph was the first to see the Christ Child when he was born from his mother. As he held the Christ Child in his arms, he made the first Holy Hour. As he showed the Christ Child to Our Lady, he was the first to announce the Eucharistic Lord to the world. By placing him in the stable, which was a feeding trough, in Bethlehem, which means the ‘City of Bread,’ Joseph was giving us all the Bread of Life, the Bread come down from heaven.”
That stable became more than a stable. In Consecration to St. Joseph, Marian Father Donald Calloway writes, “The first adoration chapel was visited by local shepherds, followed closely by the Wise Men. … St. Joseph would not only establish adoration in the Holy Land, St. Joseph established the second adoration chapel [later] in pagan territory: Egypt,” where “St. Joseph was responsible for raising the Living Host that would feed the world.”
Interestingly, Father Kirby describes how in the Old Testament the patriarch Joseph feeds the world with bread. “People came from the ends of the earth to be fed by Joseph, second only to pharaoh. In the New Testament, the earthly father of the Lord lived up to his ancestral name since he also helped to feed the world” with “the Bread of Life. Joseph gave us Jesus, the Eucharistic Lord.”
