We don’t know much about Joseph, except that he continued to have Mary’s best interests in mind as he considered divorcing her, and that when God spoke to him, he listened. I imagine that he wanted nothing more than a hidden life with simple joys, but Joseph is a saint today because he let God’s plan unfold in his life. He laid aside his rights in order for the Virgin birth to happen, and when he needed to protect his loved ones, he listened to The Lord. Joseph believed God’s plan was better than any plan of his own imagination. I love Joseph precisely for how forgotten he tends to be in the celebration of Christ—but let me remember him now as the man who was an adoptive father to the Son of God so he himself could be adopted into the Son’s resurrection.
 
My visual style has typically been associated with the mystical and the hagiographic; so I was eager to embrace the challenge of portraying Joesph as haggard and humble. No abstract patterns, no religious symbols, no embellishments in the background. Just the tired lovingness in Joseph’s countenance, looking upon his son.
 
I hope anyone who is a father or a mother can find sympathy in St. Joseph’s eyes, and receive a blessing that can inspire them to persevere. It is a haggard and humble enterprise, but through humble fathers and patient mothers, God worked his greatest miracle! And it is with fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters that Our Lord continues the story of the Grand Redemption!