The feast day of St. Joseph is celebrated annually on March 19/Our Bejjani family has proudly carried this name generation after generation for centuries and still we do. May God and His angles safeguard our caring and loving son Youssef, and our grandson Joseph, who both carry this blessed name. It is worth mentioning that St. Joseph’s Day is a Maronite – Roman Catholic feast day that commemorates the life of St. Joseph, the step-father of Jesus and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. People with very strong religious convictions among which are the Lebanese Maronites celebrate St. Joseph’s Day on March 19 and believe that this day is St. Joseph’s birthday too .Back home, in Lebanon St. Joseph is considered the Family Saint and looked upon as a family and hardworking father role model because of the great role that Almighty God had assigned him to carry. His duty was to raise Jesus Christ and take care of Virgin Mary. God has chose him to look after His begotten son and Virgin Marry. He fulfilled his Godly assignment with love, passion and devotion. May Al Mighty God bless all those that carry this name.
St. Joseph St. Joseph, (flourished 1st century CE, Nazareth, Galilee, region of Palestine; principal feast day March 19, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker May 1), in the New Testament, Jesus’ earthly father and the Virgin Mary’s husband. St. Joseph is the patron of the universal church in Roman Catholicism, and his life is recorded in the Gospels, particularly Matthew and Luke. Joseph was a descendant of the house of King David. After marrying Mary, he found her already pregnant and, “being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace” (Matthew 1:19), decided to divorce her quietly, but an angel told him that the child was the Son of God and was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Obeying the angel, Joseph took Mary as his wife. After Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem in Judaea, where the Holy Family received the Magi, an angel warned Joseph and Mary about the impending violence against the child by King Herod the Great of Judaea, whereupon they fled to Egypt. There the angel again appeared to Joseph, informing him of Herod’s death and instructing him to return to the Holy Land. Avoiding Bethlehem out of fear of Herod’s successor, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus settled in Nazareth (Matthew 2:22–23) in Galilee, where Joseph taught his craft of carpentry to Jesus. Joseph is last mentioned in the Gospels when he and Mary frantically searched for the lost young Jesus in Jerusalem, where they found him in the Temple (Luke 2:41–49). Like Mary, Joseph failed to comprehend Jesus’ ironic question, “ ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ ” The circumstances of Joseph’s death are unknown, except that he probably died before Jesus’ public ministry began and was certainly dead before the Crucifixion (John 19:26–27).
Saint Annual Joseph’s Day The feast day of St. Joseph is celebrated annually on March 19. Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary and foster-father of Jesus, has been honored as a saint since the earliest days of the Christian Church. But very little is known about his life, or even the exact date of his death, which is believed to have occurred when Jesus Christ was eighteen. The basis of saint day remembrances-for St. Joseph as well as other saints-is found in ancient Roman tradition. On the anniversary of a death, families would share a ritual meal at the grave site of an ancestor. This practice was adopted by Christians who began observing a ritual meal on the death anniversary of ancestors in the faith, especially martyrs. As a result, most Christian saint days are associated with the death of the saint. There are three important exceptions. John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus are honored on their nativities (birthdays). Many who suffered martyrdom are remembered on saint days in the calendars of several Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant sects. By the thirteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had instituted canonization, the process of making a person a saint. Before that, Christians venerated people they considered saints. In 1870 Pope Pius IX formally proclaimed Joseph the patron of the universal church. It is worth mentioning that St. Joseph’s Day is a Maronite and Roman Catholic feast day that commemorates the life of St. Joseph, the step-father of Jesus and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel Matthew 01/18-25/This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
