One of the pieces of advice that married Catholics love to give single Catholic women who want to be married is to pray to St. Joseph.
The faithful, loving husband of Mary is thought to be the ideal intercessor for women who are looking for someone like him: the strong, silent type (kidding, kidding). I cannot tell you how many times I have been told, “Just do a novena to St. Joseph!” or “Have you tried asking St. Joseph?” Once, this happened on a live radio broadcast, and I found myself choked up as I responded, “That is not how prayer works. I have done the novena to St. Joseph so many times, and nothing ever happens. In fact, nothing ever happens when I do novenas, period.”
I finally counted them up: 21. I have done the novena to St. Joseph, husband of Mary, ending on his feast day of March 19, every single year for 21 years. My novenas have reached legal drinking age.
While I have probably phrased it differently every year, depending on the state of my heart, one of my intentions for the novena has always been, “to find a man to share my life with.” And about five years ago, I discovered a prayer to St. Joseph that I really love, so I started praying it every night when I had finished Night Prayer. So I declare: I have been ghosted by St. Joseph.
Prayer is a relationship. It is a conversation with someone real, whom you cannot see but whom you trust exists and listens. It can be wordy or wordless, tearful or joyful. Over these many years of my approaching St. Joseph, he has remained silent. He has left me on “read,” and “in the blue” (sorry, non-iPhone users). But I still trust that when I ask, he listens. He prays to God for me, as a good friend would. He just does not tell me about it. He does not give me updates. He does not let me into the secret.
The only reason I can keep trusting that Joseph lives in heaven and intercedes for me is that I have people in my life who are a bit like him. People who do things silently but who mostly keep their thoughts to themselves. They mail packages to me when they know I’ve had a rough time. They text me funny memes or offer to pick up coffee for me. Their kids start calling me “Aunt Sara” even though no one told them to. They may not share a lot of what they are thinking or feeling at a given moment — apparently, I do enough of that for all of us — but they are present. They are there. And so is St. Joseph.
There is a long tradition in the Church of accepting the silence of God. I’m not talking here about the dark night of the soul — which is a specific suffering of saints who have reached a level of contemplation that I certainly have not. I’m talking about the normal, run-of-the-mill seeming lack of response from the Father.
St. Thérèse explained it as seeing herself as a little toy that belongs to the Child Jesus, a toy that he could take up or leave, as he willed. She said she did not mind being set aside, waiting to be chosen. I have found that really challenging, since I do want to be chosen — not only by Jesus but also by a good man. I am not a “pick me girl” because, if anything, I seek to build up and champion the many amazing women in my life. But we all want to be chosen. We all want someone to see us and say “That one.” And so far, St. Joseph hasn’t helped that happen for me.
In the summer of 2023, I went to visit a friend in Montreal. As she worked during the day, I toured the city. One of the places that I made it a point to visit was the St. Joseph Oratory. This is one of the places that people liked to tell me to make a pilgrimage to, if I really wanted a husband. “My friend did that and she met her husband the next day!” they would say. Well, (spoiler alert!) I did not meet my husband at the oratory.
What did happen, though, is that in the crypt, where there are myriad candles flickering in front of St. Joseph under certain titles, I found myself lighting one in front of “patron of the dying,” for my father. This did not make a lot of sense, since my dad was not dying (that I knew of), but I thought I would ask Joseph to help him anyway. This gave me some comfort when he died suddenly in January 2024.
St. Joseph has been silent when I have asked for his help in finding a husband, but he has not been entirely silent — he has supported me when I needed it, in ways that I did not know to ask. Just like any true friend.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
