Encountering the Heart of St. Joseph: The Census

When you think of your father, what is the first gift you remember receiving? Maybe it was a toy, a book or some other special thing that you remember. The reality is that one of the first gifts given to us by our parents is the gift of our name. For Jesus specifically, he received his name from his foster father, St. Joseph. This name is revealed to St. Joseph by an angel. In a dream, the angel tells him that Mary “will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus” (Mt 1:20-21). St. John Paul II writes “Joseph fulfilled for the child the significant task of officially inserting the name ‘Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth’ into the registry of the Roman Empire.’ ” 

St. John Paul II adds the task was significant because “this registration clearly shows that Jesus belongs to the human race as a man among men, a citizen of this world, subject to laws and civil institutions, but also ‘savior of the world.’ By being registered with everyone, he could sanctify everyone; inscribed with the whole world in the census, he offered to the world communion with himself, and after presenting himself he wrote all the people of the world in the book of the living, so that as many as believed in him could then be written in heaven with the saints of God.”

Rachael Duchmann 

Youth Minister / Assistant Director 

of Religious Education

St. John the Evangelist Church, Prairieville