The Most Chaste Heart of St Joseph: the devotion the Church keeps tomorrow — and the saints who loved him

Tomorrow, Wednesday 17 June 2026, many of the faithful will keep the devotion to the Most Chaste Heart of St Joseph. The day is no accident: Wednesday has been St Joseph’s day for centuries, and falling here, in the same week as the Sacred Heart (Friday) and the Immaculate Heart (Saturday), it quietly completes a beautiful pattern — the Three Hearts of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

A heart, not a sentimentality

To speak of Joseph’s heart is to speak of his interior life: the silent, watchful love of a man who was asked to believe without explanations, to obey at once, and to guard what was most precious in the world without ever drawing attention to himself. The Church calls him in her Litany “Joseph most chaste” — and the lily, his ancient symbol, stands for exactly that purity of heart. The flame above it is the love that purity sets free: undivided, unpossessive, wholly given to Jesus and Mary.

Where the devotion comes from

Devotion to St Joseph is very old, but for centuries it grew in the shadow of the great feasts. Two things changed that. First, the long tradition of dedicating Wednesdays to him. Second, the Church’s deepening love for him across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which naturally produced a devotion to his Most Pure or Most Chaste Heart, echoing those of Jesus and Mary. It was carried above all by religious families devoted to him — among them the Oblates of St Joseph, founded by St Joseph Marello. It has never been a universal feast of the calendar; it is a devotion, kept by those who love him, and it flowers most fittingly here, as the completion of the two Hearts that go before it. Where the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are honoured, the heart of their guardian is not far away.

The saints who loved him

Few devotions can call so many witnesses. Across the centuries, the greatest souls in the Church have been unembarrassed clients of St Joseph:

• St Teresa of Ávila, his great promoter, who took him as her special advocate and wrote: “I do not remember up to this day ever having asked anything of him which he failed to grant.”
• St Bernardine of Siena, who gave the Church much of her theology of St Joseph; and St Francis de Sales, who preached on him tenderly and placed the Visitation under his care.
• St Alphonsus Liguori and St John Bosco, who spread devotion to him as patron of a holy death and of workers.
• St André Bessette, the humble Holy Cross brother whose confidence in Joseph raised the great Oratory of St Joseph in Montreal; and St Joseph Marello, whose motto was simply “Ite ad Ioseph” — Go to Joseph.
• And the Popes: Bl. Pius IX, who declared him Patron of the Universal Church (1870); Leo XIII, whose encyclical Quamquam Pluries (1889) gave us the prayer “To you, O blessed Joseph”; St John XXIII, who inserted his name into the Roman Canon of the Mass; St John Paul II, whose Redemptoris Custos (1989) called him Guardian of the Redeemer; and Pope Francis, who proclaimed a Year of St Joseph with the letter Patris Corde (2020).

A consecration — and a book

If this devotion is new to you, there is a tried path into it: consecration to St Joseph — entrusting yourself entirely to his spiritual fatherhood, as Jesus and Mary once did. By far the best-known guide today is the work of Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC:

How to live it tomorrow

Keep it simply. Offer your Wednesday Mass or Communion for love of St Joseph. Pray the Litany of St Joseph or Leo XIII’s prayer “To you, O blessed Joseph.” Entrust to him one real need — he is the patron of families, of workers, of the dying, and of the whole Church. And perhaps begin the 33-day consecration: there is no better moment than the day his Heart is honoured. Then, with the Three Hearts now complete, we can turn to all three together.