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The Bible is silent about the precise age of St. Joseph at the time when he took the Blessed Virgin Mary into his home and welcomed the Christ Child.
What we do know is that Mary was a virgin, meaning that she did not have any sexual relations with her husband, St. Joseph.
For some Catholics, that seemed like an impossible feat, and so they found it more believable that St. Joseph was an old man, with no sexual drive.
In fact, in some traditions St. Joseph was believed to be 90 years old.
90-year-old Joseph
The Catholic Encyclopedia describes this tradition:
[A]s the priests announced through Judea that they wished to find in the tribe of Judaea respectable man to espouse Mary, then twelve to fourteen years of age. Joseph, who was at the time ninety years old, went up to Jerusalem among the candidates; a miracle manifested the choice God had made of Joseph, and two years later the Annunciation took place.
This tradition was accepted by many Catholics throughout the history of the Church and much early iconography depict St. Joseph as an old man.
However, there are some problems with this depiction, as the Bible states that St. Joseph had to flee to Egypt shortly after Mary gave birth.
Such an arduous journey would have been difficult, if nearly impossible, for a 90-year-old man. He would have also been useless if Herod tried to seize the Child Jesus from them, as he would not have been able to defend his family.
The other problem is that it decreases St. Joseph's holiness. St. Joseph was a just and chaste man, and even though he loved Mary with a deep and intense love, he was able to restrain his passions and respect her virginity.
St. John Paul II pointed this out in one of his general audiences that is printed in the book,
Theotokos: A Catechesis on Mary, Mother of God:
The difficulty of accepting the sublime mystery of their spousal communion has led some, since the second century, to think of Joseph as advanced in age and to consider him Mary’s guardian more than her husband. It is instead a case of supposing that he was not an elderly man at the time, but that his interior perfection, the fruit of grace, led him to live his spousal relationship with Mary with virginal affection.
Fulton Sheen had similar thoughts in The World's First Love, "Joseph was probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined, the kind of man one sees … working at a carpenter’s bench ... He was not in the evening of life, but in its morning, bubbling over with energy, strength, and controlled passion."
Living a chaste life may seem strange to most people, but with God's grace, it is possible. St. Joseph is the prime example and one whom we should invoke whenever we struggle with chastity.
