The St. Joseph Altar or also known as St. Joseph Table is Sicilian in origin. During a terrible famine, the people of Sicily pleaded to St. Joseph, their patron saint, for relief. St. Joseph answered their prayers, and the famine ended. In gratitude, they prepared a table with foods they had harvested. After paying homage to St. Joseph, they distributed the food to the less fortunate.
The act of making an altar fulfills a promise made to St. Joseph for an answered prayer. The traditional St. Joseph Altar is constructed in the shape of the cross, with three levels honoring the Holy Trinity. A statue or picture of Joseph, often seen holding the baby Jesus stands at the center of the highest tier with flowers surrounding him. Most often the colors of red, white and green (the colors of the Italian flag) are displayed. Most altars have a basket where visitors can place written petitions. Each food on the altar has some traditional significance.
- Breads are baked in the shapes of ladders, saws and hammers, the carpenter tools, and so forth.
- Hard-boiled eggs are embedded in baked bread to symbolize the rebirth of spring and the coming of Easter.
- The breadcrumbs represent the sawdust of the carpenter.
- There are wreaths and a crown of thorns, palms branches, wheat, sacred heart, crosses, Joseph’s staff and the Monstrance.
- The whole baked fish represents the Miracle of the Multiplication of Loaves.
- Wine recalls the wedding feast at Cana.
- The fava bean, which was the only crop that survived the drought, is called the lucky bean.
- Fresh produces recalls the bountiful harvest that concluded the famine.
- There is no meat on a St. Joseph Altar because the Solemnity falls during the Lenten season of repentance, fasting, and abstinence.
“Of old it was said to the needy and suffering people in the kingdom of Egypt: ‘Go to Joseph, and do all that he should say to you.’ (Gen 41:55). The same is now said by the Sovereign Pontiff to all needy and suffering people in the kingdom of the Church: GO TO JOSEPH . . . What was truly said of the first Joseph, as to his future, and as to his goodness, his chastity, his patience, his wisdom, his influence with the king, his power over the people, and his love for his brethren, is verified much more perfectly, even to this day, in the second JOSEPH.”
Herbert Cardinal Vaughan
Archbishop of Westminster
