Herod the Great had died some years before Joseph took Mary into his home. There had been uprisings back then, and the Roman legion had taken Sepphoris, the city in Galilee nearly as large as Jerusalem, burned it to the ground, destroyed stone buildings, and sold all the people into slavery.

Then Herod had died and his son Herod Antipas came to govern Galilee and chose Sepphoris as capital. Then, during the brief years after Jesus’ birth, he rebuilt colonnaded streets, forum, imposing theater, palace and villas resplendent in white limestone and colored marble. Joseph helped Sepphoris rise again in the forested hills and fertile valleys of northern Israel.

Every day, Joseph walked the hour or so north from Nazareth, down the hills, to work to be able to feed his pregnant Lady Mary.  At work one day,  he learned that the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus had mandated a census.

He walked uphill in hope and told the Lady Mary. She was very pregnant. They would have to spend one sabbath to the next walking to Bethlehem.  Joseph fretted that she had to walk eight or nine hours a day. But they had to do it.

So Joseph set out with Mary, and he got them to Bethlehem and it happened that, while they were there, her time came and she gave birth to a son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.

And then angels came and Joseph had to manage the excited shepherds and later on, the sober, gift-bearing kings. And that’s how Joseph helped as the Savior of the whole world was born in Bethlehem of Judea.