The Superstition of Burying Saint Joseph in the Ground

Saint Joseph, foster father of Jesus Christ, took on the responsibility of raising Jesus as God instructed. Joseph gave up his home in order to protect his family and was able to make a new home wherever they went. For this reason, St. Joseph believers pray to him to help them find a new home or sell the home they have. It is believed that burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the ground will help your home sell faster. Once your home is sold, you are to remove the statue, otherwise the it will sell over and over again. One story of how the tradition started claimed it was started by a nun named St. Teresa of Avila in the 1500’s. She was having a difficult time finding land to start her new convent and in order to find land, she told her nuns to pray to St. Joseph and bury blessed medals of him. Not long after, they found land for their new convent. Word got out about this and people started burying medals in their own yard in order to find a new home. They later started buying statues to bury in order to sell their property. This tradition still continues today, but should it?

Saying a prayer to St. Joseph, asking for him to intercede in the sale of your home is a religious act and does not go against any rules of the Catholic Church. However, burying the statue could be seen as a superstition, not a religious act. It is used more for good luck. If you believe burying the statue is necessary, then you don’t believe that just prayer is enough. Superstitious acts go against the Catholic beliefs. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2111) states, “Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.” So therefore, the act of burying a statue is considered “magical” and “necessary” instead of just prayer. If you believe in Magic you are believing in something false, but if you have faith through prayer, then you are believing in the one true God. Many churches have taken the statue off the shelves in their religious articles store for this reason. It is not a pious devotion to bury statues of St. Joseph. It is actually an evil practice and we should be careful not to use religious articles superstitiously. They have no power. If you want to sell your property, you should put an image of St. Joseph in a prominent place in your home and pray a novena in his honor so to obtain a good sale.

Let’s say you knew St. Joseph in person, and you watched the wonderful life he led unfold in front of your eyes. Do you think the respectful thing to do would be to bury a symbol of him, such as a picture or a statue? Of course not, especially not upside down. You would put the symbol in a beautiful spot in your home. Somewhere that reminds you to pray and ask St. Joseph’s intercession in the sale of your home, or to just dedicate your time in prayer to him. I’m sure St. Joseph does not only want to be remembered for his housing troubles (there is no room at the inn), but he wants to be remembered as the chosen one to raise the Son of God, his obedience to God, and his work as a protector and loving example to Mary, and Jesus.