There is no account of Joseph’s passing in Scripture. He was alive when Jesus was twelve years old, and the Holy Family went to Jerusalem for the Passover, but he seems to have died before Our Lord began His public ministry around age 30.   It is unknown the age that St. Joseph was when Jesus was born. Some scholars have speculated that he was an older man who was a widower. This was offered as an explanation of Jesus’ brothers who are mentioned in the Gospels. However, other explanations than siblings can be offered, such as close natural kinship. In the Church we speak of each other as brothers and sisters, though our kinship is spiritual, not natural. On the other hand, a tradition that Joseph was a young man has also been maintained, especially in the West. He was unmarried, and Jewish men were encouraged to marry young, such as 18, women even earlier. He was capable of strenuous travel (trip to Bethlehem and flight to Egypt), as well as able to perform the difficult work of a carpenter. Further, an increasing appreciation of the role of St. Joseph in the economy of salvation suggests it. In his apostolic exhortation on St. Joseph, “Custodian of the Redeemer” (Redemptoris Custos), Pope St. John Paul II, citing Pope St. Paul VI, represents this theological trend, assuming a young virginal man fully dedicated to God and the mission given to him, stating 26. The total sacrifice, whereby Joseph surrendered his whole existence to the demands of the Messiah's coming into his home, becomes understandable only in the light of his profound interior life. It was from this interior life that "very singular commands and consolations came, bringing him also the logic and strength that belong to simple and clear souls, and giving him the power of making great decisions-such as the decision to put his liberty immediately at the disposition of the divine designs, to make over to them also his legitimate human calling, his conjugal happiness, to accept the conditions, the responsibility and the burden of a family, but, through an incomparable virginal love, to renounce that natural conjugal love that is the foundation and nourishment of the family.” (emphasis added) We are unsure about Mary’s exact age, but most Bible scholars believe that in keeping with Jewish practice of the day she may have been as young as 14 or 15.