Joseph Our Patron

 

SAINT JOSEPH,

SPOUSE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Solemnity, 19 March 2022, at St. Lambert

2 Sm 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16

Rom 4:13, 16-18, 22

Mt 1:16, 18-21, 24a

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

St. Joseph! Pray for us!

St. Joseph, the foster Father of Jesus, and the Patron of the Universal Church! Those are exalted titles for a descendant of David the King, but for a man with none of the trappings of royalty! Just an ordinary guy, you might say, Joseph was an artisan, a carpenter, who earned a living by the sweat of his brow? Two thousand years later: St. Joseph’s feast today ought to amount to a high-water mark in the Church’s jubilee celebration of the last year. Among the possible gains in terms of faith and devotion, that we could hope for from the observance of this year, would be that during this jubilee Catholic people everywhere might have gained a new and deeper attachment and understanding for Joseph, the protector of the Christ and His Virgin Mother.

As terrible as it sounds, I ask myself if the Church could not have hoped for more from a yearlong reflection on him. What should we have been doing during this year dedicated to St. Joseph to gain something more for ourselves by coming to better know and love St. Joseph?

Okay, maybe “should” is the wrong word. Using the word “should” amounts to setting limits on the goals of our reflection and devotion. I imagine that in such a jubilee multiple gains were possible, all kinds of possibilities existed for deepening our appreciation of St. Joseph and coming better to draw strength and enthusiasm from him for our individual lives. Truth to be told, I have had a kind of personal prayer intention for this year’s encounter with the foster Father of the Savior of the world, with Joseph the patron saint to whom we recommend our cause for a happy death, both for ourselves and for those whom we love. I have been praying this year that St. Joseph would kind of take us under his arm, not so much for dying but rather for living.

        The Collect for today’s Mass helps some with clarifying what I mean by that intention. It reads:

        “Grant, we pray, almighty God, that by Saint Joseph’s intercession your Church may constantly watch over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation, whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care.”

        In that sense, my personal prayer would be that that [watch(ing) over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation] might be a thing with us all, but especially that it would be more a part of the lives of men and boys. I pray that through the intercession of St. Joseph Catholic men and boys might come to better own the mission of the Church in their everyday lives… watch(ing) over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation.

        These days there are all kinds of surveys out there which take note of the number of people who have simply abandoned Church practice, who have become disaffected with the Church for reasons their parents might find hard to explain. Mom and Dad may have thought they did what they could to raise their children in the faith, but despite Catholic school the children have fallen away from the Church. One of the things which has surfaced in these studies is that dads play a key role in passing on the faith to their children. Mom can work very hard at imparting the faith to the children, but if Dad is absent on that account or does not give a credible witness of faith, the children often do not seem to persevere.

        I won’t exactly try to outline to parameters of a living and manly faith, which would convince children that the faith is indeed the pearl of great price, but I guess I am ready to believe the statistics. A dad may not be perfect; he may not even have a faith which is all that articulated and filled with devotional practice, but if Sunday Mass is an absolute and he is seen at home as well to be a man of prayer, that faith of his seems to be more than enough to give children’s faith a rock-like, a St. Joseph type foundation. I think of my own father, who beyond a solid basic faith practice, was able to share with me, his oldest, as an adolescent boy, his absolute faithfulness to his bride, our mother, and his uncompromising respect for her as the love of his life and the mother of his children. It was right and it was more than sufficient for us children.

        Join me in entrusting our men and boys to the intercession of St. Joseph. I think Pope Pius IX gave St. Joseph the title of Patron of the Universal Church partly at least because of this guarantor role which is typically manly and which St. Joseph fulfilled so well. By the grace of God Joseph protected and steadied the Holy Family.

Let us in turn today pray for our men, the men of this parish and of our families, that all might be supported and encouraged to find their vocation in support of the Christian family, the building block of the Church!

Praised by Jesus Christ!

St. Joseph, the Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary! Pray for us!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI