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St. Joseph Links Today! — UPDATED: 20 Things About St. Joseph that Caught My Eye on His Feast Day, 2015

Last updated on: March 19, 2015 at 6:17 pm   by
St. Joseph Links Today! — UPDATED: 20 Things About St. Joseph that Caught My Eye on His Feast Day, 2015 2015-03-19T18:17:39-05:00

1. Today is the feast of St. Joseph. A blessed solemnity. A tremendous day. A celebration of a man who trusted in God so completely.

2. Pope Francis celebrated his inaugural Mass as pope in St. Peter’s Square on this feast day two years ago.

From his homily:

How does Joseph respond to his calling to be the protector of Mary, Jesus and the Church? By being constantly attentive to God, open to the signs of God’s presence and receptive to God’s plans, and not simply to his own. This is what God asked of David, as we heard in the first reading. God does not want a house built by men, but faithfulness to his word, to his plan. It is God himself who builds the house, but from living stones sealed by his Spirit. Joseph is a “protector” because he is able to hear God’s voice and be guided by his will; and for this reason he is all the more sensitive to the persons entrusted to his safekeeping. He can look at things realistically, he is in touch with his surroundings, he can make truly wise decisions. In him, dear friends, we learn how to respond to God’s call, readily and willingly, but we also see the core of the Christian vocation, which is Christ! Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!
The vocation of being a “protector”, however, is not just something involving us Christians alone; it also has a prior dimension which is simply human, involving everyone. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live. It means protecting people, showing loving concern for each and every person, especially children, the elderly, those in need, who are often the last we think about. It means caring for one another in our families: husbands and wives first protect one another, and then, as parents, they care for their children, and children themselves, in time, protect their parents. It means building sincere friendships in which we protect one another in trust, respect, and goodness. In the end, everything has been entrusted to our protection, and all of us are responsible for it. Be protectors of God’s gifts!

3. On this day in 2009, Pope Benedict was in Cameroon and said:

Dear brothers and sisters, I want to say to you once more from the bottom of my heart: like Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary into your home, that is to say do not be afraid to love the Church. Mary, Mother of the Church, will teach you to follow your pastors, to love your bishops, your priests, your deacons and your catechists; to heed what they teach you and to pray for their intentions. Husbands, look upon the love of Joseph for Mary and Jesus; those preparing for marriage, treat your future spouse as Joseph did; those of you who have given yourselves to God in celibacy, reflect upon the teaching of the Church, our Mother: “Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God not only does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes and confirms it. Marriage and virginity are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the Covenant of God with his people” (Redemptoris Custos, 20).

4. One of the most powerful days in his papacy was the very first time he and the pope emeritus made an appearance together in the Vatican gardens, consecrating the Vatican to St. Joseph and St. Michael.

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8. From a (a really good) homily I was present for a few years ago at EWTN’s chapel in Birmingham, Alabama.

St. Joseph was so prone to hear the word of God and put it into practice that at the Lord’s merest indication — in a dream from an angel — he didn’t debate or negotiate, he obeyed. St. Joseph never saw obeying God as incompatible with his own good but rather as the foundation for his own good. God’s omnipotence was not seen as a threat to his manliness because St. Joseph didn’t equate manliness with being in control, but rather in being responsible and responsive to God and to others. His obedience made him capable of sharing mysteriously in the fatherhood of God the Father. St. Joseph, in sum, was humble enough to sacrifice whatever his own plans might have been in order to fulfill God’s plans and help Jesus and Mary accomplish their vocations in God’s plan.

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11. Fr. Steve Grunow writes:

Saint Joseph’s fulfillment of the demand of love will manifest itself in a low-key death to self through which he will willingly disappear into the mission that God gives to him. Anticipating that God in Christ will offer his life for him in an extraordinary way, Saint Joseph offers himself to Christ in the ordinary circumstances of his life.
St. Joseph’s greatness and mightiness is manifested, not in self-fulfillment, but in self-gift. Like all the saints, he allows himself to decrease so that Christ might increase. And this is what happens, as the power of Joseph waxes and wanes, the power of Christ increases and transforms him, until his mission is fulfilled and the heavenly glory of Saint Joseph is revealed.
May Saint Joseph, made great and mighty by his willingness to conform his life to Christ, intercede for us, and help us to conform our own lives to the demand of love that is revealed by God to us in the midst of all the events and circumstances of our lives.

P.S.:

12. From a sermon by Saint Bernadine of Siena:

There is a general rule concerning all special graces granted to any human being. Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand.

This general rule is especially verified in the case of Saint Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord and the husband of the Queen of our world, enthroned above the angels. He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.

What then is Joseph’s position in the whole Church of Christ? Is he not a man chosen and set apart? Through him and, yes, under him, Christ was fittingly and honorably introduced into the world. Holy Church in its entirety is indebted to the Virgin Mother because through her it was judged worthy to receive Christ. But after her we undoubtedly owe special gratitude and reverence to Saint Joseph.

In him the Old Testament finds its fitting close. He brought the noble line of patriarchs and prophets to its promised fulfillment. What the divine goodness had offered as a promise to them, he held in his arms.

Obviously, Christ does not now deny to Joseph that intimacy, reverence and very high honor which he gave him on earth, as a son to his father. Rather we must say that in heaven Christ completes and perfects all that he gave at Nazareth.

Now we can see how the last summoning words of the Lord appropriately apply to Saint Joseph: Enter into the joy of your Lord. In fact, although the joy of eternal happiness enters into the soul of a man, the Lord preferred to say to Joseph: Enter into joy. His intention was that the words should have a hidden spiritual meaning for us. They convey not only that this holy man possesses an inward joy, but also that it surrounds him and engulfs him like an infinite abyss.

Remember us, Saint Joseph, and plead for us to your foster-child. Ask your most holy bride, the Virgin Mary, to look kindly upon us, since she is the mother of him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns eternally. Amen.

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15. Tomorrow is Friday. In Lent. Pray the Stations of the Cross. And while in a church, take a picture of one and tweet it, sharing the church name and location, and using the hashtag: #StationsoftheCross. It’s a little way to share your parish life and the faith. Maybe even let someone know there is a church nearby to welcome them!

It looks like:

16. Three more:
He’s a humble model for all fathers.

17. 5 ways St. Joseph can help your Lent.

18. Today is Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz’s name day. My interview with him last summer in his rectory in Louisville, Ky. Where you might think he is the parish priest, not the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Which is exactly who he is: A humble priest. I suspect St. Joseph looks after him.

19. ONE LAST ONE:

From Bishop Conley in Lincoln, Nebraska:

In the Gospel, St. Joseph is never recorded saying a word. Pope St. John Paul II says that, “an aura of silence envelops everything about St. Joseph.” But St. Joseph was not silent because he had nothing to say. Instead, he was silent because he had cultivated an interior silence that allowed him to hear the Lord.

The silence of St. Joseph is the sign of a life of deep contemplation. St. Joseph is silent because he was a man of prayer. Because he was a man of prayer, he could hear the Lord’s call in his life. He could hear the Lord call him to take Mary as his wife, even when she was mysteriously pregnant. He could hear the Lord tell him to take his family to Egypt, to be safe from King Herod. Because he was silent, St. Joseph knew his vocation. And because he was prayerful, he heard the Lord, and responded with action.

The Servant of God Father John Hardon, SJ, says that, “Joseph put his love to work. He did not merely tell Jesus and Mary that he loved them. He acted out his love. He lived it… That is the secret of true love. We are as truly devoted to Christ and His Mother as we do what we know they want us to do.”

St. Joseph did what the Lord and what the Blessed Mother wanted him to do. That made him a saint. And it made him an excellent father. In February, Pope Francis said that a father’s vocation is “to be present in the family. To be close to his wife, to share in everything, joy and pain, burdens and hopes. And to be close to the children as they grow: when they play and when they make efforts, when they are carefree and when they are distressed, when they dare and when they are afraid, when they make missteps and when they return to the right path. A father must always be present!”

St. Joseph is a clear model of a father who was present to his wife and child. Pope Francis says that a father must “pray and wait with patience, gentleness, magnanimity, and mercy.” St. Joseph prayed, and waited upon the Lord, and was graced with patience, gentleness, greatness of soul, and mercy.

20. Need a prayer after all that? St. Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us.

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