From One Father to Another, Gratitude

I consider it an honor and an even greater blessing to have been named after Saint Joseph. As a father (and as a man), I can think of no better patron:

St. Joseph was called by God to serve the person and mission of Jesus directly through the exercise of his fatherhood. It is precisely in this way that, as the Church’s Liturgy teaches, he “cooperated in the fullness of time in the great mystery of salvation” and is truly a “minister of salvation.” His fatherhood is expressed concretely “in his having made his life a service, a sacrifice to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission connected with it; in having used the legal authority which was his over the Holy Family in order to make a total gift of self, of his life and work; in having turned his human vocation to domestic love into a superhuman oblation of self, an oblation of his heart and all his abilities into love placed at the service of the Messiah growing up in his house.” — Redemptoris Custos

Saint Joseph, Pillar of families, Pray for us!

Note: I love artistic representations of St. Joseph as a young man, as in Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s “The Holy Family with a Young Bird,” seen above. I also love music written in his honor, such as Fr. Juan Escollar’s “Te, Ioseph, celebrent agmina caelitum,” heard here. It’s amazing how difficult it is to find either. Yet as frustrating as that can be, I’m sure the Hidden Saint would be pleased by the paucity.

Attribution(s): “The Holy Family with Dog” by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo via Museo Nacional del Prado. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.