I want to turn again during this year of St. Joseph, which Pope Francis proclaimed, to the saint himself. “WITH A FATHER’S HEART: that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four Gospels refer to as “the son of Joseph”.” With these words Pope Francis begins his letter Patris Corde in which he proclaimed the year of St. Joseph. Joseph is truly called the father of Jesus in the Gospel stories, all of which acknowledge that Joseph is not what we may call the “biological father” of Jesus. Rather, his fatherhood is characterized by everything else that makes a man a father. In the letter, Patris Corde, Pope Francis identifies seven aspects of the fatherhood of Joseph to reflect upon. I encourage you to read this letter, it is not too long and is mostly a meditation on Scripture. 

One aspect of this year of St. Joseph to which I want to draw our attention is that Joseph can be a father to all of us as well. In receiving him as our father we can learn to live and to rest more fully as a daughter or son of God the Father. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of the Father, this is His truest identity. Our adoption as daughters and sons of the Father, which is effected in Baptism, is the essence of the Christian life. To be a Christian precedes doing Christian things (such as prayer, worship, service to others, etc.). This is a truth that can easily become lost or forgotten, especially in our very driven, goal and achievement-oriented society. 

We are always in need of a loving and tender father, like St. Joseph, who can reveal more fully to us the love of God the Father. Our own earthly fathers, whether they are/were the best of men or not, are the first to teach us about our heavenly Father. There are also others along the way who are fathers to us, who show us something more about the way that our heavenly Father loves and cares for us. 

My writing here is meant to be an invitation to ask St. Joseph to be a father to each of us as he was and is a father to Jesus. And an invitation to receive from Joseph, a spiritual father, our sonship or daughterhood.
 

Fr. Scott Nolan
Pastor
St. Stephen Parish
723 Rosewood Ave SE
East Grand Rapids, MI 49506

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Good Morning,

We celebrate St Joseph the Worker and begin the month traditionally dedicated to Our Lady. In our encounter this morning, I want to focus on these two figures, so important in the life of Jesus, the Church and in our lives, with two brief thoughts: the first on work, the second on the contemplation of Jesus.

1. In the Gospel of St Matthew, in one of the moments when Jesus returns to his town, to Nazareth, and speaks in the Synagogue, the amazement of his fellow townspeople at his wisdom is emphasized. They asked themselves the question: “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (13:55). Jesus comes into our history, he comes among us by being born of Mary by the power of God, but with the presence of St Joseph, the legal father who cares for him and also teaches him his trade. Jesus is born and lives in a family, in the Holy Family, learning the carpenter’s craft from St Joseph in his workshop in Nazareth, sharing with him the commitment, effort, satisfaction and also the difficulties of every day.

This reminds us of the dignity and importance of work. The Book of Genesis tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work (cf. Gen 1:28; 2:15). Work is part of God’s loving plan, we are called to cultivate and care for all the goods of creation and in this way share in the work of creation! Work is fundamental to the dignity of a person. Work, to use a metaphor, “anoints” us with dignity, fills us with dignity, makes us similar to God, who has worked and still works, who always acts (cf. Jn 5:17); it gives one the ability to maintain oneself, one’s family, to contribute to the growth of one’s own nation. And here I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflict the world of work and business today; I am thinking of how many, and not only young people, are unemployed, often due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks profit selfishly, beyond the parametres of social justice.

I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment, this means caring for the dignity of the person, but above all I would say do not lose hope. St Joseph also experienced moments of difficulty, but he never lost faith and was able to overcome them, in the certainty that God never abandons us. And then I would like to speak especially to you young people: be committed to your daily duties, your studies, your work, to relationships of friendship, to helping others; your future also depends on how you live these precious years of your life. Do not be afraid of commitment, of sacrifice and do not view the future with fear. Keep your hope alive: there is always a light on the horizon.

I would like to add a word about another particular work situation that concerns me: I am referring to what we could define as “slave labour”, work that enslaves. How many people worldwide are victims of this type of slavery, when the person is at the service of his or her work, while work should offer a service to people so they may have dignity. I ask my brothers and sisters in the faith and all men and women of good will for a decisive choice to combat the trafficking in persons, in which “slave labour” exists.

2. With reference to the second thought: in the silence of the daily routine, St Joseph, together with Mary, share a single common centre of attention: Jesus. They accompany and nurture the growth of the Son of God made man for us with commitment and tenderness, reflecting on everything that happened. In the Gospels, St Luke twice emphasizes the attitude of Mary, which is also that of St Joseph: she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (2:19,51). To listen to the Lord, we must learn to contemplate, feel his constant presence in our lives and we must stop and converse with him, give him space in prayer. Each of us, even you boys and girls, young people, so many of you here this morning, should ask yourselves: “how much space do I give to the Lord? Do I stop to talk with him?” Ever since we were children, our parents have taught us to start and end the day with a prayer, to teach us to feel that the friendship and the love of God accompanies us. Let us remember the Lord more in our daily life!

And in this month, I would like to recall the importance and beauty of the prayer of the Holy Rosary. Reciting the Hail Mary, we are led to contemplate the mysteries of Jesus, that is, to reflect on the key moments of his life, so that, as with Mary and St Joseph, he is the centre of our thoughts, of our attention and our actions. It would be nice if, especially in this month of May, we could pray the Holy Rosary together in the family, with friends, in the parish, or some prayer to Jesus and the Virgin Mary! Praying together is a precious moment that further strengthens family life, friendship! Let us learn to pray more in the family and as a family!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us ask St Joseph and the Virgin Mary to teach us to be faithful to our daily tasks, to live our faith in the actions of everyday life and to give more space to the Lord in our lives, to pause to contemplate his face. Thank you.

Pope Francis  01.05.13 General Audience St Peter’s Square

Dearest brethren, sons and daughters!

Today’s feast invites us to meditate about Saint Joseph, Our Lord Jesus’ legal and foster father. Because of that function which he performed in regard to Christ during his childhood and youth, he has been declared Patron or Protector of the Church, which continues Christ’s image and mission in time and reflects them in history.

At first sight there seems to be no material for a meditation on Joseph, for what do we know of him, apart from his name and a few events that occurred in Our Lord’s childhood? The Gospel does not record a single word from him; his language is silence. It was his attention to the angelic voices which spoke in his sleep; it was that prompt and generous obedience which was demanded from him; it was manual labour, in the most modest and fatiguing of forms, which earned Jesus the reputation of being “the son of the carpenter” (Mt. 13:55). There, is nothing else known of him, and it might well be said that he lived an unknown life, the life of a simple artisan, with no sign of personal greatness.

But that humble figure which was so near to Jesus and Mary, Christ’s Virgin Mother, he who was so intimately connected with their life and so closely linked with the genealogy of the Messias as to be the fateful and conclusive representative of the descendants of David (Mt. 1, 20), is revealed as being full of significance if we look at him attentively. He is seen truly to possess those qualities which the Church attributes to him in her liturgy, which the devotion of the faithful also attributes to him, and which gave rise to a series of invocations that have taken the form of a litany.

A celebrated modern shrine of the saint, erected through the efforts of a simple lay brother, Brother André of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, at Montreal in Canada, illustrates those qualities in a series of chapels arranged behind the high altar. All the chapels are dedicated to Saint Joseph in honour of the many titles which have been offered to him, such as Protector of Childhood, Protector of Spouses, Protector of the Family, Protector of the Workers, Protector of Virgins, Protector of Fugitives, Protector of the Dying…

If we look carefully into this life that was apparently so unremarkable, we shall find that it was greater and more adventurous, more full of exciting events, than we are accustomed to assume in our hasty perusal of the Gospel story. The Gospel describes Saint Joseph as a Just Man (Mt. 1:19). No greater praise of virtue and no higher tribute to merit could be applied to a man of humble social condition who was apparently far from being equipped to perform great deeds. A poor, honest, hardworking, perhaps even timorous man, but one with unfathomable interior life, from which very singular directions 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 that decision to put his liberty at once 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 the nourishment of the family; in this way he offered the whole of his existence in a total sacrifice to the imponderable demands raised by the astonishing coming of the Messias, to whom he was to give the everlastingly blessed name of Jesus (Mt. 1:21), whom he was to acknowledge as the effect of the Holy Spirit, and his own son only in a juridical and domestic way.

So Saint Joseph was a “committed” man, as we might say nowadays.

And what commitment! Total commitment to Mary, the elect of all the women of the earth and of history, always his virgin spouse, never his wife physically, and total commitment to Jesus, who was his offspring only by legal descendance, not by the flesh. He had the burdens, the responsibilities, the risks and the labours Surrounding the holy family. His was the service, the work, the sacrifice, in the shadows of that gospel picture in which we love to meditate on him; and we are certainly not mistaken, for we all know him now and call him Blessed.

This is Gospel in which the values of human existence take on a different dimension from that with which we are accustomed to appreciate them. What is little becomes big, and in this connection we do well to remember Jesus’ fervent words in the eleventh chapter of Saint Matthew: “I give thee praise, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hidden these things (the things or the kingdom of the Messias!) from the wise and learned, but hast revealed them to little ones”.

In the Gospel’s account, what is lowly becomes worthy to be the social condition of the Son of God made son of man; that which is elementary and the product of fatiguing and rudimentary handwork served to train the maker and continuator of the cosmos in the skills of human hands (cf. Jn. 1:3; 5:17), and to give humble bread to him who was to describe Himself as “the Bread of Life” (Jn. 6:48); what was lost for love of Christ is here rediscovered (cf. Mt. 10:39), and whoever sacrifices his own life for Him in this world saves it for everlasting life (Jn. 12:25).

Saint Joseph was the type of the message of that Gospel that Jesus was to announce as the programme in the redemption of mankind, once he left the little workshop at Nazareth and began his mission as prophet and teacher. Saint Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises to great destinies, and he is the proof that in order to be good and genuine followers of Christ there is no need of “great things”; it is enough to have the common, simple, human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic.

Our meditation now shifts from the humble Saint to our own personal circumstances, as is usual in the practice of mental prayer. We now turn to make a comparison and I contrast between him and ourselves; we have no reason to feel proud of the comparison, but we can derive some good suggestion from it for imitating him in some way which our own life condition allows, in our spirit and in concrete practice of those virtues which are so vigorously depicted in the Saint, and one especially, poverty, of which there is so much talk nowadays. And let us not be upset by the difficulties which poverty brings with it today, in this world which is all devoted to conquest of economic wealth, as if poverty were in contradiction with the line of progress which must be followed, a paradox, an unreality in a society of welfare and consumption.

Let us think again of Saint Joseph in his poverty and hard work, all his energy engaged in the effort of earning something to live on, and let us then remember that economic goods are indeed worthy of our Christian interest, on condition that they do not become ends in themselves, but are understood and used as means to keep going life which is directed towards other and higher goods, on condition that economic goods are not sought after with greedy egoism, but be rather a source and stimulus of provident charity, on condition again that they be not used as authorization for soft and easy indulgence in the so-called pleasures of life but rather be used for the broad and honest interests of the common good.

This Saint’s laborious and dignified poverty, can still be in excellent guide for us to follow the path traced by Christ’s footsteps in the modern world, and can also eloquently instruct us in positive and honest well-being, so that we may avoid losing Christ’s path in the complicated and giddy world of economics, to avoid going too far on one side into tempting ambitions of conquest of temporal riches, and too far on the other side, into making use of poverty for ideological ends, as a power to rouse social hatred and systematic subversion.

So, Saint Joseph is an example for us, and let us try to imitate him; and we shall call upon him as our protector, as the Church has been wont to do in these recent times, for herself in the first place, for spontaneous theological reflection on the marriage of divine with human action in the great economy of the Redemption, in which economy the first, the divine one is wholly sufficient to itself, but the second, human action, which is ours, though capable of nothing (cf. Jn. 15:5), is never dispensed from humble but conditional and ennobling collaboration.

The Church also calls upon him as her Protector because of a profound and most present desire to reinvigorate her ancient life with true evangelical virtues, such as shine forth in Saint Joseph. Finally, the Church invokes him as her Patron and Protector through her unshakeable trust that he to whom Christ willed to confide the care and protection of His. own frail human childhood, will continue from heaven to perform his protective task in order to guide and defend the Mystical Body of Christ Himself, which is always weak, always under attack, always in a state of peril. Finally, we call upon Saint Joseph for the world, trusting that the heart of the humble working man of Nazareth, now overflowing with immeasurable wisdom and power, still harbours and will always harbour a singular and precious fellow-feeling for the whole of mankind. So may it be.

Pope Paul VI
Homily on the Feast of Saint Joseph
27 March 1969

Attentive Joseph, in Mary and you, the Divine Word
finds a favourable environment in which to carry out
the will of the Father; thus, you become the family of
the Child-God.

In your gentle life together, you experience Love daily.
The unity of your hearts transforms life’s lessons into
growing wisdom and grace.

Open our hearts to the Word that lives within us,
that our actions may bear witness to our connection
to the family of God.

Sustain us in our emotional commitments, where
giving and forgiveness shape our identities.
Grant us your tenderness in the things we do
each day.

 Amen.

https://www.saint-joseph.org/en/spirituality/saint-joseph/prayers-to-saint-joseph/

There was a time in Hollywood when the most popular leading men were categorized as “the strong, silent type.” Picture John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or Clint Eastwood. Their characters typically did not have too much to say but they got the job done, nonetheless. St. Joseph didn’t have much to say either and he most definably got the job done.

It’s easy to think of Saint Joseph as the strong silent type after all, not one word of sacred scripture is attributed to him. We only get a passing description of him from Saint Matthew who writes that Joseph was a “righteous man.” Now, righteous is a word that carries a bit of baggage as we often associate that word with self-righteous or the kind of spiritual arrogance that is displayed by certain pharisees. Righteous however is defined as “morally right, justifiable or virtuous.” I like to think of a righteous person as someone having not only virtue but the wisdom that comes with virtuous living. It breeds a confidence and a certainty in following the path of the Lord even when that path seems unintelligible to us. Joseph’s path must have seemed incomprehensible to him, yet his faith and trust in God surpassed his understandable confusion.

Consider Joseph’s disappointment and perhaps heart break when he found out that the young girl he was betrothed to was with child. As the Gospel writers tell us he could have rightly divorced her and according to Mosaic Law, Mary could have been stoned to death of this perceived behavior. It was through a dream that the angel of the Lord comforted Joseph and calmed his fears so that he was able to take Mary into his home as his wife. It was an act of tremendous faith and trust in God’s providential love. This was an unconventional beginning to an unusual family life. One that was filled with glorious moments as well as disappointment and apprehension. Joseph was quite adept at discerning God’s will and he trusted the path that the Lord had laid out for him. It was indeed a difficult path filled with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. It’s a reminder to us that our paths are similar at times. Being open to God and following the Lord does not mean that our lives will be tranquil and carefree. So often, following the Lord means that we do take the more difficult route. It does mean that we will experience setbacks and hardships and that we will carry our crosses. But it is through these trials that our faith is strengthened and our resilience forged. Saint Joseph is an example for us on how to move forward in our own discipleship. Sometimes we just have to endure and get the job done.

Monsignor Hurley’s reflection
St. Thomas the Apostle
Wilmington, Delaware 19805

O St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, I place in you all my interest and desires.O St. Joseph, do assist me by your powerful intercession, and obtain for me from your divine Son all spiritual blessings, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So that, having engaged here below your heavenly power, I may offer my thanksgiving and homage to the most loving of Fathers.O St. Joseph, I never weary of contemplating you, and Jesus asleep in your arms; I dare not approach while He reposes near your heart. Press Him close in my name and kiss His fine head for me and ask Him to return the kiss when I draw my dying breath. St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for me. Amen.

https://aleteia.org/2018/02/28/this-ancient-prayer-to-st-joseph-has-never-been-known-to-fail/

The Gospel (Mt 1:16.18-21.24) tells us that Joseph was a just man, a man of faith, who lived the faith. A man who can be found on the list of all the people of faith that we have recalled today in the office of readings (see Letter the Jews, Chapter 11); those people who have lived the faith as the foundation of what they hoped for, as the guarantee of what they did not see, and the proof of what they did not see.

Joseph is a man of faith: because of this he was just. Not only because he believed, but also because he lived that faith. He was a just man. He was chosen to educate a man who was a true man but who was also God: only God could have educated such a person but there wasn’t anyone like this. The Lord chose a just man, a man of faith. A man capable of being a man and also capable of speaking to God, of entering into the mystery of God. And this was Joseph’s life. To live his profession, his life as a man and enter into the mystery. A man capable of dialoguing with the mystery of God. He wasn’t a dreamer. He entered into the mystery. With the same naturalness with which he carried on his work, with this precision of his craft: he was able to adjust an angle precisely on the wood, he knew how to do it; was able to lower, to sand down a millimetre of wood, of the surface of the wood. Right, it was accurate. But he was also able to get into the mystery that he could not control.

This is Joseph’s holiness: to carry on his life, his work with righteousness, with professionalism; and at the same time, to enter into the mystery. When the Gospel tells us about Joseph’s dreams, it makes us understand this: that he entered into the mystery.

I am thinking of the Church today on this solemnity of St. Joseph. Are our faithful, our bishops, our priests, our consecrated and consecrated fathers, our Popes: are they capable of entering into the mystery? Or do they need to be in control through rules and regulations which defend them against what they can’t control? When the Church loses the possibility of entering into the mystery, she loses the ability to adore. Prayer of adoration can only come when one enters into the mystery of God.

Let us ask the Lord for the grace that the Church can live in the concreteness of daily life and also in the “concreteness” – in quotation marks – of the mystery. If it cannot do so, it will be a half a Church, it will be a pious association, carried out by rules and regulations but without the sense of adoration. Entering the mystery is not dreaming; entering into the mystery is precisely this: adoration. Entering into the mystery is to do today what we will do in the future, when we will have arrived in the presence of God: to adore.

May the Lord grant His Church this grace.

Compassionate Joseph, one with us in our human condition,
together with Mary and Jesus you experience exile, hunger
and violence. Refusing vengeance, you choose mercy.
Your forgiveness breaks the circle of violence.
Through your goodness, God’s hope for our humanity is preserved.
Joy is yours, for the Kingdom of God is your inheritance.

Open our compassionate hands in times of war, famine and exile.
Keep us from developing a victim’s mentality, and make our pain a source of growth.
Sustain us in fulfilling our responsibility of cultivating inner peace, joy and serenity.
In your wisdom, counsel us to close all doors to bitterness, so that, watched
over by God, we may dance for joy.

 Amen.

https://www.saint-joseph.org/en/spirituality/saint-joseph/prayers-to-saint-joseph/

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

“Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.” (John 20:29)

Since March is the month in which we celebrate St. Joseph, I will write each week on a different one of his virtues. The saints are not merely those who do good, but those who are good through the gift of God’s grace and through dedicating their lives to him. Each virtue is a quality in the soul that makes it excellent, and the virtue that comes at the beginning of our life in God is faith.

Faith is the virtue by which we place our trust in God and assent to all that He has revealed for our salvation. Oftentimes it is not obvious what sort of impact our beliefs have on our life. How is our life affected by the truth that God is a Holy Trinity? What is the impact of our faith in the Immaculate Conception? This is not always obvious for us. But for St. Joseph, faith had immediate consequences. St. Joseph’s belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary is not an abstract matter to him: His entire life hinged on his belief in this mystery of faith.

St. James teaches that “faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:17) and that “faith is perfected by works” (Jas 2:22). And so we see in St. Joseph a faith that is fully alive and perfect, a faith that is perfected by his works. Just to name a few of these: by faith, he took his wife Mary into his home (Mt 1:24); by faith, he gave Jesus his name (Mt 1:25); by faith, he fled to Egypt with his family (Mt 2:13); by faith, he brought his family to Nazareth and was as a father for the Messiah (Lk 2:51).

All of this came by faith. We do not hear in the Gospels that St. Joseph would have witnessed the miracles worked by Jesus, rather it seems that he died before the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. In this way, even though he lived with Jesus for many years, he is like us who have never seen the works of Jesus, but believe from the words we have received. St. Joseph only heard in a dream that the child born of Mary is the Savior and conceived by the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:19-20). He only heard from Simeon that the child would be “a light for revelation to the nations” and that he would cause “fall and rise of many” (Lk 2:32-34). Though he only heard these things by words and dreams, he placed his entire life at the service of these mysteries that he would not witness in his own lifetime.

Let us ask St. Joseph to increase our faith. Are there any divinely revealed teachings that you find difficult to believe? Remember how St. Joseph believed in the miraculous conception of Jesus, and ask for his help. Do you find it difficult to trust God, especially when suffering loss? Remember how St. Joseph left his home and all his possessions, having faith that God would provide what is truly essential.

St. Joseph, most faithful, pray for us.

 Fr. Max Nightingale
St. Joseph Battle Creek, MI

Eucharistic Adoration, or just coming to sit in church before the Eucharist housed in the tabernacle, in doing this, we imitate our patron St. Joseph.  His vocation was one of perpetual adoration.  He kept his eyes on Jesus, first by caring for Mary and watching over her, the first Tabernacle, and then after his birth protecting, housing, feeding, teaching, and loving Jesus. 

In our Gospel Luke 2: 41-51a, Joseph and Mary find Jesus after three days, they find him in the Temple.  But when we think about it, they had the new Temple with them at all times.  St. Peter Julian Eymard put it this way, “St. Joseph was the first adorer, the first religious.  Although he never adored our Lord under the Eucharistic species and never had the happiness of receiving Holy Communion, he did possess and adore Jesus in human form.”  He goes on to say, “In Joseph, we find the perfect adorer, entirely consecrated to Jesus, working always near Jesus, giving Jesus his virtues, his time, his very life; it is thus that he is our model and our inspiration.”  

St. Joseph was an adorer of great faith.  When he looked at Jesus he saw human flesh, but in his heart he believed, “Here is God!”  We pray to have that same faith, when we look at the Eucharist, we see bread, but in our hearts we believe, “Here is God!”  Under the veil of Bread our faith must see our Lord.  Ask St. Joseph for his lively constant faith.  

In 1997 Pope St. John Paul II conducted a papal visit to the Shrine of St. Joseph in Kalisz in Poland and informed those in attendance that, before each of his Masses, he prayed the following prayer to St. Joseph.

O happy man, St. Joseph, whose privilege it was not only to see and hear that god whom many a king has longed to see, yet saw not, longed to hear, yet heard not, but also to carry him in your arms and kiss him, to clothe him and watch over him!

O God, who has conferred upon us a royal priesthood, we pray to you to give us grace to minister at your holy altars with hearts as clean and lives as blameless as that blessed Joseph who was found to hold in his arms and, with all reverence, carry your only-begotten Son, born of the Virgin Mary.  Enable us this day to receive worthily the sacred Body and Blood of your son, and equip us to win an everlasting reward in the world to come.  Amen

Fr. Christopher J. Ankley
St. Joseph Battle Creek, Mi