My daily spiritual reading for several months has included a few pages from the wonderful book, The Life and Glories of St. Joseph. I never realized how much the Church knows about this silent saint of the Scriptures. The Fathers of the Church and the Mystics all cast light on St. Joseph giving us a stunning portrait of his life and virtues. As patron of the universal Church and the "pillar of families," St. Joseph offers us his powerful intercession. All we have to do is ask for it.
Here's a brief thought about this great and powerful saint from the book which I heartily recommend if you want to know more about him.:
The Savior desires that Joseph should be honoured by us, not from justice only, but from gratitude. It belongs to noble and generous hearts to feel gratitude, and the more noble and generous they are the more lively is that gratitude. Great souls are tenderly thankful even for small services, while little and mean souls overlook the greatest....Can [Jesus] have forgotten how He lay in his bosom, and how that tender father shed tears over Him when, as a Babe, He wailed in the crib or wept in his arms; for Jesus gave Himself to Joseph in all the helpless dependence of infancy, and willed to make Himself indebted to him for His earthly sustenance. Can He have forgotten or neglected to pay that debt of gratitude? Is it possible that He should have so magnificently recompensed Magdalen's testimony of love to the extnet of ordaining that the whole earth should esteem her for it, and should not have shown His gratitude to Joseph by holding him up to the veneration of all men, a veneration, too, commensurate with his life-long devotion to Himself? No we cannot doubt that, alike from justice and from gratitude, the Saviour of the world ardently desires that we should honour Joseph in a very special manner. This adorable Son of Mary, as He laboured while on earth that all men should know, love, and serve His invisible Father in Heaven, so now that He is in Heaven, He disposes all things by His Providence to exalt the glory of His visible father on earth, and moves all hearts by His Spirit, which dwells in His Church, to an ever-increasing love and veneration of him....Joseph, then, is our patron and more than our patron; he is our father, even as he was the protector and father of Jesus, who in assuming our nature made us His brethren, and in adopting Joseph as His father made him necessarily our father also, and desires with all the love of His adorable heart that we should consider him as such.
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| Sketch for Death of St. Joseph by Goya |
I wish a happy and blessed Father's Day to all dads today, especially my husband, the father of our five children. The Lord gave me a sweet memory this morning of Larry lying on the floor of our living room in Alexandria many years ago playing "catch feet" while the children ran by him trying to avoid being caught and often falling giggling into his arms. May we all fall gratefully into the arms of St. Joseph who I'm sure engages in "catch feet" when we are stumbling toward the abyss. St. Joseph, please intercede for us that we may always have a grateful heart, quick to say thank you to all who wish us and do us well.
St. Joseph, Pillar of Families, pray for us.
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