Saint of the week: Joseph

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St Joseph has no recorded words in Scripture, only deeds. The most humble of all saints. He trusted God even when His will didn’t make sense or defied belief. He denied your own plans and submitted to something higher and undoubtedly harder. He lived with not one, but two!, perfectly sinless people: on a daily basis he confronted his own imperfection and yet persisted in giving himself fully with faith and love.

Who knows what we owe to his self-gift? Certainly the safety and lives of our Lady and our Savior, and thus in a very real and practical way, Joseph is critical to our salvation.

What else we may never fathom, but surely we see glimmers of Joseph's fatherhood in Jesus’ adult life. Maybe the way Jesus learned to tell a story? Maybe how He learned to pray with abandonment to the Father? Maybe Joseph was the first to show Jesus what it looks like to cast off fear and plunge into the unknown sacrificial depths of love.

Recently, I contemplated specifically Joseph’s death and subsequent absence from the Holy Family. How Mary and Jesus must have missed him, longed to see him walk through the door just once more, to hear him pray over a meal, to feel his hand upon their shoulders, to say his trademark little phrases, to read his unique expressions and gestures. No one else on earth knew Joseph as his wife and Son did, and no one missed him with the same pangs that they did.

Joseph shows us the family: being known deeply, uniquely, personally, and being unconditionally loved and welcomed. If we consider the ratio of ordinary family life to miraculous public ministry that Jesus chose, I think we learn everything we need to about how and where to prioritize our own self-gift.

Thank you, Joseph, for offering yourself to Jesus and Mary so personally and generously. Pray for us, St Joseph, that we may faithfully love Jesus and Mary every day as much as you did.

His feast is March 19.

P.S. St Joseph's feast day is a quite a big deal in New Orleans—start here.

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