Following The Example Of St. Joseph

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of St. Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster Father to Jesus. Thirty days ago, we began a novena to the Patron of the Universal Church, entrusting fathers and husbands to his humble and loving care.

America is suffering from a crises in fatherhood, and so now, more than ever, we are in need of St. Joseph’s witness. Blessed John Paul II often wrote of his fatherly love:

Through the exercise of his fatherhood, Joseph cooperates, in the fullness of time, in the great mystery of salvation (cf. Redemptoris Custos, n. 8). "His fatherhood is expressed concretely in his having made his life a service ... to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission connected with it; ... 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" (ibid.). To this end, God shared his own fatherly love with Joseph, that love "from [which] every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph 3:15).  

Like every child, Jesus learned about life and how to act from his parents. How could we not think, with deep wonder, that he must have developed the human aspect of his perfect obedience to the Father's will particularly by following the example of his father Joseph, "a just man" (cf. Mt 1:19)?

Fathers are images of God’s love for their children, and so let us celebrate St. Joseph today and encourage a renewed culture of fatherhood in America!