Midterm of the Year of St. Joseph

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“After they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying, ‘Arise and take the child and his mother and fly into Egypt. Be there until I shall tell you, for it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him’” (Matt. 2:13).

We are halfway through the year of St. Joseph. It's a good opportunity for us to stop and look again at this Holy Patriarch—a very special person that God has placed before our eyes.

In a special way, God has wanted to place him before our eyes in this particular year. This may be the only year in our whole life where we will have a year dedicated to St. Joseph.

Halfway through this year, it's a good moment to look again at our devotion to St, Joseph, at how we're bringing him into things during this year, turning to him with greater frequency, and coming to appreciate this great personality that God has placed before us; that He chose from all eternity to be at the head of His family, and to create the family atmosphere of the family of Nazareth, and which all families for all time have to try and model themselves.

Joseph had a great role, a great mission. He had something to say to each one of us in each area of our life. He was a very solid character, totally dependable, always ready to change.

Do this, do that, go here, go there. “Arise and take the child and his mother and fly into Egypt.” Do what I tell you at a moment's notice. And humble Joseph was always ready to obey, to listen.

He listened carefully to what he was asked, what he was told. In our work of learning, of training, of studying, it's logical we have to learn new things. It's logical, therefore, that we have to be told things.

Sometimes you might have to be corrected, sometimes you might have to be encouraged, sometimes you might have something pointed out to us. That's what it's all about.

But we should try and have the disposition of Joseph: to listen, to learn, to watch out for our pride that may rebel in all sorts of ways, and to learn from Joseph how to be humble, to gratefully accept the things that are said to us, and to realize, ‘I thought I was wrong, I thought I did a good job, and now I find out that I have to do things differently, I have to begin again.’

Or maybe, ‘I have to repeat some job that I did before because it's not done well enough.’ But it's always a process of learning.

Arise and go here, and “be there until I tell you.” Wait there, in that place, in that position.

God may have told us during these years to be there in that class, with that group of people, with those teachers, learning the things that I want you to learn, so that later on you can be good and effective, and a solid worker.

We get the picture that Joseph was a solid worker. "Is not this the carpenter, the Son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Jude and Simon?” (Mark 6:3).

Joseph had a certain prestige. He was known as the carpenter. He was known through his work. It's a very good goal for our life, to be known through our work, known for doing a good job, because we're dependable. We're a good worker. We get things done. Imagine that Joseph was all of these things.

Curiously, we don't have any words from Joseph. None of his words are recorded in the Gospel. Joseph was silent. It's a rather hidden, interesting aspect of his life and also of many others. Our Lady was also quite silent. There were moments when Jesus kept silent. He talked a lot, but moments when He was silent.

We can also learn from the silence of Joseph—to be quiet in the background, passing unnoticed, doing a good job, but not making noise, not attracting attention to ourselves, knowing how to do and disappear.

It's part of the virtue of humility. That's a virtue that all of us have to try and learn because we tend to be full of pride. We think we've done a great job. We think we know everything. We think we have great experience when very often the opposite is the reality.

We need to learn how to be more humble, to learn how to listen, to learn how not to attract attention to ourselves, that we may become more dependable, we give a better service. Joseph gave great service.

All professional work is a service. We're involved in a profession of caring, which is a profession of service.

From the Holy Patriarch, we can learn the details of how to perform that service well. I remember in the final year of our studies, one of the professors said, “When you finish, when you graduate, apprentice yourself to somebody who is good.”

It's a rather interesting piece of advice. You've studied all these things, you've passed all these exams, now you can begin to learn what it's all about. Apprentice yourself to somebody who is good. Learn the art of your profession.

When we pass an exam, or we get through a certain year, or we graduate from college, we don't know everything. We might know the theory, or we might know a few things. But now we have to attach ourselves to the experts.

Learn from them. Watch out for the details of how to put into practice the things we have learned, so that we become a good worker, not just in theory, but in practice. We learn how to do things. For that also, we need to be obedient.

Joseph was very obedient. “He arose and took the child and his mother by night and retired into Egypt.” He did exactly what he was told.

A very good characteristic of a good worker in the 21st century is that they do what they're told. We might like to work on this particular job or this particular area. Or we might enjoy this type of work. But we might be told by our boss or our supervisor, ‘Look, this is what I want you to do at this particular moment, at this hour, or today.’

That might be the opposite of what we feel like or what we thought. Yet we have to listen to what our boss is telling us. In general, in our work, if our boss is happy with us, or our supervisor, then God is happy. It means we're doing a good job. The person for whom we're doing the service is happy with that service.

Therefore, we have to apply that service in the position and in the way that's asked of us. We could ask St. Joseph to help us to work better, to acquire a certain prestige, to take care of details.

I was talking to a priest this week who was at a fairly important lunch last week in the nunciature. The secretary of the nunciature was leaving. He's been appointed nuncio in Ukraine—the first Lithuanian nuncio. He's been secretary here for several years.

There were about twenty-five people at this important sort of farewell lunch in the nunciature: a number of bishops, a couple of other people. This person told me that the catering was all taken care of by Kibondeni, as always.

This person said everybody had a name in front of their place, and everybody had their personalized menu. These were the two details that this person wanted to relate.

He didn't talk about the conversation with all the bishops and a whole pile of other things that might have been going on, but the name in front of my place, and the menu, a personalized menu. It was interesting. It was just those two details; meant an awful lot.

The person was almost saying, You can't get that in the Serena Hotel—that sort of personalized attention, that sort of detail.

Behind that, you could see the preparation that had gone into this and the thought. You can also see why Kibondeni is always called to the catering at the nunciature, even for the Pope.

But there was a lot of message behind that—the professionalism, the details, the attention, the care. We transmit these messages very often through small things.

Ultimately, behind that message, or behind those little details is the much greater message of the dignity of every human person. Because every person is important, we have that personalized name, that personalized menu.

We can't do that every day of the year, but on special occasions, it means an awful lot to people. It speaks to them. There's a message here. No matter what work it is I'm handling, or what big projects, just this little thing means an awful lot. That's the message we're trying to convey to people.

Ultimately, it's a message of love, of charity. You are important. I care about you.

There was a nurse tutor on the ward where I used to work. I used to train young nurses and she had a little saying which she used to tell the nurses, which was, “Everybody is somebody's somebody.” Every patient in this hospital is important because they're important to somebody.

To you, they might just be another patient—and they might be a difficult patient, or a cranky patient, or a patient who's complaining, or whatever. But that person is somebody's somebody.

You’re there to look after them in the place of this other person, no matter who they are or where they come from. Very nice Christian approach. Care. Love.

We learn these things from Joseph—from being ready to do this or do that, or change his plans.

Sometimes in the middle of jobs that we might be doing, there might be some little emergency. Something might have gone wrong. We might be serving at the table to all these important people, and suddenly we're needed in the kitchen, or there's a fire in the kitchen, or the house is on fire.

We have to drop what we're doing and go and do something else; solve that other problem—always ready to do what we're asked, because that's the part of working well. It's part of working on a team.

When that person came to tell me that little detail, he didn't just say, ‘You know, this particular person put my name in front of my place, on my little personalized menu.’ He was sort of saying, everybody had that.

Behind that story, you could see there was teamwork there. People were working together to produce this end: to give this service to so many people would go away with that message to different parts of the country. And probably they would bring that message and that memory with them of that little occasion when they were treated well.

I heard somebody say once that people may forget what you say to them, or what you've done for them, but they never forget how you made them feel. Everybody remembers how other people made them feel.

In the profession of caring, of loving, of serving, we're here to make people feel good, feel well. We live in a culture of feeling. There is the feel-good radio station, where that word crops up almost every sentence. But we're also in the business of making people feel well, feel important, feel cared for.

Joseph did that for the Holy Family. Our Lady felt taken care of, guarded, planned for, looked after in every possible way.

She was helped to fulfill her role as the Mother of God, by having this stalwart person in the background, foreseeing the difficulties, being proactive, solving the problems. These are great lessons that we can learn from St. Joseph.

Very often he was called to start from scratch. You might have come out of college and you're used to handling this wonderful machine or this nice oven, and you might be asked to go to work in a place where maybe there's no oven. Sometimes you might have to cook on a fire because there's a power failure.

We might say, ‘This wasn't the way I was taught. This wasn't on the paper or the exam.’ Yet if God has placed us in that situation, He wants us to start from scratch like Joseph did. We're in good company.

‘I make this work. I don't complain about what's lacking, but I roll up my sleeves and carry on with the job and make this thing happen.’ We're open to all sorts of contradictions.

Joseph had to face many contradictions in the course of his life. “There was no room at the inn” (Luke 2:7). There could have been a whole series of human frustrations, human reactions, tiredness, or disappointment, or tensions, or stresses. Why is this like this?

But we get the impression that Joseph faced all of these things with great calm. Calm comes with a lot of maturity.

We're ready to accept any situation, any difficulties. We're ready for the things that go wrong. We don't lose our cool, because every day of the week, things go wrong. Yet that's where God has placed us. He wants us to be in that situation to solve that problem.

In the Preface of St. Joseph we're told, “He is that just man, that wise and loyal servant”—the words of the liturgy are very rich. They help us to savor what we're dealing with.

The great grace of this year is where we have this lovable character in front of us all the time: “a just man.” That word is probably the greatest compliment that the Old Testament could give to anybody. “Just man” in the Old Testament was somebody close to God. Honest, loyal, virtuous. There couldn't be anything better than a just man.

That's what Joseph was. Wise and loyal servant. Wise. Looking at the bigger picture.

Some time in our little department, the little jobs we have in front of us, we can be very focused there, which is very good—pushing this button, mopping this floor, fulfilling this duty, answering this door.

But at the same time, we're also called to be wise, to have the bigger picture. ‘I'm part of a whole machinery, I'm part of a team. And other people are playing on this team. There's a captain of the team as well, that's making everything go forward.’

While we fulfill our little job, we also have to be thinking of the bigger picture. It's easy to miss the bigger picture. In our little position, we could complain about this or complain about that. ‘Why is this not this? Why is this not like that?’

But if we look at the bigger picture, we'll see that really, maybe these little things that I'm observing or seeing or complaining about are very small. I have to try and enlarge my vision.

Joseph could have been a whiner. ‘Why did we go to Bethlehem? Why do we have to leave our house? Everything is ready. Why do we have to go to Egypt?’

He could have been a real pain in the neck for Our Lady. She could have complained to God, ‘Oh Lord, why did you give me this guy? Of all the people, you had to choose this whiner. I have to listen to his complaints all day long. Give me a break.’

We don't find Our Lady talking like that. She loved Joseph. She saw his virtue. He's so good, so loyal, so wise—taking care of all the details, looking after the background things, making this whole enterprise of the Incarnation happen—taking care of the donkey, that wise and loyal servant whom you placed at the head of your family.

Loyal, because he didn't run away. When things went wrong, he didn't boot and say, ‘I'm out of here. One more door closing in my face in Bethlehem, and I'm going back to where we came from. Going back to the comfort of my own home.’

Joseph was loyal all the way—stuck with Our Lady, stuck with this plan, stuck with this fulfillment of the will of God, come hell or high water. Fortitude, courage, daring, perseverance. Loyalty is a beautiful virtue.

“He is that...wise and loyal servant, whom you placed at the head of your family. With a husband's love, he cherished Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. With fatherly care he watched over Jesus Christ, your Son, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Preface of St. Joseph, Holy Mass).

He “cherished Mary”—another beautiful word for love. He saw the great treasure that God had given him in Our Lady. He saw her virtue, her holiness, her supernatural outlook.

He begins to understand why he was left high and dry when she went off to Israel for three long months and had the discretion not to tell him anything, makes him suffer.

But then through that, he comes to see the great virtue of Our Lady—her trust in God, her abandonment, her response to her vocation.

She's the model of all the virtues, and he sees those virtues shining out at every moment. He thanks God for the great privilege of being close to Mary.

The Church speaks about the dignity of Joseph. After Our Lady, he's thought to be the highest saint in heaven.

We have this great year full of graces for us to get closer to this great person, bring him into our work, our prayer, our getting up in the morning, our every job that we have to do, our apostolate, our study, so that from him we can learn how to function like he did, so that we can be close to Our Lady and close to the child Jesus.

He can teach us all sorts of little things. St. Josemaría liked to say, “I like to call him the master of the interior life” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 39).

Beautiful, beautiful title: Master. We're trying to grow in our interior life, to listen to God a little better, to follow His instructions, to detect the Holy Spirit speaking to us, to people, to places.

St. Joseph is a great personality to be close to. He can help us to get this lesson, to learn what this virtue is all about, to get the bigger picture.

He can lead us to appreciate the spiritual things that we have presented to us—the Mass, the treasure of the Mass each day. He can help us to learn how to be more charitable with other people, not to lose our temper, or to be oversensitive. Oversensitivity can be a sign of pride, touchiness.

Joseph, help me to be more gentle like you were, to see what can I contribute in this situation and that situation. How can I help this person that I'm working with and the work they're doing? How can I be more patient with them, how can I be more kind, or more silent maybe?

Not with a silence that ‘I'm not going to talk to them; I'm going to impose silence on them as a punishment for the things that they've said to me’—that's not the sort of silence that Joseph had.

It's a peaceful, joyful silence that helps to get the work done, to get the job finished, and helps people to be happy; to try and make the people that study or work around us, happen to be happy, because we're a team player, because we're easy to work with, because we forget ourselves.

We're willing to do whatever needs to be done. When Joseph discovered that Our Lady was with child, he was willing to put her away privately, not to expose her to reproach (cf. Matt. 1:18-19).

He forgets about himself and thinks of Our Lady, her good, even though that might bring condemnation on himself, even though he doesn't understand the situation.

There may be times when we have to do things, problems need to be solved, and we don't understand the situation. We don't know who's responsible.

We were told once in a class that if somebody is looking for a doctor in an emergency, you go; even if it's the middle of the night, you go. You might say, ‘But that's not my patient’ or ‘This is not in my area’ or ‘This is not my responsibility.’

But if somebody needs something, you go. Very important. All professions are a service.

If somebody needs something, and it's not really our time, or we're not on duty, or we can come up with a whole pile of reasons for not getting involved. But if somebody needs something, in principle we go, because that's our being, that's our life, that's our work, that's our vocation, to serve, to solve that problem.

We can find out later who was responsible, or who didn't do their job, or all the other questions that we might want to find answers to. But first and foremost, we go, we solve that problem.

Joseph had that sort of availability, part of charity, willing to put her away privately, not worried about his name, and not demanding explanations ‘before I commit myself in this way.’

Halfway through this year we could begin again and ask the Holy Spirit to help us discover the greatness of his character, and use the graces of this year so that for the rest of our life we stay very close to St. Joseph.

We ask him to help us to make time for our spiritual life and to give priority to the spiritual.

Pope Francis has talked about the spiritual emptiness of the world. Joseph can help us to fill that emptiness.

Pope Francis has given us this great opportunity, this great grace, and now he finds himself in a hospital. He's improving, but he's still there. In our prayer these days, we could remember to pray for his recovery. Thank God for this Pope that He's given to us, who gives us such great gifts.

Help us, St. Joseph, to build our family. He builds the family against all odds. Help us to be an instrument of unity in our family. We're thinking about our brothers and sisters and parents. Pray for them. See how we can help them, call them from time to time, and keep them informed. We build that family unity. We build family warmth.

We're called to build up the family as an institution in society, to see, What can I contribute? What can I do for those things?

In all of this, Joseph was ready to accept the cross. He didn't run away from the cross. By the way that he did all of these things, he prepared Christ for the cross. He was the instrument that God had chosen to teach the child Jesus many things.

On some occasions, we may have children entrusted to our care—a soul. We have an opportunity to transmit wonderful things to them: values, ideas, thoughts, essons. Help them along the pathway of their journey to God.

Help them to know St. Joseph, so the Holy Patriarch may guide them during their life and be a source of peace and serenity for them as they fulfill their mission.

Our Lady and Our Lord must be very happy in this year of St. Joseph—very happy when we bring the husband of Our Lady and the foster father of Jesus out of the background of our interior life and place him in the forefront, because they must feel a great debt of gratitude to him; very happy when he is praised, looked at, and learned from, because they learned so many things from him and are so grateful to him.

We can ask Our Lady that she might help us to use well the next six months of this special year. We can be very close to that person whom she loved and appreciated so much on earth.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JOSH