St. Joseph and the Setbacks of Life

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.

“And after they were 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, and be there until I tell you” (Matt. 2:13).

We are going to celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph in this coming week. We're in the Year of St. Joseph, and so it's a special occasion on which there are special graces for each one of us for our interior life, for our life of holiness.

It's an occasion for us to look a little more at the Holy Patriarch, this model that the Holy Father has placed in front of us in a special way this year. We find we have many things to learn from him.

One of those things is how St. Joseph handled the setbacks in his life. There were many setbacks, contradictions, difficulties, unexpected changes of plans.

When they heard of the decree of Caesar Augustus, they had to leave everything that they had, all their preparations, and pack up and go off to Bethlehem, where they had no support, no relatives. They didn't know what they were expecting (Luke 2:1-5).

The whole mystery of the Incarnation plays out in this sort of ambiance.

And we find that St. Joseph is a rock, a pillar on whom Our Lady can rely in a special way. Also the Christ child, as He grows, can rely on him in a particular way.

All the time, angels were appearing to him and telling him these strange plans that God had for him and for the Holy Family. “Take the child and his mother and fly into Egypt.”

Joseph could have said, ‘But look, you know, this child is the Son of God made man. Why don't you just send us a whole pile of angels to look after Him and protect Him? Why do we have to flee into Egypt with a whole army pursuing us? So much anxiety, so much urgency.’

But Joseph didn't react in this human way. We find him all the time accepting the setbacks that God permits in his life, in a very humble and peaceful way.

He gives us many lessons about how to grow in holiness in our life, in humility, in peace and serenity, in accepting the will of God, in facing the challenges.

In a homily called In Joseph's Workshop, in Christ Is Passing By, St. Josemaría likes to say that St. Joseph was “in no way frightened or shy of life...he faced up to difficult situations, dealt with difficult problems, and showed initiative and responsibility in all that he was asked to do” (J. Escrivá, cf. Christ Is Passing By, Point 40).

Imagine if that could be said about us at the end of our life. We faced up to problems, we dealt with difficult situations. It's a great habit to get into.

“For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him. He arose and took the child and his mother by night, and retired into Egypt, and he was there until the death of Herod” (Matt. 2:13-15).

We find he's particularly strong in this virtue of fortitude. Fortitude is a cardinal virtue whereby we face dangers, or put up with evils or difficult situations. It goes by different terms in modern language: toughness, manliness, courage, guts. St. Joseph was full of all of these things.

He's a very good model to have for our life—father of families, patron of families, patron of the domestic Church. His fortitude is a great character strength, a character strength that each one of us should try and cultivate as much as possible: to put up with adversities for a just cause; for truth, for justice, for the defense of human life; to be able to carry out well the mission that God has given to us in the world.

There are a lot of times when young fathers of families, or young men setting out on the journey of their life, can choose the pathway of their life involving great ideals. The greatest ideals we could have in the world are the ideals of Christ: to build a great family, to live as a great human person, to be a model for all the people who come after us by practicing the virtues.

That's the sort of person Joseph was. He didn't take life lying down. He was a mover, full of initiative, a problem solver.

You could say that he had this ability to endure or overcome pain, saying no to himself, no to his comfort.

He was able to endure inconvenience, disappointment, setbacks, tedium, all for the sake of a higher good: the birth of the Christ child or his education on this planet.

He fulfilled his duties to God and others, starting with the family that was entrusted to him, in a very heroic way.

This week, as we look to this great model that God has given to us, we could ask him that we might know how to follow his example, to either solve problems or put up with them, and look for solutions with a positive spirit, with a cheerful spirit, so that we might learn to overcome our fears or our self-centered feelings.

I heard of a man once in Canada who had lost both limbs. As he lay on his hospital bed, he was thinking to himself, ‘I have a choice in life. I can sit here moaning for the rest of my life about how tough life has treated me. Or I can get two artificial limbs and walk across Canada for charity’—which is what he did.

Sometimes the greatest moments of our life, the greatest decisions, are decisions of fortitude, are moments of fortitude, of inner toughness—when we don't give in to ourselves; when we don't take life lying down; or we formulate high ideals or great goals. We reach for the stars.

I heard of a story of a man in New Zealand once who got stuck on a mountain in a blizzard. He was there for a couple of days, hidden in a rock, but he developed frostbite. Eventually he had to lose both his legs also.

This man was an avid mountain climber, and he dreamt of one day being able to climb Mount Everest. As he lay there in his hospital bed, and he was fitted with artificial limbs, he began to say, ‘Maybe it's still possible for me to climb Mount Everest with my artificial limbs.’

Over the months and the years as he began to use them, and he began to indulge again in his passion, he began to focus again on Everest. One day he climbed Mount Everest and he reached the peak.

I learned about this from an article in the newspaper that said there had been a new record registered on Mount Everest: the first man to reach the peak of Mount Everest without any legs.

He went with his two artificial legs. He brought along a third one just in case one got broken, which it did.

But he reached the top. Fortitude of great ideals—not to give up on those great ideals—to have a certain tenacity.

When Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, and all the doors were shut in his face, he experienced rejection. He could have thrown his hat on the ground and said, ‘That's enough. I've had enough. I'm going home. If you want your child to be born, you can give me a few breaks.’

But Joseph didn't think like that. He shows initiative. He thought that if all the doors are shut, then God must have some other plan. He set about fulfilling that plan. He looked for a solution. He found the stable in Bethlehem.

Each one of us in our life has similar challenging moments, and God wants us to cultivate that toughness, looking for solutions, having initiative.

In the last few weeks, I have gone to visit a 95-year-old Irish Celtician priest in a hospice in Thigio, who was the first missionary priest to go to Pokot in 1952, which was before even I was born.

He arrived in this place, and he was the first Mzungu priest to go there. Of course, people thought he was just like the British colonizers. He was looked upon as one of them. There were big barriers to be broken down.

The British authorities, because he was Irish, thought he was just another member of the IRA, which is a terrorist organization in Ireland. He was a bit between the devil and the deep blue sea.

But he had to hang in there and work at evangelization. He said these people in Pokot had no education, no medication, and no Revelation. Over the next 49 and a half years, he set about solving that problem.

One of the things he had to do was to learn the local language. After two months of learning Pokot, he said, ‘I thought I was going mad. I got on my motorbike and I rode 250 kilometers to Nakuru, where there was a bishop.’

I told the bishop, ‘I think I'm going mad learning Pokot.’

The bishop said, ‘How long have you been learning it?’ He said, ‘Two months.’

The bishop said, ‘Ah, you're only beginning. Get back on your bike, go back to where you came from, and just keep at it.’

He did what he was told. He went back on his bike. He kept at it.

A couple of years later, he translated the New Testament into Pokot. He wrote many other books in Pokot—because he'd begun again. He went back and started over. When he thought he'd reached the end of his tether, he carried on.

You see, people inculcate these virtues in their lives by looking at the Holy Family. Joseph didn't give up. He kept at it. There was great courage there.

Sometimes that courage can be perfectly compatible with personal fearfulness. When Our Lady and St. Joseph had to flee into Egypt, they knew that Herod was coming after them.

They didn't just go nice and sweet and easy all the way to Egypt. No, they realized that a whole bloodthirsty army of a butcher was coming after us. We'd better hurry up.

They fled to Egypt. It wasn't very comfortable. There was a personal fearfulness there.

But a courageous person does what is right in spite of their anxieties, their fears. They learn how to conquer those fears.

Joseph also had all the responsibilities of a young married man with a young child. He had to think, How are we going to support ourselves in Egypt? Where are we going to live? Where is the food going to come from? All these basic things.

When we look at his life, we see many wonderful examples. We're told in The Way, “Many who would let themselves be nailed to a Cross before the astonished gaze of thousands of spectators won't bear the pinpricks of each day with a Christian spirit. But think which is more heroic” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 204).

These weeks we’re coming towards Holy Week and we're going to see the toughness of Christ—the toughness of Christ with His Cross, which was probably forged in the school of Joseph. Joseph must have taught Jesus to be tough.

Christ was a very tough man. He hung for three long hours on the cross. Sometimes we get a splinter in our finger and we can spend three hours trying to get it out.

Christ was a tough man. He fell down with the Cross, but He got up again. He fell down again and He got up again.

I often think that instead of those particular Stations of the Cross being called “Jesus fell the first time” and “Jesus fell the second time” they could be renamed: “Jesus got up the first time” and “He got up the second time” and “The third time.”

He was a fighter. He didn't give up. He kept going. What a great moral message that is for all men today.

Possibly that was the spirit that He learned from His foster father, whom He loved very much. Christ was educated in that school of Joseph.

He would have watched him work. He would have seen his silence, his gentleness—at the same time, his manliness.

He would have learned from Joseph how to face difficulties and problems, to discern the paths that deviated a little bit from our identification with the will of God. He had to discern all the time what's right, what's not right.

How can I follow the path that is right, when, maybe, everybody else is doing what is wrong? In modern society, we may need an awful lot of fortitude of that type.

If our friends are talking about something wrong, sometimes we have to change the topic, or bring the topic up to a higher level of conversation, or portray manly virtues in difficult situations.

A friend told me once how he was invited to a stag dinner one time with a couple of his friends. One particular friend had done very well in life, and he threw this stag dinner and party for his immediate friends. There were six or eight of them.

They had a very nice meal, and then they sat down to watch a movie. As soon as the movie began, he saw, ‘this isn't my type of entertainment.’ He thought there was going to be something wrong with the movie.

He got up and he said to the host, ‘Look, it's been a great evening, I had a great time, thank you very much. It's really been wonderful, but this is not my type of entertainment.’ And he left.

He knew that that would have caused quite a stir. It probably would have made everybody feel bad. But you see, that was the great act of manliness, of standing up for what was right, of giving good example. And all this, in a very ordinary circumstance that came along in his life.

Joseph is the great patron of ordinary life. He can help us to be daring. At times that might mean saying no to the boss occasionally, if something is wrong.

I heard of a man in Sweden once whose boss was a bit of a character. He used to drink too much and mess around too much.

One day he went to the boss and said, ‘You know, look, you should get your life together. You're drinking too much. You're messing around the place. You're making it tough for your wife and your kids.’

The boss got furious; threw him out of the place. Almost fired him. He knew that he might get fired for being so brazen.

But some months later, the boss got a different job. He moved to a different company. He came to this fellow and said, ‘Look, I want you to come with me to this new company.’

The guy said, ‘Why do you want me to go with you? I'm the one that infuriated you so much.’

The boss said, ‘You're the only one who told me the truth.’

Deep down he knew this guy was on the level. He had the courage, the guts, to say this thing to his face, that he was messing up his family and his marriage and himself, irrespective of the consequences.

St. Joseph teaches us to function on duty, not on feelings—duties of justice, duties of charity, duties of friendship, duties of wanting the best for the people around us, which is that they go to heaven—not just that they have a good job or a good salary or security in this world—justice to their soul.

These coming weeks are also very good weeks to talk to our friends about the sacrament of Confession. You see, Lent and Holy Week have a special grace going with them.

Sometimes people have been away from the sacraments for decades, and suddenly get touched by grace and Holy Week or Good Friday and realize, ‘I have to do something about my soul.’

Maybe God has called you to be that person in your life, to do what's called the apostolate of Confession. Of course, sometimes that takes a lot of courage and fortitude to bring it up with people.

I heard of a story of a guy in Tokyo who was studying in a third-level institution. He'd been at a talk like this and he'd heard about the apostolate of Confession—how we all have to try and do the apostolate of Confession.

He knew that in Tokyo it's about 1 percent Catholic. So in that library of that third-level college, there was a chance that there might have been one Catholic, and he didn't know who that was.

He thought, ‘I still have to launch out into the deep with daring, and do the apostolate of Confession.’ He said to the guy sitting in front of him, ‘Hey, how would you like to go to Confession?’ And the guy said, ‘What's that?’

The guy said, ‘You go into this little box, and it's all dark, and you talk to this grill, and there's a priest on the other side of the grill. You tell him all the bad things, you get out all the garbage, all the rubbish that you have inside you, the bitterness and the anger and the jealousy and the envy and the lust. You get out all this stuff and then you come out feeling much, much better.’

The guy said, ‘Oh, I think I'd like to try that.’ And so, he started receiving instruction, and three months later, he converted to be a Catholic and he went to Confession.

Sometimes God wants us to throw out these lines to people, to be a fisher of men, to have that interior toughness that Joseph had.

That means also in our work we try to instill good work habits: punctuality, order, honesty, integrity, doing a good job, making the clients happy with the work that we've done, double-checking.

There's a phrase in the Book of Proverbs that says, “Show me a man who does a good job and I will show you a man who is worthy of the presence of kings” (cf. Prov. 22:29).

We all have to be people who try and do a good job, fulfilling our duty and, at times, doing the most important thing first.

The most important thing each morning is not to read the newspaper, or get the football results, or other things, but to get the job done that we're supposed to do, to do a good day's work for a good day's pay, to be very transparent, to account for any money passing through our hands, how we've spent other people's money, giving a good service.

We see all the time in Scripture how Joseph intelligently follows the plans of God, even when they're not comfortable, traveling for fear of persecution, seeking lodging for the Holy Family, obtaining sustenance, dominating their fear of suffering, fear of temporal ills.

Joseph seems to say to us that quality in life is never an accident. If we want to be a good worker or a good person, it's something we have to work at. It's always the result of the highest intentions, of sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution.

It represents the wise choice of many alternatives. That's a goal that Our Lord wants each one of us to have. “Be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

Possibly Christ learned all these ideals from Joseph. You see, as God, Christ knew everything already. But in His human nature, He had to learn everything.

He was “like us in all things but sin” (cf. Heb. 4:15). There were these two types of knowledge present in Him.

Theodore Roosevelt says, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again...who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who best knows...the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Joseph invites us to have the highest ideals, the ideals of Christ, ideals of service. All the time we find a great spirit of service in Joseph's life: What can I contribute? How can I serve the Holy Family? This, in spite of occasions when the chips were down, difficult moments.

There's a book called The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, available in all the bookstores. He examined what it is that makes people effective in organizations.

He said that people who are effective don't just do good things; they do the right things. And they do the right things because they ask themselves the right question.

He said the right question is always: What can I contribute? What can I contribute in this meeting, in this department, in this organization, on this football team, in this marriage, in this family, at this table. What can I contribute? Should I pass the salt? Should I pass the water to somebody? What do they need?

They also ask themselves: What can I contribute that nobody else can contribute? If I contribute what nobody else can contribute, that makes me effective in this organization.

It's as though St. Joseph was always asking himself that question: What can I contribute to Mary and Joseph in this moment, in this setback, in this low period, when maybe everything seems to be going wrong?

St. Thérèse of Lisieux says, “When...we feel no courage, no energy for the practice of virtue, this is grace. This is the moment to depend solely on Jesus.”

Sometimes we must have great confidence in God; remind ourselves we are a child of God.

Joseph must have had that great conviction on so many occasions, particularly when he saw and heard the words of the angels, knowing and fulfilling the will of God, even if humanly it might seem to be the opposite.

He learned how to trust in God. Difficult moments and setbacks that we may pass through are great moments to learn how to trust more in God.

Sometimes Our Lord permits things so that we can depend totally on Him. He permitted Herod, and He permitted Archelaus, so that Joseph would learn how to depend totally on God. It wasn't an easy ride.

We will trust other people more if we trust more in God. There is a phrase by T. S. Eliot, a famous English writer, who says, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is none of our business.” An encouraging phrase.

There is only the trying. Our job is just to try and do our best; do what we can. Help everyone around us to do our best. And then the rest is in the hands of God.

Whether we are successful or whether we are a failure, it doesn't really matter as long as we have done our best; we have done what is there on our part to do. Then God will work the miracles.

We are told in the Book of Jeremiah, “A curse should be on anyone who trusts in human beings, who relies on human strength, and whose heart turns from Yahweh. Such a person is like scrub in the wastelands. When good comes, it does not affect him since he lives in the parched places of the desert, an uninhabited salt land.

“Blessed is anyone who trusts in Yahweh, with Yahweh to rely on. Such a person is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its root to the stream. When the heat comes, it has nothing to fear.; its foliage stays green, untroubled in a year of drought. It never stops bearing fruit” (Jer. 17: 5-8).

St. Joseph was like a person who “trusted in Yahweh...like a tree by the waterside.” When the heat came, he was okay, “nothing to fear.” He was all set for the difficult moments. He was able to take the blows.

St. Teresa says, “Help me to understand, Lord, that you are always perfect happiness even when you seem absent.”

In all the setbacks of Joseph's life, it seemed, very frequently, that God was absent. But he knew things were going to turn out right. Optimism.

“All things,” says St. Paul,” turn out for the good of those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).

It's as though every step of the way as he journeyed toward Egypt, he seems to be saying those words with his very footsteps. The profound divine joy that arises from every pain live for Christ, in Christ, and with Christ.

The Psalms say, “Delight in the Lord and he will give you the requests of your heart...trust in him and things will work out right” (cf. Ps. 37:4-5).

St. Paul says, “Patient in tribulation, joyful in hope” (cf. Rom. 12:12).

St. Joseph embodies all these words. In spite of the setbacks, we seem to see great joy in Joseph's life: the joy of being with Our Lady, the joy of being with the Christ child. A joy that did not come from human things.

The word ‘joy’ is written 300 times in Scripture. God is joy.

“Joy is the most infallible sign of God's presence” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.). That's why our cheerfulness is a permanent state, because our being a child of God is something permanent.

Nothing should be able to take away our joy. And if we ever lose our joy through sin, we can recover it through the sacrament of Confession.

G.K. Chesterton says that one of the aspects of the cross that has not been written enough about is the joy of Christ on the Cross. “It is accomplished” (John 19:30).

The joy of Our Lady, in spite of the sword that pierced her heart; the joy that the pain is over—things have been fulfilled.

Our Lady experienced all sorts of rejection. In Bethlehem, on the Cross. But yet like Joseph, she is completely calm.

Not a word of complaint, because there is a joy in serving God. There is a joy in self-surrender. There is a joy in conquering our self-love, in the fulfillment of our duties.

God gives us consolations, because He continues to be Our Father. We can thank God for those joys.

We can try and apply all these things to the ups and downs of our inner struggle for virtue, for holiness, to be a better person—the ups and downs of our apostolic tasks, of the world around us, of our health, of the challenges of any sicknesses that may come our way.

We can apply that joy to fortitude in our self-giving and in our generosity, as we try to look to souls. All the things that we see in the life of Christ as He goes to the Cross—we can imagine that He learned all these things from the Holy Patriarch.

“Ask your Mother Mary,” we're told in The Forge, “ask St. Joseph and your guardian angel, to speak to the Lord and tell him the things you can't manage to put into words” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 272).

Not even to Joseph does Mary communicate the mystery that God has wrought in her. This lesson teaches us not to become accustomed to speaking lightly, but to channel our joys and our sorrows correctly without seeking praise or sympathy: all the glory to God.

We could ask Our Lady that she might give us special help these days and graces as we approach the Feast of Saint Joseph, that we might learn a little more from his virtue and also from her virtue.

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.

KI