Posted on June 21, 2015 View all news
Laudetur Jesus Christus!
Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Praised be Jesus Christ!
It appears I was a week early in announcing our celebration of Father’s Day. Once again, a Happy Father’s Day to all of our Fathers.
This mistake merely gives me a second opportunity to address the importance of fatherhood in our society. Something that is certainly in need of much reflection and prayer.
God sees Fatherhood as something of such importance in the life of children that He saw it fit to give to His own son a foster-father, St. Joseph. St. Joseph remains the model and image of what it means to be a husband and a father. He was the silent force within the Holy Father, with only a few recorded lines in the Gospels. However, he was always present to the Blessed Virgin and to Christ when needed, whether it was in being the head of the family to protecting them in moments of harm. Just as St. Joseph was called to be the head of the Holy Family, each Father has been called by God to be the loving protector and head of his own household. May we pray that all husbands and fathers live up to this holy calling. I leave us this week with a reflection by St. John Paul II on the person of St. Joseph.
“St. Joseph was called by God to serve the person and mission of Jesus directly through the exercise of his fatherhood. It is precisely in this way that, as the Church’s Liturgy teaches, he ‘cooperated in the fullness of time in the great mystery of salvation’ and is truly a ‘minister of salvation.’ His fatherhood is expressed concretely ‘in his having made his life a service, a sacrifice to the mystery of the Incarnation and to the redemptive mission connected with it; in having used the legal authority which was his over the Holy Family in order to make a total gift of self, of his life and work; 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.’
In recalling that ‘the beginnings of our redemption’ were entrusted ‘to the faithful care of Joseph,’ the Liturgy specifies that ‘God placed him at the head of his family, as a faithful and prudent servant, so that with fatherly care he might watch over his only begotten Son.’ Leo XIII emphasized the sublime nature of this mission: ‘He among all stands out in his august dignity, since by divine disposition he was guardian, and according to human opinion, father of God’s Son.” – Redemptoris Custos 8
Have a blessed week ahead!
