Father’s Column – March 17, 2019

Posted on March 17, 2019 View all news

Laudetur Jesus Christus! Gelobt sei Jesus Christus!
Sia lodato Gesù Cristo! Praised be Jesus Christ! 

This coming Tuesday, we will celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph. This is also the anniversary of the establishment of the Cincinnati Oratory by Pope Francis in 2017. We will have a Solemn Traditional Latin Mass for St. Joseph and also to celebrate the Oratory’s second anniversary. All parishioners are encouraged to attend and pray with us in thanksgiving to God, to allowing the Oratory to exist and to provide priests for our parishes to continue to be staffed, and also to ask for the intercession of St. Joseph in the continued protection of the Church.

The Church has long been devoted to the person of St. Joseph, as the foster father of Our Lord. He accepted the difficult task of protecting both the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child, a task he fulfilled ever so quietly and faithfully. There is something in St. Joseph we should all envy, the quiet way in which he went about his God given task. Very little is recorded of St. Joseph, but yet he is on the greatest saints in the Communion of Saints. After the Blessed Virgin, he was given one of the most important tasks entrusted to human beings. May we all strive to be like him, especially fathers of families. I encourage all, especially fathers, to pray to him daily and ask for his continued intercession as the Pillar of Families, the Terror of Demons, and the Protector of the Holy Church. St. Joseph, pray for us!

Please find this reflection from St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

“What and what manner of man the blessed Joseph was, we may gather from that title wherewith, albeit only as a deputy, God deemed him fit to be honoured he was both called, and supposed to be the Father of God. We may gather it from his very name, which, being interpreted, signifieth Increase. Remember likewise that great Patriarch who was sold into Egypt, and know that the Husband of Mary not only received his name, but inherited his purity, and was likened to him in innocence and in grace.

If then, that Joseph that was sold by his brethren through envy, and was brought down to Egypt, was a type of Christ sold by a disciple, and handed over to the Gentiles, the other Joseph flying from the envy of Herod carried Christ into Egypt. That first Joseph kept loyal to his master, and would not carnally know his master’s wife; that second Joseph knew that the Lady, the Mother of his Lord, was a virgin, and he himself remained faithfully virgin toward her. To that first Joseph it was given to know dark things in interpreting of dreams; to the second Joseph it was given in sleep to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.

The first Joseph laid by bread, not for himself, but for all people; the second Joseph received into his keeping that Living Bread Which came down from heaven, not for him only, but for the whole world. We cannot doubt but that that Joseph was good and faithful to whom was espoused the Mother of the Saviour. Yea, I say, he was a faithful and wise servant, whom the Lord appointed to be the comfort of His own Mother, the keeper of His own Body, and the only and trusty helper in the Eternal Counsels.” – St. Bernard of Clairvaux