St Joseph, Husband and Father; fatherhood.
A few years ago while at home from the Philippines I was celebrating Sunday Mass in Blanchardstown, Dublin, when I noticed a family coming in a little late. I realised the parents were Filipinos. They came right up to the front of the church. What touched me was that the husband/father was carrying the couple’s infant.
In November 2014 I was in the pre-departure area of Incheon Airport, Seoul, for a flight back to Manila. I saw a Filipino father with his son who clearly had just recently learned to walk and was taking sheer delight in running around. He wasn’t disturbing anyone as there was plenty of space. The child’s father stayed at a distance, moving around and keeping an eye on his son while giving him space. I can imagine St Joseph doing exactly the same with the Child Jesus when he had just learned to walk.
Philippe de Champaigne’s painting shows St Joseph carrying Jesus into the temple, just as the young Filipino father carried his infant child to the church in Dublin that Sunday morning.
In his book Jesus of Nazareth, The Infancy Narratives Pope Benedict quotes Matthew 1:21: [Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. The Pope then writes, Together with the instruction to take Mary as his wife, Joseph is asked to give a name to the child and thus legally to adopt it as his.
St Joseph was the legal father of Jesus according to Jewish law, much more than a foster father, important though such a person may be in the lives of many.
The Church honours St Joseph on 19 March as ‘Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’ That is his greatest title, the one also used in the Eucharistic Prayers of the Mass. It was as husband of Mary that he was known as the father of Jesus – and was a real father to him.
Below is a video of one of the best talks on fatherhood I have ever heard. It was given during an online conference organised by the Legion of Mary in Dublin on the theme of St Joseph. The speaker, Mickey Harte, is a national and successful figure in Ireland in Gaelic Football, a major sport that is native to the country. Ten years ago his daughter Michaela was murdered on her honeymoon in Mauritius aged 27. He speaks about her briefly during his talk.
It is also clear that Mickey learned how to be a father from his own father. I have seen the same in my own family. He also suggests that if we know of a family that doesn’t have a father-figure to ‘adopt’ that family in the sense of praying specifically for them to St Joseph that they will find such a figure.
He also points out that it is a manly thing to pray and how he learned from his father to be the leader in family prayer.
Collect of the Mass of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that by Saint Joseph’s intercession
your Church may constantly watch over
the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation,
whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Original post on Bangor to Bobbio.
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