St. Joseph Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary - LENT 2023

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

They are happy who dwell in your house, O Lord,
forever singing your praise. PS 83:5

2 SAMUEL 7:4-5,12-14,16 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Joseph at the halfway mark of Lent, and we her faithful interrupt for a day, the penitential season to rejoice that God chose him to be an integral part of the fulfillment of the hope of Israel and through Israel all the nations on earth.

The Liturgy today celebrates God's total commitment to redeeming the world after the fall of our first parents and reveals how meticulously God planned the entire course of salvation history in order to untie the knot of Adam and Eve's disobedience and how St. Joseph, from the house and line of David, was an integral part of that magnificently incredible plan.

God swore oath after oath with the patriarchs and prophesied through the mouth of prophets of the coming of His Son who would redeem His people and establish His reign forever. 

The word of the Lord came to Nathan:
‘Go and tell my servant David, Thus the Lord speaks: “When your days are ended and you are laid to rest with your ancestors, I will preserve the offspring of your body after you and make his sovereignty secure. (It is he who shall build a house for my name, and I will make his royal throne secure forever.) I will be a father to him and he a son to me. Your House and your sovereignty will always stand secure before me and your throne be established forever.”’

ROMANS 4:13,16-18,22 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Faith in You and Your Word will number us among the righteous in Your sight. You desire us to place all our hope, trust, and belief in You first, and above all else, everything else follows. All the other rituals, our good works, and the fulfillment of all that Holy Mother Church demands of her children flow from our faith.

The foremost example of one who put his faith in God above and before his love for his only son is Abraham. St. Paul tells us that he was counted as righteous because he believed and believing was obedient even to offering his son in sacrifice as commanded by God. Faith comes before all else for without faith we cannot please You.

It does not matter how much we pray, give alms, and fast, all of it is like dirty rags if offered to God without faith.

You assure us that faith in You has the power to move every obstacle we will face in life and Abraham is our father in faith because of his unswerving faith in God's promises to him. Even when, on the face of it, it seemed that if he acquiesced to God's demand the oath that God swore to him and the covenant that God had made with him and his descendants would be thwarted, he still put his trust in God. 

 

Though it seemed Abraham’s hope could not be fulfilled, he hoped and he believed, and through doing so he did become the father of many nations exactly as he had been promised: Your descendants will be as many as the stars. This is the faith that was ‘considered as justifying him.’

Beloved, take away my cowardly, wishy-washy, puny, lackluster faith and replace it with a towering faith like that of Abraham our father in faith. Thank You. 

MATTHEW 1:16,18-21,24 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Scripture tells us little about St. Joseph. We know that he is the husband of Mary, the foster father of Jesus, and a dreamer of dreams like his namesake Joseph in the Old Testament. The Gospels do not record a single word uttered by him but despite the apparent silence in Sacred Scripture of this well-beloved servant of God, the Church offers us a luminescent spirituality based on the life of this silent, humble, obedient man, called by God to share in the most intimate and most sacred mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God. 

The more we contemplate the hidden years and the hidden life of the Holy Family in Nazareth the more we are in awe of the singular privilege accorded to Joseph to guard, protect, raise, provide, and offer himself in total sacrifice in Your service and the service of Mary his most chaste spouse and Your Mother.

Each time the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and instructed him he acted promptly in doing all that God asked of him.  Whatever misgivings he may have had he aligned his will with the will of God. He lived to serve You and Mary with all the fervor of his being. St. Joseph is the best role model for husbands and fathers, he is the gold standard by which all fathers can measure their own fatherhood. The Church also recognizes Your foster father as the protector and guardian of the Church which is Your Body because he was the protector and guardian of the Head of the Church. 

Joseph always did what God wanted him to do and at the end of his earthly life he had the singular privilege of being held in the close embrace of the Son of God and the Mother of God this is why he is also the patron of a good and holy death.

Dear St. Joseph, accompanied by Mary, please take all the prayers and petitions we make through you to Jesus. He who was obedient to you on earth will deny nothing that you ask of Him in heaven. Thank you.