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Now, one hundred and fifty years after the proclamation of Joseph as Patron of the Catholic Church by Blessed Pius IX, I would like to share some personal reflections on this extraordinary figure, so close to our own human experience. For, as Jesus says, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Mt 12:34).
My desire to do so increased during these months of pandemic, when we experienced, amid the crisis, how “our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people often overlooked.
“People who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines or on the latest television show, yet in these very days are surely shaping the decisive events of our history.
“Doctors, nurses, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caregivers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests, men and women religious, and so very many others. They understood that no one is saved alone…
“How many people daily exercise patience and offer hope, taking care to spread not panic, but shared responsibility.
“How many fathers, mothers, grandparents, and teachers are showing our children, in small everyday ways, how to accept and deal with a crisis by adjusting their routines, looking ahead, and encouraging the practice of prayer.
“How many are praying, making sacrifices and interceding for the good of all” (“Meditation in the Time of Pandemic” L’Osservatore Romano, March 29, 2020, p. 10).
Each of us can discover in Joseph—the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence—an intercessor, a support and a guide in times of trouble.
Saint Joseph reminds us that those who appear hidden or in the shadows can play an incomparable role in the history of salvation. A word of recognition and of gratitude is due to them all.
Excerpted from Patris Corde, an apostolic letter, December 8, 2020, the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Joseph as patron of the universal Church
