With assured and peaceful step, a discreet man goes his way and nobody notices him. It is true that in him there is nothing outstanding to attract glances. He is not a man of empty activity or flashy appearances. He is a man of mission.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
With assured and peaceful step, a discreet man goes his way and nobody notices him. It is true that in him there is nothing outstanding to attract glances. He is not a man of empty activity or flashy appearances. He is a man of mission.
What is his honor? To fulfill that mission in daily and hidden fidelity – in the humble fidelity that characterizes noble souls, forgetful of themselves, devoted to their mission. The rest is, for them, only wisps of straw, details that do not distract them.
This man who walks through the maze of the streets of Nazareth seeks neither rewards nor recognition. He has given himself. He does not play a part, he fulfills his mission. He does not despise possessions, but he lives, quite simply, on another level: that of being.
In a few moments he will enter his humble dwelling and will have the joy of meeting there his wife, simple and devoted like he; indeed, even more than him. Together they take care of a sacred deposit, a life that was entrusted to them, a young and frail being who, however, holds the world in His hands. And it is him, the humble carpenter of this distant village, Joseph, the simple man who has been constituted by God as father of the Child-God and guardian of the Virgin Mother.
Joseph, sober and vigilant, is established in the divine intimacy, living in the joy of a profound virginal union with the Virgin Mother.
God made him simple because He wanted him devoted to truth, to Being. Without ornaments or pretenses, far from the illusions of the world, Joseph achieves his mission while adoring, in silence.
God has placed him close to His divine Son, so that he remains by His side, defends Him and forms Him, since the child necessarily rests upon paternity. Even for His own Son, God did not want to abolish this sacred law that He Himself instituted.
Devoted to the will of God, Saint Joseph lived in his times ignored by all those who were unaware of essentials. After twenty centuries, we have hardly changed!
As moths are attracted to a flame, we are attracted to the glitter of useless things. We take pleasure in possessions to the detriment of being; we live for what is passing and for the illusions of our pride. The morbid attraction of appearances makes us live in intellectual and moral poverty, which leads us to the doors of death.
Saint Joseph is the antidote for this deadly spirit.
His life of hidden consecration in God, lived exclusively for Him, is radically opposed to our usual morbid search of acknowledgment and satisfactions.
Joseph’s titles of nobility are happily listed in the litanies dedicated to him. Each title underlines a particular virtue, inviting us with tact and gracefulness – this is the way Joseph works – to practice it.
This is not the place to comment on these litanies, but it is enough for us to underline their common foundation: his intimacy with God.
Intimate friend of God, close to Our Lady, Saint Joseph is completely subject to the divine will. The eyes of his soul are fixed on what God expects of him and his heart is in peace because he has only one intention: to please his Creator and Redeemer. Fixed in God, he is really a man of a magnificent mission: to be Husband of the Virgin and foster Father of the divine Infant!
Saint Joseph, entirely taken up by his mission, is also the man of silence.
We are far from practicing this silence – we, who live in a ceaseless whirlwind, mixing concerns that corrode us and curiosities that exhaust us. We live in a constant concern for ourselves, which enslaves us to our desires and renders us basically unable to establish ourselves in silence. Such excessive concern with ourselves is the source of all the noises that distract us from what should be our supreme occupation: God and His will. Let us “go to Joseph,” as we are invited by Sacred Scripture, and we will learn how to imitate he who had only one ambition: to consume his life in a simple consecration.
This invitation of Sacred Scripture must be taken very seriously. Silence is more essential to the soul than air is to man. However, nothing in society invites us to silence, and this is why so many men who pass their life in deafening pleasures remain far from God. We must learn again to live in silence, simply in order to live!
Saint Joseph, powerful upon the Heart of God and upon our own hearts, because of his particular mission of paternity, is really and providentially he who can give us again the sense of God, our Father, by exercising upon our souls his divine mission. He will, then, form us by the power of his own grace by adopting us as his children. As children of such a father, we will take to heart his paternal lessons, and we will walk peacefully in the path of the silence that leads to God.
May Saint Joseph protect and guide you in the midst of an uncertain world where, more than ever, God and His will remain the only steadfast certainty.
In Christo sacerdote et Maria.
Fr. Yves le Roux
P. S. Model in a disorientated world, Saint Joseph remains faithful to his first mission of guardian.
Patron of Holy Church, he protects her as he protected the Child-God from the first hours of His earthly life.
Foster Father of Our Lord, we pray to him especially under this title so that he may inspire you to be generous towards us. On his feast-day, and during this Passiontide – so favorable for almsgiving – we indeed appeal to you for help in building our new seminary in Virginia. This seminary is called to be, for the United States, a symbol of faith, hope and charity, a living proof that the Church is always mistress of truth and of souls.
Please, kindly read the enclosed card entitled “OPERATION 5000,” fill it out and pass it to others around you.
We need holy priests, help us to form them.
In advance, we thank you for your generosity.