Month: February 2021

Second Sunday of Lent 2021 in the Year of St. Joseph

Sorry I missed posting on Friday.  I was finishing up a talk I was giving on St. Joseph at a parish day of renewal.  My premise for the presentation was that Joseph and Mary developed a faith and trust in a God who could do the POSSIBLE even in the midst of situations and circumstances that seem impossible.  Hold on to that.  Cling to it like an anchor when the boat of life is rocking.  Storms pass.  Earthquakes come and have aftershocks, but the ground settles.  Fires become smoldering ash…and from the ash a sapling will rise.  Do you remember when Mt. St. Helen’s erupted and blew half a mountainside into the sky?  Hillsides cascaded down the mountain snapping trees like matchsticks.  Roadways were washed away or impassible from boulders larger than semi-trucks.  But, the Spring came, and the desolate hillside and vale began to see life emerge.

Here is a truth that will level the spiritual playing field.  Joseph and Mary were made of flesh and blood, bones and veins…just like you and me.  Just as they were called by God in a very particular time and place to obediently follow the call of God to their mysterious mission, so are we.  Did they know everything that would unfold in the time they had with Jesus?  Did Joseph know that his son would be sacrificed…unlike Isaac, Jesus would not be spared.  Did Mary know every step that would lead to Calvary?  I don’t think so.  But what they did know was a call. A call to obedience…holy listening to the prompting of God in their lives.

So too you and me.  No matter what is going on right now…in your life, in the life of someone you love or know, remember it is temporary…hold on to the anchor…Christ Jesus.  Give him yourself in the quiet this Lent to hear his voice and respond to his call.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

First Friday of Lent 2021 in the Year of St. Joseph

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” (Col 1:15).  Each Friday, Fridays of Lent in particular, we are called to join ourselves to the Passion of Jesus…to deep prayer, to self-sacrifice and repentance.  It is with this triple-play that grace leads us home, in a new direction…a new path toward life and away from death.  The irony of the passion and the cross is that, what seems like loss and death, sorrow and pain, is truly the opposite.  The passion is the path, the cross is the vehicle, the loss of self is the gain of Christ, and death is not death, it is life itself.  Homeruns are awe inspiring, but a triple play, that is breathtaking to behold, is it not.

Jesus, true God and true man was in the garden of Gethsemane.  He was cut off from all he had felt and known of his heavenly father.  It is called the Agony in the Garden, right?  Agony is that gulf of abandonment between the beloved and the lover…between the son and the father.  Jesus wanted to do His father’s will, but if it could pass, he would be ok with that…but despite abandonment, despite feeling otherwise, Jesus says,” not my will, but your will be done.”  Just like his Mother Mary, Just like his father Joseph. 

Now ponder this.  If Jesus is the image of the invisible God, who is the image of the Invisible God the Father for Jesus?  Exactly:  JOSEPH!  Who raised this Messiah?  Who taught him to pray?  Who told him of God and his heritage and lineage from David the King?  Who stood by him in synagogue? Who may have told him about a number of messages he had from angels in his dreams?  Who may have told him about why people talk about Joseph and Mary sometimes?  Who may have told him about the Angel who spoke to his mother…or the visitor who came from afar…or the astonished shepherds come to take a look at the new born savior.  Well, I am sure that the one to whom God the Father entrusted His only begotten Son, was with him in the garden and in his heart as he agonized to bring his mysterious and oft’ confusing mission to fulfillment.  Joseph was with Jesus in the Garden, was with him at the pillar, was with him on the way on the cross and in the tomb. 

Now ponder this.  If we are “born-again” in Christ…if we are baptized in him, and have a new identity, i.e. We are Christ, or as St. Paul says, “I no longer live, it is Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)…then when someone is lost, we are to be the way for them  We are Christ for them.   When one is confused, we are to be the light in their darkness. We are Christ for them.  And so on…

May Lent lead us to the grace that changes us from mere namesakes, to images of Christ to one another.

St. Joseph pray for us.

Ash Wednesday 2021

Many, many years ago…I remember it as if it was yesterday…I was talking a snowy walk with my best friend and his two little boys.  As we walked, he kept looking back at his son. Every once in a while he would say, “Hey Guys, stay on the path.”  The snow and slush, the mud and ice were all around…getting off that path was fraught with peril.

Not unlike my friend, our Heavenly Father’s glance is always upon us…trying to keep us on His path.  There are many paths…but only His leads to eternal life.  Once again, Lent offers us the opportunity to hear the Father’s voice, to gaze into his loving eyes, to know the direction of our eternal call, and to embrace eternity. 

“Hey guys, stay on the path”

Friday February 12 2021 Year of St. Joseph

 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Mt 22:36-40).  I wonder what went through Jesus’ mind when he gave that response?  Did it make him think of Joseph who, as his earthly father, taught him that and so much more?

I’ve been thinking about the father – son relationship between Joseph and Jesus. As Joseph was known to be Jesus’ father just as Mary is known to be his mother, there was obviously a known public connection and intimate family connection. No kidding. From both accounts of his birth Joseph and Mary have central place. Their “yes” to God’s incredible plan, begins, as it were, the salvific ball rolling in our human world. Joseph and Mary do not have passive roles in the life of Jesus.  This Holy Babe comes to them in need of instruction. Who taught him? Of course, Mary and Joseph. But who taught this “God in a tiny growing body” how to pray? I would posit, because of Jewish worship and custom, most rested with Joseph, the righteous and just.

In the passage above, Jesus just connected the whole of the law and prophets together in the love of God and neighbor.  I am sure Joseph schooled Jesus in this connection.  I am also convinced that the bedrock of Jewish morning/evening prayer experience, the Shema Israel fell from the lips of Joseph to the ears of Jesus.  Joseph must have taught this essential Jewish prayer to his divine little boy.  “Jesus, this is our creed.  This is who we are and in whom we believe. Speak these words. Memorize them. ‘HEAR O ISRAEL THE LORD IS GOD, THE LORD IS ONE.’” (DT 6:4) but  it continues with, “therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength” (V.5).  Answering the question in Matthew 22, Jesus must have smiled inside…a smile of thanksgiving for his first teach, Joseph.

What does this mean to you and me?  Our faith is important. What we have we must give and share.  Our faith, as a gift from God himself, returns to God himself though our giving it away.  Yes, only Joseph and Mary had the particular privilege to give that gift to Jesus…but we are just like Joseph and Mary, in that, we can give and share that same gift with another.  This we must do.

St. Joseph.  Pray for us.

 Friday February 5, 2021 Year of St. Joseph

Growing up, I always knew that I shared a name with my grandfather.  He died a few years before my birth, but growing up, I heard stories of him.  Sometimes it was like he was giant of a man. He was revered, loved, missed.  I grew to love the fact that I shared his name.  It became part of my own story.

The Gospel of Matthew begins, not with the story of Jesus’ birth, but of his genealogy.  From the very first verse Jesus is connected to David the King and to Abraham:  all tied into the very heart of the covenant of God with his people.  It ends with the prominent place of Joseph in that bond of connections. “Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.” (Mt. 1: 16).  Joseph as husband gives birthright connection of Jesus to his heritage.

Big deal?  Yep. Huge deal.  It shows God writing again with crooked lines to help us see His plan and our place in it. 

Joseph, the carpenter knew his family tree.  Joseph knew that, while he might be a middle-class laborer, he was descended from the greatest king there ever was.  David, the giant slayer, David who slew tens of thousands (making King Saul jealous), David the shepherd, David the Psalmist, even David the murderous adulterer – whose heart was so much in love with God that forgiveness touched his sorrow.  David, lover of God. 

I want us to imagine the mind and soul of Joseph the Carpenter.  He knew who he was and who he was descended from.  Cutting and building, shaping and sanding, his mind must have drifted to that reality.  Some of the greatest and most passionate psalms he prayed in synagogue were attributed to his ancestor.  Sometimes, as sweat poured down his brow, he might have wondered why his family was not in a palace like David’s.  This was his identity.

Do we even comprehend ours?  Our identity is in the little babe that Joseph protected!  Joseph must have wondered what his little boy would become, Would he be a King, like his ancestor David?  Would he take up arms again the oppressive Romans?  How would this all happen?  Would he live to see it take place? 

As we ponder St. Joseph, we need to ponder our spiritual identity in Jesus Christ.  We are sons and daughters of God through our brother, messiah and savior, the redeemer King.  Ponder that.  Grasp that.  We have been given a new birth by water and the spirit.  Ponder that.  Grasp that.  What Joseph could barely comprehend, he yet served.  It has been fully revealed to us, and we doubt. We are call to something so much more than what we can see, taste, touch, hear, smell and comprehend. Joseph knew Jesus in the Flesh…we know Jesus in Flesh and Blood, Soul and Divinity…and know are call to union with Him.  But, knowing and doing sometimes can be worlds apart. Let our words be those of St. Paul to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  (Gal 2:20)  We bear His Name…let us bear it in truth and love…Like Joseph.

St. Joseph, pray for us!