Year of St. Joseph: A Tender and Loving Father

Recall that our aim in this “Year of Saint Joseph” and in these reflections is, as Pope Francis says, to increase “our love for this great saint, to encourage us to implore his intercession and to imitate his virtues and his zeal.” Simply put, we want to discover in Saint Joseph the same father’s heart that Jesus and Mary discovered.

 

A Tender and Loving Father

 

Saint Joseph obediently took Mary, his wife, and her unborn Child into his home just as the angel instructed him to do, and we can imagine that he responded to the details of Mary’s needs with the same promptness. His love for the unborn Child was bound up with and expressed through his tender care for the Mother. 

When the law of Rome required Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem to register for the census, Joseph made provision for Mary’s comfort and safety as best he could. There were many details, expected and unexpected, along the journey and we can imagine how Saint Joseph lovingly attended to each of them in turn. Married life is made harmonious by responding to daily details and challenges with love

When the time had come for the Child to be born, Joseph readied the makeshift shelter God had provided so the birth could take place in privacy. Joseph was as present to the details of the delivery as Mary needed him to be and he welcomed the Child with wonder and awe. 

 

What joy and gladness he must have experienced in those privileged moments alone with Mary and the newborn Christ Child. No doubt he raised his heart and mind to God in praise and thankfulness. For all we know, the angels echoed the content of Saint Joseph’s heart, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will” (Luke 2: 14) for today a Child is born and a Son is given to him, it is the Savior, Christ the Lord. 

 

Pope Francis writes, “As the Lord had done with Israel, so Joseph did with Jesus.

 

 

Saint Joseph was a natural father; humble, affectionate, attentive, and present to his Son, because that is what every child needs, the love that comes from the father’s heart.

 

In Saint Joseph, the Pope continues, “Jesus saw the tender love of God” in action, helping him to learn, grow, and face the reality of all things as God made them. The reality of human life and growth through childhood involves a willingness, on the part of both the child and the parent, to accept natural weakness and see in it God’s method of formation, because “it is through” and despite “our fears, our frailties, and our weakness” that most divine designs are realized. This is the tender and loving heart of Saint Joseph at its best; and it is the example most accessible to us Christian fathers.

 

When we acknowledge our weakness we learn to depend on God to lend us His strength. When we direct that borrowed strength to the service and growth of those who depend on us, we imitate the father’s heart, so evident in Saint Joseph, and model our Heavenly Father’s love on earth, just as he did.

 

Though life within the Holy Family was uniquely virtuous, there was plenty of room for human mistakes, ordinary misunderstandings, and unpleasant surprises. Merciful love is not applicable only to occasions when sin is involved; an inadvertent offense is a sufficient opportunity for extending mercy. The truest love is always gracious. To “be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful” (Luke 6: 36) requires of us a predisposition to avoid condemnation. If we knew the extent to which Saint Joseph embodied merciful love, we might better understand his initial intention not to take Mary into his home; it was not necessary that he supposed that she had sinned. It was sufficient that, in his ordinary human weakness and in the face of such a Mystery, he simply did not know what to do.

 

Pope Francis connects the reality of human weakness to the remedial value of merciful love by directing the reader to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. “Only tender love will save us from the snares of the accuser,” stresses the Pope, for it is by encountering God’s mercy, most especially, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation that we “experience His truth and tenderness,” and  “we know that God’s truth does not condemn us, but instead welcomes, embraces, sustains and forgives us.” He continues, ”That truth always presents itself to us like the merciful father in Jesus’ parable (cf. Lk 15:11-32). It comes out to meet us, restores our dignity, sets us back on our feet and rejoices for us.”

 

Pope Francis concludes his reflection on Saint Joseph, as a tender and loving father, by putting the saint’s humanness (and ours) into the proper context. It bears repeating here:

 

 

Once again, we conclude today’s reflection by encouraging you, dear reader, to “Go to Joseph!” Ask him to intercede for you to obtain from God the grace that “is sufficient for you,” to cooperate with His Divine method and participate in His merciful love, “for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:7-9). This gently reminds us that even in our weakness, with faith we can mirror the tender love of Saint Joseph’s fatherly heart.

 

PS Want to introduce your children to Saint Joseph?  Let them learn about his life, what he did, what the angels whom God sent to him had to say? Here are great conversation starters: