Letter from the Pastor
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December 27, 2020
The Sunday after Christmas is always the beautiful Feast of the Holy Family. Devotion to the Holy Family grew in popularity during the 17th century. The Holy Family in art also became popular during this time. Many Popes promoted the feast as a way to counter the breakdown of family life especially during the Industrial Revolution. Then on October 26, 1921, Pope Benedict XV inserted the Feast of the Holy Family into the General Calendar.
When a man marries a woman a family is established. One of the main purposes of marriage is to have children and raise them in an indissoluble, committed and faithful relationship between the mother and father, so as to increase the number of the Church and the world.
This past December 8th, Pope Francis wrote an Apostolic Letter about St. Joseph: "Patris Corde," (With a Father’s Heart”). The letter begins: “WITH A FATHER’S HEART: that is how Joseph loved Jesus, whom all four Gospels refer to as ‘the son of Joseph.’ The Pope called for a Year of Saint Joseph to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the declaration of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church. The Apostolic Penitentiary also issued a Decree granting plenary indulgences for this special year for special devotions particularly on Wednesday.
Pope Francis describes Saint Joseph as a beloved father, a tender and loving father, an obedient father, an accepting father; a father who is creatively courageous, a working father, a father in the shadows. He is to be the example of Christian fatherhood for our families.
The Holy Father wrote Saint Joseph is, the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence, who nonetheless played an incomparable role in the history of salvation. In him, we never see frustration, but only trust…His patient silence was the prelude to concrete expressions of trust. St. Joseph is the model of fatherhood, because our world “needs fathers,” and not “tyrants”; a society that “rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” (Pope Francis)
True fathers, “refuse to live the lives of their children for them,” and instead respect their freedom. In this sense, says Pope Francis, a father realizes that “he is most a father and an educator at the point when he becomes ‘useless,’ when he sees that his child has become independent and can walk the paths of life unaccompanied.” The goal of parents is to make independent, well-adjusted, self-sufficient and most important, holy adults.
At the conclusion of his Letter, the Pope adds another prayer to St Joseph, which he encourages all of us to pray together:
Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.
Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy, and courage,
and defend us from every evil.
Amen.It is a beautiful meditation on fatherhood, a bit wordy, but that is the style of Pope Francis.
Our prayer is that the Holy Family:
Jesus Mary and St. Joseph watch over and protect your family.
