To you, O Blessed Joseph, we come in our trials, and having asked the help of your most holy spouse, we confidently ask your patronage also. Through that sacred bond of charity which united you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the fatherly love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you to look graciously upon the beloved inheritance which Jesus Christ purchased by his blood, and to aid us in our necessities with your power and strength.
The Lord’s Prayer, The Hail Mary, Glory Be to the Father
O most provident guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ. Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and sin. Our most mighty protector, graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of darkness.
And just as you once saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God’s Holy Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity.
The Lord’s Prayer, The Hail Mary, Glory Be to the Father
Shield each one of us by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your help, we may be able to live a virtuous life, to die a holy death, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven.
The Lord’s Prayer, The Hail Mary, Glory Be to the Father
Amen
THE ESSENTIAL LESSON OF SAINT JOSEPH
Saint Joseph is a “ Just Man, ” who has his eyes fixed on God, His law, His sovereign will. His heart is the mirror of divine truth. As Father and Patron of the Church, he wants it to adhere to him with a docile and loyal heart. He assists it with all his power, but it is necessary for the authorities within the Church to do their duty, teaching the truth and condemning error. The appalling decadence of our lives is only the rotten fruit of our apostasy. Saint Joseph cannot save us from that apostasy unless we renounce the causes that have provoked it. The Faith comes first ! That is what gives our Counter-Reformation its unshakeable foundation.
The Faith is the nursemaid of all the virtues ; it brings with it the respect for discipline, authority, and the order that it legitimates. In the same way that the Son and the Holy Spirit in Heaven obey God the Father in all things because it is from Him that their life proceeds and They are completely turned toward Him, in the same manner our Heavenly Father has willed that all earthly society should be paternal. There can be no progress, order, or justice except to the degree that the family obeys the father, or the entire factory obeys the owner, or the whole nation obeys the prince.
Saint Joseph thus wills to restore Christianity, contrary to all cult of man, in disgust for the idolatry of self, of capitalo-socialism, of anarchy. He, the least of the three glorious members of the Holy Family, was the Father and protector of Jesus and Mary ; he was in charge, having the grace of state for it. He reigns eternally in Heaven. « Behold that in his school, we relearn how to love our fathers, our bosses, our princes, our pontiffs, our popes, our heads of families, professions, nations, the Church. We admire the fact that in Canada Saint Joseph is so honoured at Mont Royal, in sweet and humble anticipation of the Sovereign Pontiffs and the Christian Kings… » (CRC no. 233, June 1987, p. 25)
The Holy Family is the model for the Church, and the Church is the model for temporal society. « If you will the salvation of the world » wrote our Father in the aftermath of the Council, « recreate holy families and other Nazareths ! » (Letters to My Friends, no. 221.) In the terrible crisis that menaces the world, we must remember this ; hence the invocation that he initiated in 1987 for the use of our communities and our families :
