12/17/2020
A Year of Saint Joseph: This past week, Pope Francis
proclaimed a “Year of Saint Joseph” beginning on 8 December
2020 and concluding 8 December 2021. “My desire to do so”,
the Holy Father writes, “increased during these months of
pandemic, when we experienced, amid the crisis, how our lives
are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people
often overlooked. People who do not appear in newspaper and
magazine headlines, or on the latest television show, yet in
these very days are surely shaping the decisive events of our
history. Doctors, nurses, storekeepers and supermarket
workers, cleaning personnel, caregivers, transport workers,
men and women working to provide essential services and
public safety, volunteers, priests, men and women religious,
and so very many others. They understood that no one is saved
alone … How many people daily exercise patience and offer
hope, taking care to spread not panic, but shared responsibility.
How many fathers, mothers, grandparents and teachers are
showing our children, in small everyday ways, how to accept
and deal with a crisis by adjusting their routines, looking ahead
and encouraging the practice of prayer. How many are praying,
making sacrifices and interceding for the good of all. Each of us
can discover in Joseph – the man who goes unnoticed, a daily,
discreet and hidden presence – an intercessor, a support and
a guide in times of trouble. Saint Joseph reminds us that those
who appear hidden or in the shadows can play an incomparable
role in the history of salvation. A word of recognition and of
gratitude is due to them all.” St. Joseph, pray for us.
