08/28/2024
We are a brotherhood committed to modeling our lives after the great Saint Joseph. We endeavor to learn, share, and live out our rich Catholic faith. We strive to lead and counsel our loved ones on their own unique spiritual journeys. We also intend to serve and witness to those we encounter in our lives each day, and cultivate opportunities to share our faith with others. We hope to fulfill the words of Jesus: “Thus you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). Jesus encourages us all (in Mark 12:30) to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength. He also promises (in Matthew 7:7) that if we seek, we shall find. Knock and it will be opened.
Our primary goal is the development of a brotherhood that gathers to seek and to find God together. With Saint Joseph as our model and intercessor, we are inspired to pursue virtue and to grow in spiritual wisdom. We seek to not only learn our faith, but to live it, as Saint Joseph did with overwhelming humility, obedience and strength. And, as “iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17), we refine each other by praying together, learning together, working together, progressing together. And by loving God together.
Our secondary goal is to share our faith at home, especially with the souls for whom we have spiritual responsibility. Witness can be bold or subtle. It can also be difficult – especially at home. We can teach actively through our words, but also passively through example, by living a virtuous life modeled after Saint Joseph. We strive to develop and share ways to lead our loved ones to the living water that Jesus says “will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13).
Our tertiary goal is to serve and witness to those we encounter in our lives. Jesus says (in Mark 12:30 again), “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Saint James said “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). Saint Peter said “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s grace….in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (Peter 4:10-11). We hope to cultivate and take advantage of opportunities, as Saint Joseph did, to present Jesus to those we encounter in our lives each day. We do all this under the spiritual direction of, and with full obedience to, our pastor, Father Paul Aveni and our parochial vicar, Father Will Sexton. Saint Joseph, please pray for us.
