“You made him Prince over all your possessions….” Those are the last words of the Litany of St. Joseph, just before the final prayer, which we will all offer today to Jesus, son of Joseph. To whom has Almighty God granted seats at Christ’s right and left in heaven? Surely to his parents, to Mary on his right and to Joseph on his left. The name “Joseph” means “the Increaser” in Hebrew, and that is just what the Patriarch Joseph did as Pharaoh’s administrator in time of famine. He increased wheat and oil so that the people would not die of hunger. The New Covenant Joseph will increase our virtues, our holiness, and our intimacy with Jesus and Mary, if we trust him as our father.
A dear friend asked me last week: “Do you know how much the saints love you?” His own wife was dying of cancer, and she quite literally cast herself upon one of her favorite saints, Junipero Serra. With the pastor’s permission, she stretched her body over the saint’s tomb at Mission San Carlos in Carmel. Her cancer disappeared a few months later. “How much the saints love us!” her husband exclaimed in wonder.
Fr. Calloway offers several consecration formulas on page 235. In the first prayer we ask “St. Joseph, whom God has made the Head of the Holy Family, accept me, I beseech you, though utterly unworthy, to be a member of your ‘Holy House.’” Above all we long for home, and this is what we ask for through Joseph. In Fr. Calloway’s second consecration prayer, we boldly promise: “I give everything to you, St. Joseph. Take me as your own. I am yours. Amen!”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph long to take us into their home, but they will not force us to enter. It is ours to make an act of entrustment, a valiant self-offering. We must allow them to love us. I will pray these acts of consecration at the 6pm Mass tonight (live streamed). From this day forward, I ask you to join me in memorizing one of the “acts of daily consecration to St. Joseph” (page 239). I myself will add one of them to my daily prayers, right after my daily consecration to the Immaculate Mother of God.
Thank you for making this 33-day journey with me. I don’t know all of you on earth, but we will know each other in heaven, where “I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:12). God bless you all!