Serenity March 20

Prayer

St. Joseph, help us to follow our dreams. Through your righteousness and steadfast commitment, you helped Mary raise an obedient son. You willingly and without question did exactly as the angel of the Lord commanded you. You diligently worked to provide for your family and taught Jesus how to work with wood and nails – the tools through which he would fulfill his life’s work and the redemption of all people.

Like your great example, help us to be diligent at work. To those called to matrimony, help us to be faithful spouses. Help us to set a good example for the children we encounter. Help us be obedient to our parents and to the commandments God gave to Moses and the great commandment Jesus gave to us. Grant us a Fourth Day filled with close moments with you attained through piety, study and action. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/032006.shtml

Today, the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Joseph (even though the traditional date would have occurred on Sunday, March 19). The readings are for the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Growing up in an Italian family, the feast days of our Patron Saint namesakes were always an occasion to rival a birthday. My siblings and I would get a special card from our great-grandmother on our “Name Day.” Having a grandfather, brother, and several cousins named Joseph just meant that March 19 became a bigger feast day than others – like that of St. Anthony of Padua (June 13 for purely personal interest) or St. Anne (July 26 for my sister).

Joseph would have been what we would call a foster father to Jesus. Joseph just became Father.

Father – when I think of “father” I think of devotion, unending love, sacrifice, quiet endurance and serenity. Salvatore James De Cristofaro taught me to ride a two-wheel bike by adjusting my training wheels so they were still on the bike but didn’t touch the ground. I felt safe flying around teh block thinking I still needed those two extra wheels. When I outgrew the pedals, he taught me to drive a car and to take car of it. How to use a timing light to tune that car. How to use a ratcheting socket to change the spark plugs. How to use a screwdriver to set the points (before electronic ignitions). How to use an oil filter wrench to change the 10W30 every three months. How to wash and wax it so it wouldn’t rust and how to paint it when it did. He drove me to school, to church and to CCD. He taught me how to fight fires in our small-town volunteer fire department. He also was a carpenter taught me how to help build a new room on our house, a shed in the backyard and much more. He had the courage to influence and change the lives of his three children even though it meant enduring this son's sixth grade basketball season on a team that went 1-13. But there were ice cream sundaes all around after that one victory.

Through his vocation as a father, Dad also taught me how to deal quietly with suffering when he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He faced that with God-granted serenity because God also gave him the wisdom to know he couldn't change it. Dad taught me all that and more before his lungs gave out on March 5, 1987. BTW, his Name Day was March 18 – right between Patrick and Joseph. I wish he were here today to read this. But I guess he really is reading it up there on that cloud of witnesses with Patrick and Joseph and the rest.

Think back 2006 years. What might Joseph have taught an obedient Jesus as he was growing up? Certainly we know that carpentry was at the top of the list. But Jesus also had to learn the scriptures. So Joseph would have brought Jesus to temple to learn from their local rabbi. Even though we don’t know much about Joseph from Scripture after the incident in the temple, we know he felt great anxiety that day and probably many others wondering what this child would grow up to become.

Action

Pick up something made of wood and carry it with you this week. Meditate on the carpenter who made that item. Then meditate on the simple carpenter who was “father to the Son of God.”

While we may not all be called to be foster parents like Joseph, how can you aid those who are foster parents? Can you donate something to help a foster parent care for his or her “foster” child this Easter Season?

Joseph’s Song
By Michael Card

How could it be? This baby in my arms
Sleeping now, so peacefully
The Son of God, the angel said
How could it be?

Lord I know He's not my own
Not of my flesh, not of my bone
Still Father let this baby be
The son of my love

Father show me where I fit into this plan of yours
How can a man be father to the Son of God
Lord for all my life I've been a simple carpenter
How can I raise a king, How can I raise a king

He looks so small, His face and hands so fair
And when He cries the sun just seems to disappear
But when He laughs it shines again
How could it be?

PS: This message is sent to support the Men's Cursillo 113th and Women's 122nd Teams-in-Hiatus while we relocate Cursillo to another location. This is also sent to other potentially interested Cursillistas in order to support Team Formation and your own Fourth Day.
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