We have a new house guest, Joseph of Nazareth!
By Robert Fontana
Some of you might recall that on December 8, 2020, Pope Francis invited Catholics and Christians everywhere to participate in a year of honoring of St. Joseph, father to Jesus and spouse of Mary. He wrote,
“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…St. Joseph reminds us that those who appear hidden or in the shadows can play an incomparable role in the history of salvation.”
We took this invitation to heart and created a St. Joseph version of The Angelus. Many of you know the Angelus as a Marian devotion that recounts Mary’s “fiat,” (Latin for “let it be done”), her “yes” to God. Mary’s “yes” resulted in the birth of Jesus as told in the Gospel of Luke.
We modeled our prayer off the Marian Angelus to tell the story of Joseph’s “fiat,” his “yes” to God, which was the necessary compliment to his wife’s fiat. The prayer (see below) begins with a Scripture verse and concludes with a prayer to St. Joseph that I modeled off a prayer that Pope Francis had written.
St. Joseph’s silent and courageous “yes” to God, as told in the Gospel of Matthew, shaped the rest of his life. He took in his pregnant wife, thus preventing, at worst, her death by stoning and, at best, the humiliation of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. He had to protect his wife and child from the evil intentions of King Herod and guide his family to safety in Egypt. He provided for them in this foreign land where they lived as refugees, not unlike the millions of refugees fleeing violence and poverty today; and, when it seemed safe to do so, he returned with them to their extended family in Nazareth.
We also know from Jewish culture that it was Joseph’s task to teach his son the responsibilities of every Jewish man: to learn Torah and follow its teachings, and to learn a trade.
During the Holy Year of St. Joseph, we prayed the St. Joseph Angelus daily at noontime. An unexpected bonus was that this daily prayer nurtured in us a deeper love and relationship (devotion) to St. Joseph. Previously, the only time that we gave St. Joseph much thought was on March 19th, the Feast of St. Joseph, and this was because we Sicilians look to him as the patron saint of our ancestral island (my grandparents were from Sicily). St. Joseph Day in the United States became the Italian version of St. Patrick’s Day for the Irish. It was a day to celebrate Italian cooking and the memory of our ancestors who made the journey across the Atlantic to settle in America.
Praying the St. Joseph Angelus changed that. It caused us to pause, stop the busyness of the day, and remember how God loves us so much that God sent his beloved son Jesus into the world not to condemn it, but to save it (John 3:16). The Incarnation of the Son of God would not have happened without the cooperation of both Mary and Joseph, who both said “yes,” who both guided their son in the ways of God. We grew to love St. Joseph. And then, he came to visit our home in a formal way through the image of a sacred ICON.
In October, 2019, Lori and I did a pilgrimage walk from Florence to Assisi on the Way of St. Francis (called the Via Francigena). In Assisi, we met a young Italian couple, newlyweds Romina and Fabio. We had dinner together, heard the story of their engagement and marriage, and exchanged e-mail addresses. During the pandemic Romina trained to be an iconographer, which is described as a “writer” of icons because she places the Word of God in art form on a piece of wood. She prayed, fasted, and wrote the image of St. Joseph for her first icon. It was so beautiful! After we saw a photo of it on social media, we ordered the one pictured here. The real icon was even more beautiful than the photo conveyed.
Icons in Christian history, especially in the Eastern Church, are like sacraments. They are not merely artwork to admire. They are divine images that help us encounter the presence of God through prayer, meditation, and veneration. The St. Joseph ICON sits on our table, and in a beautiful way known only to God, we not only sense the divine presence as we pray before this image, but we can also feel the masculine presence of Joseph, husband of Mary, and father to Jesus.
We have several “copies” of icons in our home, images taken from photos and placed on wood. They are lovely and help us in our prayer. The St. Joseph ICON is our first original ICON, created by Romina, after she trained in the ancient custom of iconography, and spent time in prayer and fasting. We felt great joy as we welcomed “St. Joseph” into our home.
I encourage you to include the Angelus, in either its Marian or Joseph form, in your prayer. You can access copies of this from our blog at http://www.catholiclifeministries.org/2022/10/10/the-marian-angelus-and-the-st-joseph-angelus/
Allow it to help you welcome both the mother of Jesus and the father to Jesus into your home. You might even consider commissioning Romina to write an ICON for you, one of Jesus, St. Mary, St. Joseph, or a favorite saint (I can give you her contact information)!
Glory be to God, we have a new guest in our home – St. Joseph.
