From time to
time consecrate an entire week to glorious St. Joseph, that he may offer
all you do to Mary, to Jesus, to the Most Holy Trinity, and that he may
dispose, according to his pleasure, all the fruits of your good works.
Choose 7 titles of honor, one
for each day of the week, by which to pay homage to this great Saint, and vary
your devotion:
1) St Joseph Son of David 2) St Joseph Most Chaste Spouse 3) St Joseph Virgin-Father 4) St Joseph ValiantProtector of Jesus and Mary 5) St Joseph Patron of Workers 6) St Joseph Patron of the Dying 7) St Joseph Patron of the Universal Church
ACT OF CONSECRATION
O dearest St. Joseph, I consecrate
myself to your honor and give myself to you, that you may always be my
father, my protector and my guide in the way of salvation.
Obtain for me a greater purity of heart and fervent love of the interior life. After
your example may I do all my actions for the greater glory of God, in
union with the Divine Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
O Blessed St. Joseph, pray for me, that I may share in the peace and joy of your holy death. +Amen.
We
do not praise the Saints merely for the sake of praising them; as St. Bernard
says, they are so full of Heaven's gifts that our poor praises can scarcely add
anything to their glory. We praise them in order to admire them; we admire them
in order to love them; we love them in order to serve them; we serve them in
order to imitate them; and by imitating them we gain their favor, and merit to
have them as protectors in heaven. It is glorious for St. Joseph to be so
great, but what do we gain by his greatness if he does not share it with us, if
he be not our advocate on high? Now he is willing to be of service to us if we
show ourselves worthy, if we render him some poor service, and offer him really
heart-felt homage.
The
best devotion to Saint Joseph is to imitate his virtues, to model your actions
on his, and to act as he acted. He and Our Lady will accept your feeble efforts
and help you, and God will give you His blessing. Say attentively each day a
short prayer in honor of Saint Joseph, or an aspiration or two, with all of
your heart. As with the Golden Hail Mary, it is better to say one brief prayer
or aspiration with utter devotion and from the heart than a long prayer
distractedly.
"When
you invoke Saint Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your
Father in heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend Saint
Joseph.Tell him, ‘If you were in my place, Saint Joseph, what would
you do? Well, pray for this in my behalf.'" - St André Bessette
It
seems that St. Joseph, contemplating the Incarnate Word in the lowly house of
Nazareth, must often have said in his heart: 'I adhere to all that my spouse
says; I unite myself with all that she does; I take part in all her desires. I
do not speak myself: but I hope that, as I agree with all that she thinks well
to say, Jesus will approve of my silence. She and I are one in heart; she says
all; I say nothing except through her mouth and her heart.'
Reader,
do the same; repeat to Our Lady that you approve and ratify all she says and
does in honor of her spouse. and that you thank her for all a thousand times.
Add that it is not the want of cordial affection which makes you silent, but
rather its excess, because you can find no words to express it, and your tongue
cannot keep pace with your feelings. Say that since St. Joseph by his silence
has said as much as, and more than all others, you desire to imitate him.
St.
John tells us that when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal of the mysterious
book mentioned in the Apocalypse, there was silence in Heaven, as it were, for
half an hour; all the Saints were as if entranced, and could do nothing but
admire the infinite majesty of God. So may you also do. Tell St. Joseph that,
while others do wonderful things, your part must be to humble yourself, and
acknowledge your own nothingness; while they offer their love, you can but
offer nothingness and abjection, and acknowledge yourself incapable and
unworthy of speaking. Fear not to imitate St. Augustine and other Saints who
complained of God to God Himself, in some such terms as these: ' Thou
commandest me to love Thee, O God most worthy of love; why, then, hast Thou
given me such a poor and narrow heart? Why art Thou so great and I so little?
The object being infinite, should not the heart and love be infinite also?
'Thou hast made St. Joseph so great; Thou inspirest me with
the ardent desire to love him, and yet Thou seest how incapable I am of doing
anything worthy of Thee or of him. Assist my weakness, I beseech Thee, O Lord!
I desire to do what is right, but I have not the power. Give me the power to do
more. At any rate, be satisfied to see one who desires more than he is able to
perform, who would fain do all that can be done by all men and all Saints, so
as to honor Thee in the great things Thou hast done to St. Joseph. + Amen.
The espousals between Joseph and Mary are an episode of great importance. Joseph was of the royal line of David and, in virtue of his marriage to Mary, would confer on the Son of the Virgin - on God's Son - the legal tile of "Son of David," thus fulfilling the prophecies. The espousals of Joseph and Mary are, because of this, a human event, but determinant in the history of humanity's salvation, in the realization of the promises of God; because of this, it also has a supernatural connotation, which the two protagonists accept with humility and trust. Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican Gardens, 5 July 2010
The Most High spoke to the heart of the high priest, inspiring him to place into the hands of each one of the young men a dry stick, with the command that each ask his Majesty with a lively faith, to single out the one whom He had chosen as the spouse of Mary. While they were thus engaged in prayer the staff which Joseph held was seen to blossom and at the same time a dove of purest white and resplendent with admirable light, was seen to descend and rest upon the head of the saint... And the priest espoused Mary to the most chaste and holy of men, Saint Joseph. - Venerable Maria de Agreda
How exalted in the virtue of virginity must Joseph have been who was destined by the Eternal Father to be the companion in virginity of Mary! Both had made a vow to preserve virginity for their entire lives, and it was the Will of God to join them in the bond of a holy marriage. - St. Francis de Sales
Joseph teaches us that it is possible to love without possessing. In contemplating Joseph, all men and women can, by God’s grace, come to experience healing from their emotional wounds, if only they embrace the plan that God has begun to bring about in those close to him, just as Joseph entered into the work of redemption through Mary and as a result of what God had already done in her. - Pope Benedict XVI, Cameroon, 18 March 2009 In the Liturgy, Mary is celebrated as "united to Joseph, the just man, by a bond of marital and virginal love." There are really two kinds of love here, both of which together represent the mystery of the Church -virgin and spouse - as symbolized in the marriage of Mary and Joseph. “Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God not only does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes and confirms it. Marriage and virginity are two ways of expressing and living the one mystery of the Covenant of God with his people,” the Covenant which is a communion of love between God and human beings. - Blessed Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos
Words of the Saints and Scripture concerning St Joseph the Worker
At
Nazareth Joseph's days were filled with work which necessarily took him away at
times from his Infant God. During these hours Mary replaced him, but when
evening brought him home again, he would pass the entire night in adoration,
never tiring, only too happy for the chance to contemplate the hidden riches of
Jesus' divinity. For he pierced the rough garments the Child wore, until his
faith touched the Sacred Heart. In profound adoration he united himself to the
special grace of each one of the events in the life of Jesus.
- St. Peter Julian Eymard
Joseph
was a craftsman from Galilee, just one man among many. What had life to offer
to someone from a forgotten village like Nazareth? Nothing but work: work every
day, with the same constant effort. And at the end of the day, a poor little
house in which to rest and regain energy for the next day. But the name Joseph,
in Hebrew, means "God will add." God adds unsuspected dimensions to
the holy lives of those who do his will. He adds the one important dimension
which gives meaning to everything, the divine dimension. To the humble and holy
life of Joseph he added — if I may put it this way — the lives of the Virgin
Mary and of Jesus, our Lord. - St.
Josemaria Escrivá
For
Joseph, of royal blood, united by marriage to the greatest and holiest of
women, reputed the father of the Son of God, passed his life in labor, and won
by the toil of the artisan the needful support of his family. It is, then, true
that the condition of the lowly has nothing shameful in it, and the work of the
laborer is not only not dishonoring, but can, if virtue be joined to it, be
singularly ennobled. Joseph, content with his slight possessions, bore the
trials consequent on a fortune so slender, with greatness of soul, in imitation
of his Son, who having put on the form of a slave, being the Lord of life,
subjected himself of his own free-will to the spoliation and loss of
everything. - Pope Leo XIII,Quamquam
Pluries
Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. The Gospel specifies the kind of work Joseph did in order to support his family: he was a carpenter. This simple word sums up Joseph's entire life. For Jesus, these were hidden years, the years to which Luke refers after recounting the episode that occurred in the Temple: "And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them" (Luke 2:51). This "submission" or obedience of Jesus in the house of Nazareth should be understood as a sharing in the work of Joseph. Having learned the work of his presumed father, he was known as "the carpenter's son." If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human families, in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus' work at the side of Joseph the carpenter… At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption. - Blessed Pope John Paul II,Redemptoris Custos
The Catechism of the Catholic Churchdefines purgatory as a "purification,
so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," which
is experienced by those "who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still
imperfectly purified"(CCC 1030). It notes that "this final
purification of the elect . . . is entirely different from the punishment of
the damned"(CCC 1031).
The purification is necessary because, as Scripture teaches, nothing unclean
will enter the presence of God in heaven (Rev. 21:27) and, while we may die
with our mortal sins forgiven, there can still be many impurities in us,
specifically venial sins and the temporal punishment due to sins already
forgiven.
Two Judgments
When we die, we undergo what is called the particular, or individual, judgment.
Scripture says that "it is appointed for men to die once, and after that
comes judgment" (Heb. 9:27). We are judged instantly and receive our
reward, for good or ill. We know at once what our final destiny will be. At the
end of time, when Jesus returns, there will come the general judgment to which
the Bible refers, for example, in Matthew25:31-32: "When the Son of man
comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his
glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will
separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats." In this general judgment all our sins will be publicly revealed
(Luke 12:2–5).
Augustine said, in The City of God, that "temporary punishments are
suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now
and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment"
(21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments, then, that the
soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: "I tell you, you
will never get out till you have paid the very last copper" (Luke 12:59).
Money, Money, Money
One argument anti-Catholics often use to attack purgatory is the idea that the
Catholic Church makes money from promulgating the doctrine. Without purgatory,
the claim asserts, the Church would go broke. Any number of anti-Catholic books
claim the Church owes the majority of its wealth to this doctrine. But the
numbers just don’t add up.
When a Catholic requests a memorial Mass for the dead—that is, a Mass said for
the benefit of someone in purgatory—it is customary to give the parish priest a
stipend, on the principles that the laborer is worth his hire (Luke 10:7) and
that those who preside at the altar share the altar’s offerings (1 Cor.
9:13–14). In the United States, a stipend is commonly around five dollars; but
the indigent do not have to pay anything. A few people, of course, freely offer
more. This money goes to the parish priest, and priests are only allowed to
receive one such stipend per day. No one gets rich on five dollars a day, and
certainly not the Church, which does not receive the money anyway.
But look at what happens on a Sunday. There are often hundreds of people at
Mass. In a crowded parish, there may be thousands. Many families and
individuals deposit five dollars or more into the collection basket; others
deposit less. A few give much more. A parish might have four or five or six
Masses on a Sunday. The total from the Sunday collections far surpasses the
paltry amount received from the memorial Masses.
A Catholic "Invention"?
Fundamentalists may be fond of saying the Catholic Church "invented"
the doctrine of purgatory to make money, but they have difficulty saying just
when. Most professional anti-Catholics—the ones who make their living attacking
"Romanism"—seem to place the blame on Pope Gregory the Great, who
reigned from A.D. 590–604.
But that hardly accounts for the request of Monica, mother of Augustine, who
asked her son, in the fourth century, to remember her soul in his Masses. This
would make no sense if she thought her soul would not benefit from prayers, as
would be the case if she were in hell or in the full glory of heaven.
Nor does ascribing the doctrine to Gregory explain the graffiti in the
catacombs, where Christians during the persecutions of thefirst three
centuries recorded prayers for the dead.Indeed, some of the earliest Christian
writings outside the New Testament, like the Acts of Paul and Thecla and the
Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity (both written during the second century),
refer to the Christian practice of praying for the dead. Such prayers would
have been offered only if Christians believed in purgatory, even if they did
not use that name for it.
Why No Protests?
Whenever a date is set for the "invention" of purgatory, you can
point to historical evidence to show the doctrine was in existence before that
date. Besides, if at some point the doctrine was pulled out of a clerical hat,
why does ecclesiastical history record no protest against it?
A study of the history of doctrines indicates that Christians in the first
centuries were up in arms (sometimes quite literally) if anyone suggested the
least change in beliefs. They were extremely conservative people who tested a
doctrine’s truth by asking, Was this believed by our ancestors? Was it handed
on from the apostles? Surely belief in purgatory would be considered a great
change, if it had not been believed from the first—so where are the records of
protests?
They don’t exist. There is no hint at all, in the oldest writings available to
us (or in later ones, for that matter), that "true believers" in the
immediate post-apostolic years spoke of purgatory as a novel doctrine. They
must have understood that the oral teaching of the apostles, what Catholics
call tradition, and the Bible not only failed to contradict the doctrine, but,
in fact, confirmed it.
It is no wonder, then, that those who deny the existence of purgatory tend to
touch upon only briefly the history of the belief. They prefer to claim that
the Bible speaks only of heaven and hell. Wrong. It speaks plainly of a third
condition, commonly called the limbo of the Fathers, where the just who had
died before the redemption were waiting for heaven to be opened to them. After
his death and before his resurrection, Christ visited those experiencing the
limbo of the Fathers and preached to them the good news that heaven would now
be opened to them (1 Pet. 3:19). These people thus were not in heaven, but
neither were they experiencing the torments of hell.
Some have speculated that the limbo of the Fathers is the same as purgatory.
This may or may not be the case. However, even if the limbo of the Fathers is
not purgatory, its existence shows that a temporary, intermediate state is not
contrary to Scripture. Look at it this way. If the limbo of the Fathers was
purgatory, then this one verse directly teaches the existence of purgatory. If
the limbo of the Fathers was a different temporary state, then the Bible at
least says such a state can exist. It proves there can be more than just heaven
and hell.
Argument: "Purgatory Not in Scripture"
Some Fundamentalists also charge, as though it actually proved something,
"The word purgatory is nowhere found in Scripture." This is true, and
yet it does not disprove the existence of purgatory or the fact that belief in
it has always been part of Church teaching. The words Trinity and Incarnation
aren’t in Scripture either, yet those doctrines are clearly taught in it.
Likewise, Scripture teaches that purgatory exists, even if it doesn’t use that
word and even if 1 Peter 3:19 refers to a place other than purgatory.
Christ refers to the sinner who "will not be forgiven, either in this age
or in the age to come" (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed
after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that,
when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a
righteous man’s work fails the test? "He will suffer loss, though he
himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor 3:15). Now this
loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved
there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering
("fire") there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains
this passage.
Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead:
"In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he
had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead
to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in
death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those
who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he
made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin" (2
Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help
those in hell. That means some people must be in a third condition, at least
temporarily. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that,
at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the
Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.
Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of
the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was
practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been
retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s
Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may
be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of
purgatory. Rather, any change in the original teaching has taken place in the
Protestant churches, which rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by
Jews and Christians.
Why Go To Purgatory?
Why would anyone go to purgatory? To be cleansed, for "nothing unclean
shall enter [heaven]" (Rev. 21:27). Anyone who has not been completely
freed of sin and its effects is, to some extent, "unclean." Through
repentance he may have gained the grace needed to be worthy of heaven, which is
to say, he has been forgiven and his soul is spiritually alive. But that’s not
sufficient for gaining entrance into heaven. He needs to be cleansed
completely.
Fundamentalists claim, as an article in Jimmy Swaggart’s magazine, The
Evangelist, put it, that "Scripture clearly reveals that all the demands
of divine justice on the sinner have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
It also reveals that Christ has totally redeemed, or purchased back, that which
was lost. The advocates of a purgatory (and the necessity of prayer for the
dead) say, in effect, that the redemption of Christ was incomplete. . . . It
has all been done for us by Jesus Christ, there is nothing to be added or done
by man."
It is entirely correct to say that Christ accomplished all of our salvation for
us on the cross. But that does not settle the question of how this redemption
is applied to us. Scripture reveals that it is applied to us over the course of
time through, among other things, the process of sanctification through which
the Christian is made holy. Sanctification involves suffering (Rom. 5:3–5), and
purgatory is the final stage of sanctification that some of us need to undergo
before we enter heaven. Purgatory is the final phase of Christ’s applying to us
the purifying redemption that he accomplished for us by his death on the cross.
No Contradiction
The Fundamentalist resistance to the biblical doctrine of purgatory presumes
there is a contradiction between Christ’s redeeming us on the cross and the
process by which we are sanctified. There isn’t. And a Fundamentalist cannot
say that suffering in the final stage of sanctification conflicts with the
sufficiency of Christ’s atonement without saying that suffering in the early
stages of sanctification also presents a similar conflict. The Fundamentalist
has it backward: Our suffering in sanctification does not take away from the
cross. Rather, the cross produces our sanctification, which results in our
suffering, because "[f]or the moment all discipline seems painful rather
than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness" (Heb.
12:11).
Nothing Unclean
Purgatory makes sense because there is a requirement that a soul not just be
declared to be clean, but actually be clean, before a man may enter into
eternal life. After all, if a guilty soul is merely "covered," if its
sinful state still exists but is officially ignored, then it is still a guilty
soul. It is still unclean.
Catholic theology takes seriously the notion that "nothing unclean shall
enter heaven." From this it is inferred that a less than cleansed soul,
even if "covered," remains a dirty soul and isn’t fit for heaven. It
needs to be cleansed or "purged" of its remaining imperfections. The
cleansing occurs in purgatory. Indeed, the necessity of the purging is taught
in other passages of Scripture, such as 2 Thessalonians 2:13, which declares
that God chose us "to be saved through sanctification by the Spirit."
Sanctification is thus not an option, something that may or may not happen
before one gets into heaven. It is an absolute requirement, as Hebrews 12:14
states that we must strive "for the holiness without which no one will see
the Lord."
NIHIL OBSTAT
IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
From time to
time consecrate an entire week to glorious St. Joseph, that he may offer
all you do to Mary, to Jesus, to the Most Holy Trinity, and that he may
dispose, according to his pleasure, all the fruits of your good works. 
