As I have written before, I took Joseph as my confirmation name and have a personal devotion to him. His feast day, March 19, is nine days away, counting from today, and so this seemed a perfect time to say my first novena. (We converts don’t know a novena from novella. This is a big deal for me.) I am using this text from the EWTN web site, and am praying for a private intention, but I would encourage anyone in special need to follow along with me. As St. Teresa of Avila knew, Joseph is a powerful saint.As a complement to this novena, each day I will post an excerpt from a homily for the Feast of St. Joseph, written by Karl Rahner, S.J. I found the homily in a book loaned me by Father Barnes (another good father). The book is Saint Joseph and the Third Millennium, edited by Michael D. Griffin, OCD. I commend it to your attention.
Here is the beginning of Karl Rahner’s homily:
The Catholic Church today [March 19] celebrates the feast of her patron, her heavenly protector. We can understand such a feast only if we believe in the communion of saints, if we know by faith that God is not a God of the dead, but a God of the living, if we confess that whoever has died in God’s grace lives with God and precisely for that reason is close to us, and if we are convinced that these citizens of heaven intercede for their brothers and sisters on earth in the eternal liturgy of heaven.
The meaning of such a feast can be grasped only if we believe that after death all the events of this earthly life are not simply gone and past, over and done with forever, but that they are preparatory steps that belong to us for eternity, that belong to us as our living future. For our mortality does not change to eternity in an instant; rather, it is slowly transformed into life.
[To be continued tomorrow]
Oh blessed St. Joseph, pray for us!
