On the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, and in the Year dedicated to the Saint by request of Pope Francis, Fr. John Connor, LC, the General Director of the Legionaries of Christ, sends the following letter to all members of the Congregation regarding the figure of Saint Joseph, highlighting some of the virtues to which the Legionaries are invited to follow.
Thy Kingdom Come!
Rome, March 19, 2021
Saint Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary
To the Legionaries of Christ:
Dearly beloved in Jesus Christ:
I send you a warm greeting from Rome during this Lenten season, in which we prepare to live fervently, united to the Lord, the mysteries of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, together with the entire Church.
As you know, on the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church, Pope Francis has proclaimed a special year dedicated to Saint Joseph “to perpetuate the Church’s dedication to the mighty patronage of the Custodian of Jesus… in which each faithful, following his example, may strengthen daily their faith life in full compliance with God’s will” (Decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary, December 8, 2020). The Holy Father has granted particular indulgences for this jubilee year so that the faithful may receive special graces through the intercession of Saint Joseph, amidst the human and social tribulations afflicting the world.
Therefore, I write this letter to invite you to take advantage of this grace period offered by the Church and thus renew, as Legionaries, the devotion we must profess to the one who, along with Saint Michael the Archangel, is our primary protector (CLC, 7).
Keeping before us the figure of Saint Joseph, I would like him to inspire us in some Christian virtues that are also typically Legionary, helping us to live our vocation to holiness and our mission to extend the Kingdom of Christ in the world.
1. Pope Francis, in his apostolic letter Patris Corde, written on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church, presents him as a model in his total dedication to the service of his specific vocation and mission. “The greatness of Saint Joseph lies in the fact that he was the husband of Mary and the father of Jesus” (Patris Corde, 1); a vocation and mission he accepted wholeheartedly, embracing the Lord’s salvific plan entirely. Saint Joseph lived his vocation as a service, a service to the mystery of the Incarnation, making his life a total gift of himself to God, through daily dedication to Jesus and Mary. His existence was an unconditional donation of his being, his abilities, and his possessions, to make them available to the plan of merciful love that the Father entrusted to him.
The example of Saint Joseph also invites us to give ourselves completely, always moved by love, to our own specific vocation and mission. We know that the offering of our life is lived day by day in the loving acceptance of the task entrusted to us through obedience. The Lord asked Saint Joseph to give himself and care for Jesus and Mary in silence, in work, and in prayer. His life was not very conspicuous before men. He exercised his profession diligently and perfectly, always seeking the greatest good for his son and wife. It was in the faithful fulfillment of this mission entrusted by the Heavenly Father that Saint Joseph, supporting the action of the Holy Spirit, achieved his own sanctification.
Also, each of us has been entrusted with an apostolic mission in the Legion, or we are in a specific stage of formation on the way to the priesthood. It is there that we must sanctify ourselves, and it is there that our own donation takes place. What matters is not so much the position each one holds, but the spirit and love that one puts into what one is responsible for doing for the good of the common mission. Saint Joseph lived his in charity, forgetting himself, with great inner peace, knowing that his life was pleasing to the Father, while he watched in amazement how Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and grace before God and men (cf. Lk 2:52). He knew that his vocation, like that of Saint John the Baptist, required him to remain in the background so that Jesus could illuminate all men with His grace.
We do not know many specific vicissitudes of how Saint Joseph’s life unfolded, but we can imagine him very close to Jesus, accompanying Him to the synagogue, introducing Him to the world of work, opening Him to the social relationships of his age and time. His life revolved around Jesus and Mary. What mattered to him was the good and education of Jesus and pleasing Mary, his beloved wife, above his own tastes or interests. He knew how to be the grain of wheat that died to bear abundant fruit in the life of the Holy Family.
The figure of Saint Joseph encourages us to make the Kingdom of God present in the world, often in hidden ways, in silence, with humility and simplicity, always giving ourselves consciously and enthusiastically to others, to the Church, to the Legion, and to Regnum Christi (cf. CLC, 18).
2. Saint Joseph was the legal father of Jesus. Moved in dreams by the revelation of an angel to accept Mary as his wife, he renounced biological paternity to assume a spiritual paternity in relation to Jesus. This renunciation of biological paternity is also what we do, called by God to a celibate and chaste life for the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. CLC 27, 3rd; CVV 176 and 178). Our paternity is also a true spiritual paternity, capable of generating, thanks to faith and the strength of self-giving love, many children for the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. CVV 73).
Today, the world needs spiritual fathers who, like Saint Joseph, reflect the face of the Father; who guide children along the sometimes tortuous and complicated paths of life; who give peace, confidence, firmness, and security. God calls us to be fathers, that is, educators, teachers in faith, hope, and love; shepherds who lead and accompany with wisdom, prudence, and decision, so that they may reach vocational fullness in their own state of life.
Our paternity requires profound formation and emotional maturity, continuous concern for the good of the children, knowing how to sacrifice for them, and being by their side when needed.
The priest is called to represent in the midst of the people of God the divine paternity, exercising authority rooted in love. For this, he must assume a role of responsibility, which requires making, when necessary, just decisions for the good of his children. The spiritual father must show his children the way of salvation; he must be the good shepherd walking before his sheep. Paternity, goodness, and responsible demandingness under the action of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates, guides, and strengthens in this high mission.
The love of a father is the culmination of love, and we ourselves experience this love. We are loved by God with Fatherly love. Jesus saw reflected in His earthly father the face of the divine Father. We are also called to love souls with Fatherly love. Paternal love, while supporting, also knows how to leave the proper freedom to the child; the father who loves his child does not exempt him from his task but launches him to assume freedom with responsibility and maturity.
I entrust to Saint Joseph and confide to him the spiritual paternity of the Legionaries. May Saint Joseph grant us to have new generations of Legionaries who joyfully and responsibly assume their mission as spiritual fathers, humble, dedicated with passionate love as he did.
3. Model of faith. Saint Joseph, the Gospel of Saint Matthew tells us, was a just man (Mt 1:19). The just man, in biblical vision, is one who fulfills the commandments of the Lord; first of all, the commandment to love God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength (cf. Dt 6:4). The just also fulfilled the other precepts of the Law of Moses. But it was not mere external compliance, but an act of love and faith to the God of the Covenant. The just lives by faith, lives by obedience in faith. This is how Saint Joseph lived his vocation and mission: in faith. He, who was the custodian and depositary, along with Mary, of the mystery of the Incarnate God, had to live his vocation in the chiaroscuro of faith, as a pilgrim in faith toward the eternal goal.
Being the depositary of the divine mystery, he was also a protagonist in its realization in history: “Saint Joseph is the first to participate in the faith of the Mother of God and, doing so, supports his wife in the faith of the divine annunciation” (Redemptoris Custos, 5). He had to live in faith not only the extraordinary acceptance of Mary’s divine motherhood, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in the manger, the adoration of the shepherds and the Magi from the East, the flight to Egypt, the long hidden life of his Son in Nazareth; but also the everyday occasions of faith in that continuous contact with Jesus that, on the one hand, seemed like a normal boy, but in whom the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation was hidden.
In our Christian, religious, and priestly life, we are not lacking occasions to live faith. From the very birth of divine vocation, which is embraced in faith, through the various formative stages and priestly ministry, our entire life is an exercise of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God, nor to persevere in a vocation like ours, in which deep motivations and great ideals that move us belong to the supernatural world. Living from the perspective of faith will sometimes place us in positions contrary to a worldly, earthly view, typical of those who consider things only in the light of reason, without the broad and luminous dimension that radiates from faith.
It is not that Saint Joseph, as a good father and husband, did not have to use his human talents, his human experience, his human reason to live his mission. Of course, he had to! But this alone would not have been enough; he had to elevate himself to that higher level of faith, which knows how to complete reality from God’s perspective.
Faith involves a great abandonment of ourselves because, deep down, we have to trust in God, credit His plans. This is what Saint Joseph had to do when accepting the angel’s revelations that asked him to take Mary as his wife or to flee hastily to Egypt. Faith is a detachment from one’s own judgment in favor of a deeper, more profound, more mysterious vision, typical of those who look at and face the various realities of life from God.
May Saint Joseph help us, the Legionaries, in this moment of our history, to be men of faith as he was. Our life is also a pilgrimage in faith, a looking beyond our own personal aspirations to embrace a divine plan that we do not always understand, but which is greater and more beautiful than we could have imagined. May Saint Joseph grant us, in this year dedicated to him, a more lively, operative, luminous faith, more rooted in God.
4. His creative courage. Saint Joseph faced his life with courage and determination and, at the same time, with creative responsibility. Pope Francis calls this series of virtues that Saint Joseph lived, as responsible for the life of his son Jesus and as husband of Mary, “creative courage.” He had to face the various situations of Jesus’ life with brave, decisive spirit, and with a creative spirit. No prior recipes were given to him, which could simply be applied. He had to confront the decisions presented to him daily, seeking the good of the Holy Family, with courage, with determination, with creative intelligence.
Amid the uncertainties that the Father allowed in the early years of Jesus’ earthly life, “heaven intervened trusting in the creative courage of this man, who, when he arrived in Bethlehem and found no place where Mary could give birth, settled in a stable and arranged it until it became as welcoming as possible for the Son of God who was coming into the world (cf. Lc 2:6-7). Facing the imminent danger of Herod, who wanted to kill the Child, Joseph was alerted once again in a dream to protect Him, and in the middle of the night organized the flight to Egypt (cf. Mt 2:13-14)” (Patris Corde, 5).
Like any family, that of Nazareth had to face numerous concrete problems, similar to those faced by our own families, those currently facing families amid the difficulties of the pandemic, and those faced by migrant families, those living in hardship or conflict. Saint Joseph was solving day by day the problems that arose, and he did so with courage, with determination, without fear. Surely, he could have felt fear that events might slip out of his hands, but he possessed the courage of those who trust in Providence and know that the necessary help the Father gives to His children will never be lacking. The various human circumstances that arose, Saint Joseph faced with boldness and creative imagination, with the fantasy typical of charity, with that extra touch of imagination that love gives in all things it touches.
Our life as men consecrated to an apostolic mission also requires a lot of creative courage, entrepreneurial daring. The challenges presented by apostolic works, the carrying out of the common mission, together with the other branches and lay members of Regnum Christi, also demand from us a great energy, a determined and daring spirit, that is not intimidated by difficulties, that does not fear failures, and perseveres in trying to bring Christ’s love to our secularized societies. Although we know that grace’s action is always prior and primary, our collaboration is necessary. Our work, sometimes silent like that of Saint Joseph, but well done and, above all, offered out of love, will contribute, as only God knows, to the extension of Christ’s Kingdom in the hearts of men.
Creative courage manifests especially where there are particular difficulties or obstacles: “Difficulties are precisely those that bring out resources in each of us that we never thought we had” (Patris Corde, 5). We are all aware of the great challenges awaiting us in fulfilling our apostolic task. Faced with these challenges, instead of losing heart, we must know how to face them with serenity, decision, realism, humility; not only with a defensive attitude but also with those “weapons” of God that Saint Paul speaks of: truth, zeal, faith (cf. Ef 6:13), and that “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Ef 6:17).
The Legion and Regnum Christi have always been characterized by their missionary ardor, by giving an evangelizing impulse to the works they undertake, by having creative courage in the face of the challenges of a modern culture sometimes hostile to the Gospel. With sincere humility, we are called in this stage of history to live this virtue of creative courage (cf. CVV 326). Let us ask Saint Joseph to help us fulfill our mission with the same spirit of daring and creative imagination with which he lived. That mission, although full of challenges, we can always accomplish as long as “that same creative courage of the carpenter of Nazareth, who knew how to transform a problem into an opportunity, always trusting in Providence” (Patris Corde, 5).
5. Blessed Pius IX proclaimed Saint Joseph Patron of the Church on March 19, 1870. These were not easy times for the Church, and precisely in those circumstances, the Pope thought of Saint Joseph as a special protector and patron of the Church. Because of the sublime dignity of being the legal father of Jesus and the husband of the Virgin Mary, for sharing so many years of life with Jesus Christ, and for the sublime dignity conferred by God upon him, “the Church has always held in high honor and praise Blessed Joseph, after the Virgin Mother of God, his wife, and has implored his intercession in difficult moments” (Pope Pius IX, Decree of December 8, 1870).
Saint Joseph will help us, in the peculiar circumstances of the present moment, to exercise that guardianship work in favor of the Church, which each one is called to carry out from their own position. The best way to safeguard her is to love her personally and passionately, putting ourselves at her service and living with awareness of our own mission within her (cf. CLC 14).
Adherence to the Church and the Pope has characterized the spirituality of the Legion and has been decisive in our recent history to overcome difficult periods of the past. With a spirit of grateful children, let us humbly offer the specific gifts that our charism can bring in these moments. Let us be at the same time faithful and grateful children. Never cease to live our filial and obedient relationship
