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Sirach 17:24-29

Today’s reading from Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) is a call to the sinner to repent and come back to God. There is an implication by the author that the Lord will postpone death for a repentant sinner so that he may fulfil his destiny of praising God on earth. In the light of Christian teaching, the gift of final penitence extends this divine purpose into a life with God that never ends.

If we truly repent of the wrong we have done, we can be sure that God’s door is open to receive us back. This is beautifully expressed in Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. A realisation of this should help to dispel any loss of hope which we might have in God’s mercy and compassion.

So we are urged to turn back to the Lord, to convert, to pray in his presence—to leave behind our sinful ways and thereby lessen the effects of our wrongdoing.

Turn back to the Lord and forsake your sins;
pray in his presence and lessen your offense.

We do that, above all, by totally identifying ourselves with God and hating “intensely what is abhorrent”, i.e. morally loathsome.

Reflecting the belief of the Jews at the time, the author asks how we can give praise to God once we are in “Hades” (in Hebrew, Sheol, the place of the dead). Sheol (Hades) was understood as a place of no escape and a place where one could no longer actively serve and love God. We are told:

From the dead, as from one who does not exist, thanksgiving has ceased; those who are alive and well sing the Lord’s praises.

We believe:

How great is the mercy of the Lord
and his forgiveness for those who return to him.

If we die in communion with God, he will take us to himself and we will live in unspeakable happiness with him forever.

How foolish of us, then, to act sinfully instead of spending our lives in the praise and service of God! But there is still time for us to turn away from the wrongs we do and to experience the compassion and the forgiveness of God, which is waiting there for us. Only then can we give God the praise which is his due. We cannot praise God and at the same time act in ways which are contrary to his wishes for us. Now is the time to give praise to God when we have the opportunity.

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Note: The Feast of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated in connection with World Communications Day. We are invited to reflect upon the diversity of media of social communication and how they influence our lives.

Commentary on Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20 Read The Ascension of the Lord (Year B) »

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Commentary on Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

The theme of today’s Mass is clearly love. When we see a film or television programme, when we hear people singing on the radio, the subject is very often about love. Even in the church, we speak frequently about love. What is love?

According to today’s Second Reading, the centre of all living is love. It is not only the centre of Christian living, but needs to be at the centre of any kind of life.

Our Christian faith should not be just seen as a religion, something tacked on to an otherwise secular life, which in most respects is the same as everyone else’s. Our Christian faith is a vision of how a human life should be lived in fullness. It teaches us how to be a real person. St Irenaeus said a very long time ago, “The glory of God is a person fully alive” (Gloria Deo homo vivens). And a person is only fully alive when full of love – because such a person then reflects best the God who is love.  

What is love?
It would be well at this point to say what we mean here by the term ‘love’. The Greek word that John uses in his Gospel and in the three letters attributed to him is agape (Greek, pronounced ‘ag -ah-pay’). The Christian writer CS Lewis wrote a small book called The Four Loves in which he discusses four different ways of loving. The first of these is eros, which is physical love, the love of young lovers, the love of Romeo and Juliet. The second is philia, which in a way is the highest form of love. It is the love of friendship, is essentially mutual and shared, and touches every aspect of a person’s being expressing itself in a total transparency through intimacy and affection, and covers marriage and all other genuinely close relationships. To experience such a relationship is one of the great blessings of life. The third love mentioned by Lewis is prautés, sometimes translated as ‘gentleness’ or as ‘meekness’ (as in “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”, Matt 5:5). It suggests someone who is unassuming, undemanding and totally submissive to what God wants, but also warm and caring.

Finally, agape describes a love which reaches out to others without expecting anything in return. Such is the love of God for his creation. God’s love is poured out in abundance on every single creature and it continues to flow out whether there is a response or not. This is the love which the father in the story of the Prodigal Son shows to the wayward son who has gone far away and wasted all his father’s gifts on a debauched life. It may come as a shock to some to be told that the love of God for the Mother of Jesus and for the most immoral person you can think of is exactly the same! God is love; it is his very nature; he cannot not love. What then is the difference between Mary and some depraved person? It is in the person’s response. Mary listened to Jesus. He once said, referring to his mother:

Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it! (Luke 11:28)

Mary said an unconditional ‘Yes’ to God at her annunciation. She opened her heart to the agape of God.

It is that love of agape which we, too, are supposed to have. It is this love that enables us to love our enemies and want to be reconciled with them. We are not asked to love them with eros or philia. That would not make sense. To love them with agape is to want the very best for them, to want them to reform, to be changed, to be healed of hate and negativity.

Where there is God, there is love
St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) once said:

Where there is love, there is God.

She did not say, “Wherever there are Christians, there is God” or “Wherever there is a Christian church, there is God”. But, wherever there is a person filled with real agape-love for others, God is there. That is the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He was called “good” not because he was a religious person, but because he reached out in compassionate love for someone who was supposed to be his enemy. So we can find agape, and therefore God at work, in a Protestant, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim. Maybe that person has no religious faith at all. He or she may be an agnostic or even an atheist. Wherever in the world there is truth, compassion, justice, true freedom and peace, God is certainly there.

What gives value to my life?
Perhaps I have been baptised, perhaps my family has been Catholic for a long time, perhaps I fervently go to Mass every Sunday, perhaps I carefully keep all the Ten Commandments, yet if I do not really love and reach out in solidarity to brothers and sisters, whoever they are and wherever they are, I do not have God’s life in me. Paul put it well when writing to the Christians of Corinth:

If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
(1 Cor 13:1-3)

God loves me unconditionally, but that love is not fully realized in me if I am not passing it on to others.

One commandment
In today’s Gospel, Jesus does not say, “Love me, or love God as I have loved you”. No, he says:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

If we really love our brothers and sisters, including strangers and even enemies, we do not have to worry if we love God. But if we do not love everyone unconditionally, then there is no other way we can claim to love Jesus. We need to love those God loves (with agape) and God loves every single person without exception, even the most wicked.

So I do not really have to worry and ask, “Is it a sin to do, say or think such a thing?” Or, “Does the Church allow me to do this?” Rather, let me ask this way: “When I do, say or think such and such, am I really a loving person?” In one way, to be a Christian is terribly simple. I do not need to study in a university or an institute of theology. If I really love people as Jesus loves me, I will definitely graduate – with honours! 

In practice, of course, it is not always so easy. We need to learn slowly how to love people unconditionally. Our lower instincts and the prevailing culture around us think differently. Yet we need to learn that the way of Jesus is in fact more in tune with our deeper nature. It is more human to be loving than hating (yet we often excuse our outbursts or anger or hatred as being ‘only human’). Deep down, we all want to love people. We do not like to hate people, and hating does terrible things to our minds and our bodies. We like people to be our friends and do not like them to be our enemies.

Yet, because of our past experiences, the influence of family and other people around us, the pressures of our society and our traditions, we often do not know how to love, do not know how to forgive, do not know how to be reconciled.

Love and commandments
The love that Jesus speaks about is very different from the love sung about in songs in music videos, or much (most?) of the love on TV and the movies. Sometimes when we love, we will be very happy. But sometimes loving the poor, the sick, the criminal will not be very easy. If we have to look after a relative who is close to dying, it can be a very painful experience, especially if that person is difficult or unresponsive to our attentions. But that is love.

Love is not a question of keeping rules and commandments. Love is a way of life. It is an internal attitude which influences every single thing we do and say and think.

The love of a Christian needs to be unconditional. Sometimes people will love us back; sometimes they will not. Sometimes, even though we want to love people, they may reject us. If they do reject us, we need not necessarily think that we have done wrong. When people cannot return genuine love, it is they who have the problem. All the more reason why we need to reach out to them. People often learn to love by being loved.

The most important thing is not that I am very clever, very successful, very rich, very famous… The most important thing is that I am someone who really loves. When I genuinely love others, there will always be some who do not love me back, but there will be others who will really respond in love. And it may be that my love has empowered them to be loving too. To be able to reach out in love and to experience being loved is God’s greatest grace.

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Andrew (Andrzej) Bobola was born in 1591 of an old and distinguished Polish family, in the Palatinate of Sandomir, Poland. In 1611, he entered the Jesuit order in Vilnius, Lithuania and was ordained a priest in 1622. He was subsequently appointed preacher in the Church of St Casimir, Wilno. After making his solemn vows on 2 June, 1630, he became superior at Bobruisk, where he worked wonders by his preaching and was much admired for his devotion during an epidemic of the plague.

In 1636, he began his work in the Lithuanian missions. During this period Poland was being ravaged by Cossacks, Russians, and Tatars, and the Catholic faith became the object of the combined attacks of Protestants and Orthodox. The Jesuits, in particular, suffered greatly.

Andrew first laboured in Vilmius, Lithuania and Warsaw, and later, from 1652, as an itinerant missioner in Eastern Poland. He served for several years as an adviser, preacher, and superior of a community in various places such as Polock, Lithuania, where he was probably stationed in 1655, and also in Pinsk, Lithuania (both now part of Belarus).

Bobola’s success in converting members of the Orthodox church stirred the anger of those in high authority. A Catholic nobleman, Prince Radziwell, offered the Jesuits a house at Pinsk, and here Andrew Bobola was stationed. His opponents tried in every way to hinder him in the exercise of his apostolate, even to extending their persecutions to attacks upon his person.

On 16 May, 1657, he was seized by two Cossacks and severely beaten in the village of Peredil, Lithuania. Tying him to their saddles, they dragged him to Janów, Poland where he was subjected to appalling tortures (amputated limbs, flayed skin, burn wounds, wood slivers driven underneath the fingernails, nose cut off). After having been burned, half strangled, and partly flayed alive, he was released from suffering by a saber stroke.

At the beginning of the 18th century, nobody knew where he had been buried. In 1701, Fr Martin Godebski, rector of the Pinsk college reputedly had a vision of Bobola. This caused Godebski to order a search for his remains. They were found completely incorrupt, and this was widely recognized as a proof of holiness. In 1719, the casket was officially reopened and the body inspected by qualified medical personnel (five physicians and pharmacists). It was still completely incorrupt, the flesh pliable and soft. His body was interred in the collegiate church of the Society at Pinsk, where it became the object of great veneration.

In 1922, Bolsheviks moved the corpse to Moscow, where it was put on display as an object of curiosity (due to its condition) in the Museum of Hygiene of the People’s Commissioners of Health. In May 1924, the holy relic—as a form of ‘payment’ for help during time of famine—was handed over to the Holy See. Since 17 June, 1938, it has been kept in Warsaw.

Declared Blessed by Pope Pius IX on 30 October, 1853, Bobola was canonised by Pope Pius XI on 17 April, 1938. On his feast day in 2002, he was declared a patron saint of Poland and of the Warsaw archdiocese. Andrew is remembered for his outstanding preaching and pastoral zeal.

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There is only one mention of Matthias in the whole of the New Testament and that is in chapter 1 of the Acts of the Apostles, whose author is always understood to have been Luke, the author of the Gospel bearing his name.

According to Acts, after the Ascension of Jesus to his Father, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. They gathered in a ‘room’ together with the women who had accompanied Jesus, along with Mary his mother and other relatives. This room was a refuge because, as friends and companions of Jesus, they were afraid that the authorities might come to arrest them. We are told they gathered there frequently as a group to pray.

A few days later, about 120 ‘believers’ gathered together and Peter spoke to them. He wanted to address the problem of choosing someone to replace the traitor, Judas, and keep the number of the Apostles at twelve, a number of significance, for these were the ‘patriarchs’ of the New Israel. Peter cites two passages from the Psalms:

Let his house become desolate,
and let there be no one to live in it… (Ps 69:26)

and

Let another take his position of overseer. (Ps 109:8)

The main qualification for the candidate to replace Judas was that he would be someone who had:

…accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us…

Two possible candidates were then chosen—Joseph, called Bar-Sabbas, and Matthias. The gathering prayed that God would indicate which of the two was his choice. They then cast lots, leaving the outcome to God, and the choice was Matthias, who was now included among the Twelve Apostles. And that, basically, is all we know about Matthias because there is no other mention of him in the Gospels or in any other New Testament writing.

Given such sparse information, it is not surprising that many stories and legends grew around Matthias. He has been identified with a number of other people or even given a different name. St Clement of Alexandria says some identified him with Zacchaeus, the tax collector from Jericho (Luke 19:1-10), while other sources identified him either with Nathanael (John 1:45, 21:2) or with Barnabas (the companion of Paul in Acts).

A legend holds he first preached the Gospel in Judaea and later in Ethiopia or Colchis (now Caucusian Georgia) and that he was crucified in Colchis. A marker placed in the ruins of the Roman fortress at Gonio (Apsaros) in the modern Georgian region of Adjara claims that Matthias is buried at that site. Another legend, according to Nicephorus (in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History), says Matthias preached the Gospel to “barbarians and meat-eaters in the interior of Ethiopia, where the sea harbor of Hyssus is, at the mouth of the river Phasis,” and that “he died at Sebastopolis, and was buried there, near the Temple of the Sun.” Still another tradition says that he was stoned in Jerusalem by Jews and then beheaded. But then again, according to Hippolytus of Rome, he died of old age in Jerusalem.

There is record of Gospel of Matthias, which is now lost. It is claimed that the Apostle’s remains are interred in the oldest German town, Trier, at the Abbey of St Matthias and were brought there through Empress Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine I (the Great). However, according to Greek sources, the remains of the Apostle are buried in the castle of Gonio-Apsaros, Georgia.

The Latin Rite celebrates his feast on May 14, while the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates it on August 9.

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Commentary on John 14:21-26

Jesus continues his farewell message to his disciples at the Last Supper. Those who really love him are those who carry out the teachings he has given them. Words alone will not be enough. Where there is real love from the disciple, Jesus will return that love and reveal himself to his disciple. He will do this by coming with his Father to dwell in that person.

Now it is Jude’s turn to ask a question. Jude, in the reading referred to as “Judas (not Iscariot)”, is also called “Judas son of James”; he listed among the Twelve in Luke 6:16 and he appears again (in a list) in Acts 1:13. He is believed to be the ‘Thaddaeus’ of Matthew 10:3 and Mark 3:18.

He wants to know why Jesus only reveals himself to his disciples and not to the world. Jesus is rather elliptical in his reply, but basically he is saying that anyone who responds to Jesus with love will certainly experience the love of Jesus (which is always there). The ‘world’ by definition in John’s Gospel consists of those who turn their back on Jesus, his message and his love:

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.

Jesus again reminds his disciples that everything he passes on to them comes ultimately from the Father and not from him alone. He is the mediator, he is the Way, he is the Word of God. And later, after he has gone, this role will be taken over by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

The word ‘paraclete’ (Greek, parakletes) has many meanings. It can mean a defence lawyer in a court of law who stands beside the defendant and supports him in making his case. It means any person who stands by you and gives you support and comfort. (See 2 Cor 1:3-7 where, in one brief paragraph, the word parakletes, in various forms of the original Greek, is used 7 or 8 times in the sense of ‘comfort’ and ‘support’). The Spirit will play that role in the Church after Jesus has returned to his Father…the Spirit continues in that role still.

The Spirit’s role is to help the disciples keep in mind all that Jesus has told them. He is the inner voice of God who will lead those who listen to the fullness of truth (something which no one possesses at any given time). The Spirit will help them to understand the full meaning of Christ for them and for the world. The Spirit will show them that Christ is the fulfilment of the Scriptures, will help them understand ever more deeply the meaning of Jesus’ life, his actions, his ‘signs’.

All this the disciples barely understand at this stage—a deficit that continues on into our own day.

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Commentary on Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

Now that Jesus is risen, it means that he is now in his people. Of course, Jesus is present in every person in some way:

…just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

But he is present in a special way in his own disciples, that is, those who accept him as their Lord.

Today’s Gospel says that our relationship to him is similar to a tree and its branches. The branch cannot be separated from the parent tree and continue to live. Is that why many, with the name of Christian, fall away? They have never really been part of the vine?

At the same time, it is not enough to be a branch on the tree. There must also be fruit produced. It is not enough to be a Christian and ‘fulfil one’s religious duties’.

What is that fruit of which Jesus speaks? We get an indication in the Second Reading, which is from the First Letter of John:

Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.

Love cannot just be in words and talk, not even in the most lovely-sounding prayers.

Love in deed
Love, he says, is shown in action and in deeds. Only when we are loving in our deeds can we know that Jesus lives in us. An example from the behaviour of electricity may help us to understand. If a person makes an electrical contact with his body while wearing thick-soled rubber boots, the electricity will not enter his body because it cannot go through the boots. On the other hand, if one were to stand bare-footed in several inches of water, then the electricity romps through the body (with rather disastrous results).

In other words, if electricity cannot go through me, it cannot go into me. And God’s love is similar. If the love he communicates to me does not pass on to others, then it does not come to me either. For me to experience God’s love, others have to experience mine. And I cannot make an exception of even one person, because God doesn’t.

And that is how we become ‘good’. We are good because God’s love and goodness is acting in and through us. We usually put it the other way: if I am first good, then God will love me. But God always loves me, whether my actions are good or bad. When I act for the good, it is because I allow his love to act in me; when I act badly, it is because I have blocked off his love.

We must abandon entirely the idea that we “earn” God’s love by our ‘good deeds’. God does not love me because I am good; I am good because God’s love is working in and through me to others.

Love in words
We might also add that loving in deeds sometimes includes words. Often many of us find it easier to express our love by doing something than by speaking directly to a person. Parents, for instance, often feel they show their love by providing the best education they can afford for their children, by showering them with gifts and pocket money. Yet, those same children may seldom hear real words of love and affection spoken by their parents. In that and similar cases, loving by one’s deeds becomes an escape for the more direct love expressed in sincerely meant words.

We have an excellent example of what we have been talking about in the experience of St Paul in today’s First Reading.  

Paul, by his words, said that he was now a disciple of Jesus and no longer a persecutor of Christians. They just did not believe him; they felt he was an infiltrator. They felt that the leopard does not change his spots and his words were not enough to convince them.

Only later, when he really proved his love of Jesus by his total service of the community were they ready to accept him. When he spoke out so strongly for Jesus that his life was threatened and his fellow-Christians had to send him away to a safer place, then they knew he was for real. When his new-found Christian faith bore fruit, when his love was shown in action, then they knew that Jesus was his Lord. And subsequently, of course, Paul was the instrument by which very many people became Jesus’ disciples. Truly, his was a fruitful life.

Am I dead or alive?
So, finally we have to ask ourselves:

It is only through the way that we live that people will be inspired to follow our footsteps and discover what we have discovered: the joy of knowing God’s love that comes to us through Jesus and his Church.

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Athanasius was born in Alexandria, in northern Egypt, in 293. He was a theologian, Patriarch of Alexandria, a Church Father, and a noted Egyptian leader of the fourth century. He is best remembered for his role in the conflict with Arius and Arianism. At the first Council of Nicaea in 325, Athanasius argued against Arius and his doctrine that Christ is of a distinct substance from the Father; in other words, that Christ was not divine. He is chronologically the first Doctor of the Church as designated by the Catholic Church and counted as one of the four Great Doctors of the Eastern Church.

Athanasius received his philosophical and theological training at Alexandria and was ordained a deacon by Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria in 319. In 325, he served as Alexander’s secretary at the First Council of Nicaea. As a recognised theologian and ascetic, he was the obvious choice to replace Alexander as the Patriarch of Alexandria on the latter’s death in 328, although the Arians were opposed to his appointment.  

In the first years he visited the people in his diocese and also the desert monks and hermits. Soon after, however, he became much involved in disputes with the Byzantine Empire and Arians and these would occupy much of his life.

In 335, he was deposed by the Arians at a meeting of bishops in Tyre. Later, he was exiled by Emperor Constantine I to Trier in the Rhineland. On the death of the emperor, Athanasius returned to Alexandria only to be banished again by the new emperor, Constantius II. Athanasius then went to Rome, but kept in contact with his people through his annual ‘Festal Letters’. Efforts by Pope Julius I for Athanasius’ reinstatement proved fruitless, but in 346 he was able to return to Alexandria. His return was welcomed by the majority of the people of Egypt, who saw him as a national hero.

This was the start of a ‘golden decade’ of peace and prosperity, during which time Athanasius assembled several documents relating to his exiles and returns from exile in the Apology Against the Arians. However, in 350, Athanasius was once again banished and took refuge in desert monasteries. During this time he wrote a number of important works attacking the Arians.

In 361, he was able to return again to Alexandria and made appeals for church unity, but in 362 there began another series of expulsions for him. Altogether he spent 17 of the 46 years of his episcopate in exile.

After long years of struggle he died peacefully 2 May, 373. He left behind a large corpus of writings and was hailed as “the pillar of the Church” by Gregory of Nazianzus. He is now numbered as one of the Doctors of the Church.  

Athanasius was originally buried in Alexandria, but his body was later transferred to Italy. During Patriarch Shenouda III’s visit to Rome in 1973, Pope Paul VI gave him the relics of St Athanasius. They are now preserved in the new St Mark Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Deir El-Anba Rowais, Abbassiya, Cairo, Egypt.

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Commentary on Genesis 1:26—2:3 or Colossians 3:14-15,17,23-24; Matthew 13:54-58

The Gospel reading from Matthew describes a scene where Jesus, now engaged in his public ministry, returned to visit Nazareth, the place where he grew up.   When he speaks, the people of the town are amazed:

Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?

They could not understand because, to them, he was the son of Joseph the carpenter and of Mary, and did they not know all his relatives?  And, because they thought they knew him, they rejected him. 

In response Jesus told them that a prophet will find honour everywhere except in his own place. And as a result, Jesus did not do any ‘mighty deed’ there because of their lack of faith and trust in him.  

It is an example of the saying “familiarity breeds contempt”.  The townspeople thought they knew Jesus but, of course, they did not.  But many others had no problem in seeing the presence of God in the words and actions of Jesus.

It is a problem we ourselves can easily have when we fail to recognise the voice of God in the words and actions of people with whom we are very familiar.  Yet that is the way in which God most often communicates with us.

The passage has been chosen, of course, because of its mention of Joseph as the local carpenter, a man who worked with his hands, and so today we remember especially all those in our society who also work with their hands, people who in the past and sometimes in the present, too, have been abused and exploited.  It is Joseph who gives dignity to what they do.

There is a choice of two First Readings.  The first is from the beginning of the Book of Genesis, in the first account of the Creation.  On the sixth and last day of the creation, God created all the animals which inhabit the earth.  He then created Man “in our image, according to our likeness” and gave Man dominion over all living things—on the earth, in the sky and in the sea.  All plants and animals of all kinds were also given to Man for his food.  God the saw everything that he had made and it was very good.

With the completion of the work of Creation, God then rested on the seventh day (as the Jews also refrained from doing any manual work on the Sabbath):

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

For countless generations humanity lived in harmony with the Creation entrusted to it—as do the rest of living things.  But in modern times, we have exploited our environment in ways that could bring about the destruction not only of ourselves, but of all life on our planet.  And, we have come to be more and more aware that ‘dominion’ does not mean exploitation and abuse, but ‘stewardship’ where, with our special abilities, we can not only preserve but enhance our environment. 

The Alternate First Reading from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians is a lovely description of the spirit in which we should live our lives and interact with other people, in other words, the spirit in which we should do our daily work. 

Paul says:

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Whatever is done in agape-love is good; in fact, wherever there is such love, God is there.  Secondly, we should:

…let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body [the body of Christ himself].

And whatever we do—in word or action—should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus while at the same time giving thanks to God for his countless blessings.

And whatever is done should be done with the utmost sincerity and integrity and with the aim of giving glory to God and not simply to please the demands of other people. Paul says that, just as Jesus himself came to be our slave-servant, where service is love in action, we should be:

…slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul.
(Eph 6:6)

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All we know definitely about Joseph can be found in the Infancy Narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  In Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus, Joseph is called a ‘just’ man, someone who always did what was right.

According to the Gospel, Joseph was descended from the house of King David, which is why he and Mary had to go to Bethlehem, David’s city, to register for the imperial census.   The Gospel also tells us that he was a carpenter from the village of Nazareth in the northern province of Galilee.  He became the husband of Mary and the guardian of her Son, Jesus. 

After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, the family returned to live in Nazareth.  Only two other incidents are mentioned where Joseph was present.  One was at the circumcision of Jesus eight days after his birth.  This was when they met Simeon who made prophecies about Jesus’ future and spoke of a ‘sword of sorrow’ which would pierce Mary’s heart.  The other was when Jesus, now 12 years old, went with Mary and Joseph to celebrate the Pasch in Jerusalem.  After the celebration, Jesus, unknown to his parents, stayed on in the city and he was only found by them three days later discussing with the teachers of the Law in the Temple. 

That is the last reference to Joseph in the Scriptures and it is not known when he may have died.  During the public life of Jesus, only his Mother is mentioned as being with him up to his death and resurrection.

Devotion to Joseph began very early in the Eastern Church but spread to the whole Church.  From the 9th and 10th centuries he is called foster-father of the Lord.  The first church dedicated to his name was in 1129 in Bologna, Italy.

It was Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) who first added the name of St Joseph to the liturgical calendar and Pope Pius IX placed the whole Church under his patronage in 1870. 

In 1989, Pope John Paul II wrote a letter on Joseph entitled Redemptoris Custos (Guardian of the Redeemer) describing “the person and mission of Saint Joseph in the life of Christ and of the Church.”

Joseph’s patronage covers the Mystical Body of Christ, the Christian family and schools, carpenters, fathers, labourers, and all individuals who appeal to his intercession, especially in the hour of death.

His major feast is celebrated on March 19 but today, May 1, there is a special memorial to Saint Joseph the Worker, to coincide with Labour Day (International Workers’ Day).