Monday 4 March 2013

St Joseph - a saint for March

This is the editorial for the March edition of our parish magazines
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At this time of year our thoughts in church are inevitably focused on the end of Lent and our preparations for the Triduum – the great three days when we celebrate Jesus’ passing over from death to life. But tucked away in the Church’s calendar at the end of March is another significant celebration.

I feel sorry for poor old St Joseph. His feast day on the 19th March always falls in Lent, and often falls in or near Holy Week. Because of this, we tend to forget him. We’re busy enough already at this time of the year, we’re not going to do anything special to mark his day! This reflects a tendency to ignore the role of Joseph in the story of Jesus’ life more generally. But there are important things we can learn from Joseph.

In the life of St Joseph we see God working in unexpected ways, upsetting Joseph’s view of his relationship with Mary, and bringing about a family situation which was far from ordinary. Yet through the unusual, through the scandalous, God’s Son lived a human life. Do we recognise in our day that God defies convention and refuses to be tied to the expected and respectable?
 

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