The Solemnity of St. Joseph!

It's an oasis in the desert, a Solemnity (read: "It's as big as a Sunday!") Today we're celebrating the earthly foster father of Jesus.

My beloved St. Joseph is the model husband and father ... giving of himself completely, pouring himself out in body and spirit, offering a total self-donation for his wife and foster-son. May he hear our prayers and cries for intercession, and may he intercede before the throne of God for our family, for all fathers, and for all who call on him with love and faith in the Savior whom he raised.

~~~~~

I find nothing sweeter to my imagination than to see the celestial little Jesus in the arms of this great saint, calling him father a thousand and a thousand times in his childlike language, and with a heart all full of childlike love.

~~ St. Francis de Sales,
from The Mystical Flora of St. Francis de Sales

Our St. Joseph statue, bundled up by Ramona and Betsy, a couple of winters ago.


(Image above is Georges de La Tour's "Christ in the Carpenter's Shop", 1645)