This blog is posted on the Solemnity of St. Joseph. He is the
patron saint of the Archdiocese of Edmonton (under his title of Joseph the
Worker), as well as the patron of Canada. I think we could also call him the
patron saint of course corrections.
This “good and righteous man” offers us a beautiful witness. He
sets out on a course of life together with Mary. While engaged to her, he
learns that she is with child. Knowing that he is not the father, he draws what
would be for any of us the obvious conclusion. He decides on a course
correction and determines to “dismiss her quietly”. However, God reaches out
and summons him to correct the correction. Through the message of an angel, who
appears to Joseph in a dream, God calls him to stay the course, as it were, and
take Mary as his wife. Yet through this call God also announces that there is,
indeed a course correction about to happen, one that will impact not only the
direction of Joseph’s life but also the trajectory of history itself. The
child, Joseph is told, has been conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit and will
save the world from its sins. In other words, the course of sin on which
humanity had been launched by the disobedience of Adam and Eve is about to be
corrected - indeed, radically re-directed - toward salvation. Joseph could not
have fully understood what all this meant and how God’s plan would unfold.
However, he trusted God and placed his faith in the ability of God to do all
that he promised. In consequence, Joseph surrendered to the role he was called
to play in the accomplishment of the loving and merciful course correction that
would happen through the child now entrusted to his care.
What course corrections do we need? Do the directions we have set
for our lives need to be changed? We achieve clarity answering these queries
when we pose the question thus: are we moving away from or toward Jesus and his
Church? That’s the issue in a nutshell. We engage the question with particular
seriousness in the season of Lent, yet it is perennially urgent. Living apart
from the grace of Jesus Christ is to be following a course that leads to
perdition. That is what it means to say that Jesus is the world’s one and only
Saviour. So, repentance and conversion mean surrendering to whatever course
correction is necessary to begin walking with the Lord in the obedience of
faith. Let’s not hesitate to turn to our patron, St. Joseph, and ask him to
pray that the needed re-direction of our lives will take place.
He is also the patron of Canada. Let us ask him to intercede for
our beloved country also, since it is manifestly in need of a serious course
correction. This necessity has been on display for quite some time in for
example the decisions of both Parliament and the courts to allow unlimited
access to abortion, to change the definition of marriage, and to legalize
assisted suicide and euthanasia. In recent months, we are witnessing the
country’s trajectory move - with alarming speed - in the direction of
steamrolling over Charter rights, in particular that of freedom of religion and
liberty of conscience. Just consider the moves in Ontario to force doctors to
give effective referrals for practices that run counter to their conscience, or
the intractable insistence of the federal government to link the granting of
summer grants to the forced attestation of agreement to what it mistakenly
claims is the “right” to abortion. A parishioner recently asked me, with
obvious anguish, “When am I going to get my country back?” When, indeed? In our
nation, which is supposed to be a liberal democracy, the State is leading us in
a decidedly illiberal direction. The needed course correction cannot happen
soon enough.
Good St. Joseph, pray for us! Lead us by your prayers to the
setting of our lives on the right course.
