In God’s hands
The finding of the child Jesus in the Temple. How does Saint Joseph react? Like Our Lady: without understanding.
Neither our Lady nor Saint Joseph understood Jesus. And yet they continued most faithfully to carry out their mission of caring for Him. It is an operative faith: a faith of abandonment into God's hands.
As our Father says, Joseph abandoned himself without reserve into God's hands. Let us ask the Lord today, right now, through the intercession of Saint Joseph — and turning also to Saint Josemaría, thinking of these words of his — to help us know how to abandon ourselves without reserve into God's hands.
His hands reach us in very different ways: in unexpected events, in familiar plans that can even sometimes seem monotonous… in a thousand different ways.
May we know how to abandon ourselves into God's hands, for we are in his hands, and we need this faith!
Meditation, 19-III-2026
Renewing our self-giving
We want everything that is ours to belong to God: our work, our rest, our leisure, our hopes, our sorrows and sufferings…, all of it. Because all of it can be his, and because the Lord wants it all to be his, since we are his, and we want to be ipse Christus, Christ Himself.
And we are, and we will be ever more so, if we renew our self-giving with the grace of God, which has never failed us and never will fail us. All the strength to fulfill this sincere desire for renewed fidelity is, naturally, where it has to be: in the Lord himself. And so we find all our strength in the Eucharist, the central moment of each day, in which we live an intimate and real union with Christ, a physical identification with the Lord. And it is there too that we live that Ite ad Ioseph, "Go to Joseph."
Today we can ask Saint Joseph to help us be souls of the Eucharist, to teach us to dwell in the Tabernacle, finding the strength to be faithful there; the daily strength to renew our fidelity, day after day, so that our renewal may truly be a "making-new" of faithfulness.
Meditation, 19-III-2025
Joseph’s name
"The name Joseph, in Hebrew, means 'God will add.' God adds unsuspected dimensions to the holy lives of those who do his will. He adds the one important dimension which gives meaning to everything, the divine dimension" (Christ is Passing By, no. 40). In the smallest things (our work, our prayer) we touch the whole world and reach immense horizons. Christ is the one who gives greatness to our works. He places that greatness there. And when we place in your hands, Lord, even the smallest thing, it reaches to the ends of the earth, to every region, to every task. Even in tasks that seem — and, humanly speaking, perhaps are — small and limited in time, You, Lord, can make them reach the remotest corners of souls near and far from us. Fidelity is worth everything. Today is a day to sing in our souls: "Fidelity is worth everything."
Meditation, 19-III-2025
Joseph’s intelligent obedience
In his letter on Saint Joseph, Pope Francis considered how “in every situation, Joseph declared his own fiat, like Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in Gethsemane.” When Saint Josemaría spoke about obedience, he often referred to Saint Joseph, because he saw in the patriarch a heart eager to listen, a heart that was attentive to God and also attentive to the circumstances and the people around him. For example, in speaking about the return from Egypt, he points out how “Joseph’s faith does not falter; he obeys quickly and to the letter. To understand this lesson of the Holy Patriarch better, we should remember that Joseph’s faith is active, that his prompt obedience is not a passive submission to the course of events.”
In this regard, our Founder appreciated the fact that Saint Joseph, being as he was a man of prayer, applied his intelligence to the situation facing him: “In the various circumstances of his life, Saint Joseph never refuses to think, never neglects his responsibilities. On the contrary, he puts all his human experience at the service of faith (...) That is the way Saint Joseph’s faith was: full, trusting, complete. And it expressed itself in an effective dedication to the will of God with an intelligent obedience.”
We can understand why Saint Josemaría, especially for those called to be saints amid the changing and challenging situations of this world, stresses the need to learn an intelligent obedience that is integrated into our personal freedom.
Pastoral letter, 10-II-2024
Into Egypt
"Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him" (Mt 2:13).
It is a tremendous setback: God Himself has to flee because they want to kill Him. Saint Joseph arranges everything to set out quickly, in the middle of the night, without even waiting for dawn, not knowing whether their exile would last weeks, months, or years.
We can imagine that our Lady and Saint Joseph would have begun their journey with some anxiety, yet without complaint, with the quiet joy of doing God's will and the peace of knowing themselves to be with Him.
Let us ask Saint Joseph for that readiness to act on whatever the Lord suggests to us, even when at times it may seem senseless or come as an unwelcome surprise.
We want to imitate the Holy Family and set out in that new direction: a new job, a new set of circumstances, a new person to help.
Faith will move us to set out toward the Egypt of the unexpected.
Book: In the Light of the Gospel — 29 December 2019
Under the same roof
"Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?" (Jn 6:42).
In the simplicity and greatness of Saint Joseph, who was a craftsman like so many others, we discover the traits of many others who know themselves called by God to live everyday life with Him, with everything that involves, including surprises and worries.
Saint Joseph lived under the same roof as God. We might think that this makes him seem unlike "a craftsman like so many others." And yet, we pray: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof." But if we let Him in, He enters. He needs only to say the word to heal us (cf. Mt 8:8).
Today especially, together with the whole Church, we contemplate Joseph, a just and faithful man. Let us turn to his intercession, that he may help us to respond to the immense love of Jesus Christ each day, throwing wide open the doors of our home, of our heart. And may this response move us to serve others and spread the joy of the Gospel.
Book: In the Light of the Gospel — 19 March 2018