Archive for March, 2006
In March, Remember St. Joseph as Well as St. Patrick
Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
“The Catholic Miscellany”
By Jeff Kirby
Mid-March is the time of year for wearing green and honoring St. Patrick, but it is also the time for honoring another saint who has often been shown wearing green.
St. Joseph’s feast day on March 19 tends to be overshadowed by St. Patrick’s two days earlier. Depicted in the Bible as a righteous and humble man, St. Joseph probably doesn’t mind being overlooked. But the great bishop, St. Patrick, would tell us to give the guardian and foster father of Jesus more attention.
Following the Jewish custom, Jesus was circumcised and named on the eighth day of his life. According to custom, the man who was legally known as the child’s father named the infant, thereby claiming him/her as his own. When Joseph named the Christ Child “Jesus,” a name that means “savior,” he claimed him as his foster son. And for his whole life, Joseph taught, protected, and loved Jesus as his foster son.
Sometimes in the church, we present our saints as untouchable. We make them more mythical beings than real humans who had struggles. At times we forget their humanity.
With St. Joseph, we can understand his fatherly affection and love for the baby entrusted to his care. We can empathize with his anxiety in having to quickly take the Christ Child and Mary to Egypt, and relate to his human fear for the child and his mother throughout Jesus’ early life.
We can comprehend Joseph and Mary teaching the toddler Jesus how to walk and talk, and how to pray and worship. We can imagine Joseph taking Jesus into his carpentry shop so he could watch him work and learn his trade.
Sometimes we may wonder why St. Joseph was silent when, after three days of searching, he and Mary finally found the young Jesus teaching in the temple. We can speculate about the emotions in his heart, and only guess what he may have wanted to say to his foster son that difficult day.
No words of St. Joseph are recorded in the Bible. He is always seen in the company of angels or of Mary. Tradition says that he died before Jesus began his public ministry.
Since tradition says that he was flanked on either side by Jesus and Mary on his deathbed, St. Joseph has been invoked by the church as the patron of a happy death.
It makes sense that Joseph would die before Jesus’ public ministry began. Joseph had been appointed the protector of the Christ Child, and we can only imagine what reaction he would have had to the Passion and what it would have done to his custodial heart to see his foster son so mistreated and abused.
St. Joseph loved Jesus. He sought throughout his life to be a faithful servant of God, and a lover of Mary and Jesus, the God-Man. In this way, perhaps we can see St. Joseph as a protector of parenthood, marriage and family life. In him, we see the example of the high vocation and the intrinsic goodness of these institutions.
Jeff Kirby is a seminarian studying in Rome. He is a member of St. Joseph Church in Columbia, S.C.
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Lent a Journey to Christian Renewal
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
“The Post and Courier”
By Jeffrey Kirby
Recently, the season of Lent began with the stark observance of Ash Wednesday. In the ceremony, while ashes are placed on the person’s forehead, he or she is told, “Remember, man, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
To the unexpecting participant, such a ceremony might seem harsh on one hand and morbid on the other. What is the point behind this ancient Christian custom? What is the purpose behind Lent?
Ash Wednesday starts the season of Lent, which is a time for the Christian community to reflect on difficult topics, such as death. Since everyone will die, the enduring questions of dying, death and the afterlife continue to provoke curiosity and inquiry. They deserve attention and some resolution within the person. The conclusions reached on these final questions will shape and help determine the way the person lives and interacts with life and its occasions of joy and struggle. How does Ash Wednesday and Lent contribute to this search?
Lent points to Easter, the celebration of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and his victory over sin and death. Without the joy of Easter, Ash Wednesday and Lent could be truly depressing with their ongoing references to death and dying. With Easter and its authentic assurance of the Resurrection, however, the Lenten season respects the person’s call to another state after death. Its lessons and customs, such as the ashes, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, find their meaning within the belief in life after death. The season can offer the willing person several
points for consideration on the questions surrounding the mystery of death and the afterlife.
Death is humanity’s question because it appears to be a contradiction to the life it leads now. It seems to be at odds with humanity’s will to live. Death relativizes the freedom that the person normally cherishes and protects. Aroused by fear, the person sees dying as a terrible evil. It’s assumed he or she must permanently let go of everything and everyone.
These are not abstract ideas or emotions. They are very concrete and immanent, because when death is spoken of, the question also includes my death and what happens to me when I die.
Within the forum of this restlessness and fear, the Christian faith presents the full reality of human existence, during and after this life. Through Ash Wednesday and Lent, it asserts that death does not simply come at the end of one’s earthly life, but it is something that accompanies the person through life itself.
Life is a journey, and death is a process. It does not need to be feared. Death doesn’t have to be a haunting grim reaper, but it can be an amicable companion on the person’s journey of life. Death doesn’t have to be suffered through, it can itself be lived. Dying is a transition, like childbirth, which only initiates a new phase of life for the person. Death is not an end, nor a final goodbye.
Robert Baker, the local Catholic bishop, in his recent pastoral letter, “The Redemption of Our Bodies,” wrote that the “peculiar event” of each person’s death is faced “by God’s grace.” It is that grace that Ash Wednesday and Lent provide to the Christian believer.
It is the means through which the Christian faith presents these considerations to the persistent questions on death, dying and the afterlife.
Jeffrey Kirby, a seminarian from the Catholic Diocese of Charleston, is studying in Rome at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
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