"Grant us, Lord, that we may serve You… with a pure heart like Saint Joseph, who gave himself to serve Your Son." While preparing for today's Solemnity by considering the devotion of the Seven Sundays of Saint Joseph, we meditated on the principle stated by Saint Thomas Aquinas, which applies to the election of Saint Joseph and to every vocation: "To those whom God chooses for a task, He prepares and disposes them in such a way that they are fit for it."
God’s fidelity is shown in the help He always grants—in any situation of age, work, health, etc., in which we find ourselves—so that we may faithfully fulfill our mission on earth. Saint Joseph responded delicately and promptly to the innumerable graces he received from God.
The Constancy of Our Response
We must meditate often on the fact that the Lord will never fail us; He always expects our firm correspondence: in youth, in maturity, and when the time separating us from God is no longer long; when everything seems to support our loyalty, and in those moments when it might seem as if everything invites us to break our commitments.
Not "feeling" God at times—or for long periods—or not feeling attracted to dedicating the best part of the day to Him, may perhaps be because the soul is full of itself and everything happening around us. In these moments, fidelity to God is fidelity to interior recollection, to the effort to leave that state, to the life of prayer—that prayer in which the soul remains alone, naked before God, and asks Him, or simply gazes at Him...
A Path Ever New
God expects from all of us an alert, loving attitude, full of initiative. The heart of the Holy Patriarch was always full of joy, even in the most difficult moments! We must ensure that our divine task on earth, our walk toward God, is always new—just as love is always new and original. As the poet says:
No one went yesterday // nor goes today // nor will go tomorrow // toward God // by this same path // that I travel. // For every man the sun keeps // a new ray of light // and God // a virgin path. Always eternally new.
Today we ask Saint Joseph for that interior youth that true self-giving always provides—the renewal from its very foundations of those firm commitments we once made. We also ask him for the many people who expect from us that interior joy, a consequence of our surrender, which may draw them to Jesus, whom they will always find very close to Mary.
HCD