A Book Review… A Gateway To Devotion To St. Joseph
By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father, by Fr. Donald Calloway (Marian Press, Paperback and Kindle).
In writing Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father, Fr. Donald Calloway has produced a much needed work in which he succeeds in bringing out the immense significance for Catholics of St. Joseph, the foster father of Christ and husband of our Lady.
The book is divided into three parts — the first of these deals with a 33 Day preparation for Consecration to St. Joseph which parallels the similar De Montfort Consecration to Our Lady. The second part is entitled, “The Wonders of our Spiritual Father,” and has numerous readings about the saint which are designed to supplement particular days of the consecration process and thus round out the reader’s understanding of St. Joseph. The third part contains various prayers to the saint.
In his introduction, Fr. Calloway makes the bold claim that we are living in the “time of St. Joseph” and it can be said that the contents of this work do indeed justify such a remark.
The author shows how devotion to St Joseph in the Church has been gradually building up over the centuries to the point that we are now in the midst of a papally proclaimed “Year of St. Joseph.” As Fr. Calloway shows, this devotion has in fact accelerated over the last century and a half, such that the Church has done more to promote St. Joseph during this period than in whole of the previous 1,800 years.
But this devotion to St. Joseph is not just an exterior one, but rather is something we are meant to live out in our own lives, and for Fr. Calloway this means in particular that we should all be making a total consecration to St. Joseph, while at the same time working to gain a much greater appreciation of his spiritual fatherhood.
This, he argues, is necessary not least because of the increasingly virulent attacks we are seeing on marriage and the family, which mean we should turn for help to the head of the most perfect of all earthly families, the Holy Family.
Fr. Calloway also argues that St. Joseph, as the “first missionary,” is essential to the very necessary process of re-evangelizing the world by the Church. Thus, since he is the Guardian or Protector of the Church, we need his spiritual help if this re-evangelization is to succeed; and the first step in this process is for individual believers to consecrate themselves to St. Joseph. This consecration means having the saint as your spiritual father, who in turn will love, protect, and guide you, his protégé.
Each day of the 33 days of consecration has spiritual advice and information about St. Joseph, along with quotes from some of the saints, as well as recommended prayers and litanies. Quite often the teaching given for each day is illustrated by examples from the lives of saints or holy people, such as St. Peter Julian Eymard or St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, or St. Francis de Sales, or a link is provided to the fuller material in the second section of the book.
Fr. Calloway has some very useful insights into the role of St. Joseph scattered throughout the book, and for example, the focus for the first day of the consecration process is answering the question, “Why Consecration to St Joseph?” To this question, the author replies that “Consecration to St. Joseph will help you become ‘Another Joseph’ for Jesus and Mary,” and that he will provide you with a model for loving Jesus, Mary, and souls.
So the fundamental purpose of this consecration is to bring us closer to our Lady and ultimately to God. By making this consecration, St. Joseph becomes our spiritual father and a model for our interior life. In addition, through this consecration we become members of the Holy Family on Earth, which prepares us enter the Holy Family in Heaven.
And as Fr. Calloway says, quoting St. Teresa of Avila, those who honor St. Joseph in a special manner make definite progress in virtue; and likewise, this devotion will also increase our love for the Blessed Virgin. This is because of the immense love St. Joseph had for our Lady on Earth, a love which has now been perfected in Heaven.
We can get an idea of St. Joseph’s immense holiness when we reflect on the fact he was, for the Holy Family, God the Father’s representative on Earth, and that he was thus gifted with all the necessary graces for such an exalted role. His headship of the Holy Family means he is the model of all fatherhood, a self-sacrificing, manly saint who was also a loving husband and father.
These are not just abstract ideas but mean that a true devotion to St. Joseph will help the men of today to become holy and chivalrous, to gain in strength, fidelity, heroism, and virtue, and see the saint as being truly a model for all men. Fr. Calloway also says that St. Joseph will help men to be chaste in a world engulfed in immorality and impurity, and likewise he will increase their zeal for Christ, and for justice. The same is true of the virtues of prudence and patience, which the saint practiced to a very eminent degree.
St. Joseph can also be a model in terms of the poverty he embraced for the love of God, Jesus, and Mary, to the extent that the Holy Family lived on divine Providence and in a state of detachment from the things of this world, living out a true poverty of spirit as well as actual poverty.
The book covers many other aspects of St. Joseph’s life, such as his role as a workman — which in turn enables the person devoted to him to become a diligent worker — his role as the patron of a happy death, and his role as patron of the home, a role which grew from the hidden homely life he led at Nazareth. Joseph lived for thirty years with Jesus and Mary and we can only imagine the extent of the love, intimacy and familiarity the Holy Family shared during that time.
And given the threats facing the family nowadays it is imperative that families, once again, model themselves on the Holy Family. As the author says, “A world filled with men like St. Joseph will experience a renewal of the social and moral order.”
The only real criticism that can be made of the book is the inclusion of material from messages allegedly from St. Joseph and given to Sr. Mary Neuzil in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1950s, as part of the alleged apparitions of Our Lady of America. These have not received any official Church approval, and indeed were recently declared to be non-supernatural by a commission of six bishops headed by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind.
Greater Devotion
To Jesus And Mary
Having said that, the inclusion of this material does not affect the overall worth of the book, which is sure to be an inspirational volume for many readers, and a means by which a very necessary devotion to St. Joseph can be promoted in the Church.
If Catholics can grasp the immense holiness of this saint, then that can only increase their veneration for our Lady, who was even more spiritually blessed as the virginal Mother of God. And likewise, it can only exalt their view of Christ Himself, as the incarnate and infinitely holy God-Man, who did not disdain to live a simple and poor life on Earth, with Joseph and Mary, despite His divine status.
Thus, as Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father maintains, a genuine devotion to St. Joseph can only lead to a greater devotion to both Jesus and Mary.
In sum, Fr. Calloway has written a very important book which could well be the gateway to much greater devotion to St Joseph in the Church, with all the benefits that will bring in its wake.
- + + (Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people, and the third in the series is due to be published next year — details can be seen at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk.)