The Year Of St. Joseph . . . Consecration To Redemptoris Custos
By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Pope Francis proclaimed a Year of St. Joseph last December, and this runs until December 8, 2021. To mark this event, he issued an apostolic letter entitled Patris Cordes (“With a Father’s Heart”). The letter marks the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s declaration of St. Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church in 1870. This declaration was made regarding St. Joseph because of his position as the foster father and guardian of Christ, a position which is paralleled in the economy of salvation such that he, with regard to the Body of Christ, that is the Church, exercises a spiritual paternity.
Even before the 1870 declaration, Pope Pius IX, had, in 1847, extended the feast of St. Joseph’s patronage to the whole Church, and his Successor, Pope Leo XIII, also strongly supported devotion to St. Joseph. He praised the dedication of the month of March to the saint, and also proclaimed his wonderful holiness, which he said was second only to the Blessed Virgin. A special indulgenced prayer to St. Joseph was included in the Pope’s encyclical on devotion to him, Quamquam Pluries, which was issued in 1889, and he ordered that it be part of the public recitation of the rosary during October.
Succeeding Popes have also honored St. Joseph in various ways. In 1909, Pope St. Pius X approved a litany in honor of St. Joseph, and in 1919, Pope Benedict XV issued a proper preface for the Feast of St. Joseph, while also adding the invocation of his name to the Divine Praises. In 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical against Communism in which he described St. Joseph as the heavenly patron of the campaign of the Church against world Communism, and later on, in 1955, Venerable Pope Pius XII instituted the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, to be celebrated on May 1.
Pope St. John XXIII was very devoted to St. Joseph, and took him as the Protector of the Second Vatican Council, while he also, on March 19, 1961, issued an apostolic letter dedicated to the saint. In addition, he added the name of St. Joseph to the Roman Canon of the Mass.
Pope St. John Paul II was likewise keen to promote devotion to St. Joseph, and his apostolic exhortation, Redemptoris Custos (“The Guardian of the Redeemer”), dated August 15, 1989, focuses on St. Joseph in relation to the life of Christ and His Church. In this exhortation, the Pope said that “Joseph showed Jesus by a special gift from Heaven, all the natural love, all the affectionate solicitude that a father’s heart can know.”
In June 2013, Pope Francis decreed that St. Joseph’s name should be inserted into Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV of every Mass, and now he has declared the current Year of St. Joseph.
These actions of recent Pontiffs show us that the Holy Spirit is urging the Church to a much greater devotion to St. Joseph, and this is no doubt a response to the increasingly troubled times for the Church and the world which we are living through.
So the papal initiative of the Year of St. Joseph means that we should be focusing on the saint at this time, and there are numerous books, and resources on the Internet, to help us do that. In addition, we are now in March, the month dedicated to St. Joseph — and indeed his major feast day is celebrated as a Solemnity on March 19 — and so this is a particularly appropriate time to deepen our knowledge of, and devotion to, the saint.
Apart from March as the month dedicated to St. Joseph, the Church has also traditionally regarded Wednesday as the day to be devoted to him, in the same way that Fridays are dedicated to Christ, and Saturdays to our Lady. In particular, the first Wednesday of each month is seen as having particular importance as regards devotion to St. Joseph in what is known as the Nine First Wednesdays devotion.
This devotion is essentially concerned with having St. Joseph as the patron of a happy death, given the fact that his own death — in the company of Jesus and Mary — was so auspicious. Probably the best way to partake of this devotion is to make the effort, if possible, to attend Mass and receive Holy Communion on each of the nine first Wednesdays for nine months. This should be done with the intention of honoring St. Joseph and of petitioning him for the salvation of the dying, and for a happy death for oneself and one’s family members. Apart from this devotion, there are also numerous prayers and novenas which can be offered up to St. Joseph.
One such devotion which we can take up at this special, and indeed critical time, when there is so much need for dedication and prayer in the Church, is the special consecration to St. Joseph which parallels the 33 Day Marian Consecration of St. Louis de Montfort to Our Lady.
The idea is to say special prayers each day for 33 days leading up to one of the feast days of St. Joseph either on March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, or May 1, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. For the latter feast, it is necessary to start the novena on March 29 in order to finish the 33 days by May 1.
This site has good resources for making the consecration and also celebrating the Year of St. Joseph: https://yearofstjoseph.org/
Information about Fr. Donald Calloway’s book on the 33 Day consecration, Consecration to St. Joseph: The Wonders of Our Spiritual Father, can be seen here: https://yearofstjoseph.org/consecration/ and here: https://www.consecrationtostjoseph.org/
And there is more info, here about the Year of St. Joseph: https://www.facebook.com/consecrationtostjoseph, and here, on the WAF-USA website: https://www.bluearmy.com/yearofstjoseph/.
St. Teresa of Avila was particularly devoted to the saint, and said, regarding “the glorious St. Joseph”:
“I wish I could persuade everyone to be devoted to the glorious St. Joseph, for I have great experience of the blessings which he can obtain from God. I do not remember that I have ever asked anything of him which he has failed to grant. I am astonished at the great favors which God has bestowed on me through this blessed saint, and at the perils from which he has delivered me, both in body and in soul.
“To other saints, the Lord seems to have given grace to help us in some of our necessities. But my experience is that St. Joseph helps us in them all; also that the Lord wishes to teach us that, as he was himself subject on Earth to St. Joseph, so in Heaven he now does all that Joseph asks. This has also been the experience of other persons whom I have advised to commend themselves to the saint….
“I only request, for the love of God, whoever will not believe me will test the truth of what I say, for he will see by experience how great a blessing it is to recommend oneself to this glorious patriarch and to be devout to him.”
At this difficult time, then, let us turn in prayer to St. Joseph and consecrate ourselves to him.
- + + (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.)