Catholic Husband

While I normally post once per week, I wanted to write today because it’s a special day. While the World grapples with the Coronavirus pandemic and the United States economy grinds to a halt, we find ourselves celebrating the first day of Spring. Panic, fear, and uncertainty run through our minds, while nature seems not to have noticed. My azalea bushes are in full bloom, birds are chirping and building their nests, and the trees bring forth their new leaves.

Today is not just special because we are in the season of renewal. Today is a special day because it’s the Solemnity of St. Joseph. The Church holds this celebratory feast in such high esteem that the practices of Lent are suspended. Priests around the world wear their white chasubles to honor the purity of St. Joseph. The Gloria finds its way back into the sequence of the Mass. Today is a day of rejoicing and celebration in the middle of Lent.

Seven years ago, as I began work on this project, I specifically chose the Solemnity of St. Joseph as the launch date. My first post went live on the morning of March 19, 2013. At the time, I thought it appropriate to launch a blog about the vocation of marriage on the day that the Church honors the prototypical husband. A year later, I published my first book, _The Transition_.

This year, I’ve taken my devotion to St. Joseph to an entirely new level. Although I was given the middle name Joseph at my Baptism, I never developed a true relationship with the silent saint. In January, Fr. Donald Calloway published the book _Consecration to St. Joseph_, a 33 day devotional that, in one of its cycles, reaches its apex today.

For the past 33 days, I’ve been immersed in the theology of St. Joseph. I’ve learned about him, about his apparitions, about his place in the Church, and about the very special relationship he desires to cultivate with me. I’ve learned about his eagerness to point me to his foster son, and how only now is the Church beginning to fully understand and truly embrace his role in salvation history.

I’ve learned about his many titles, including Glory of Domestic Life and Terror of Demons. I’ve learned about how his life and virtue directly correlate not only to my vocation as husband and father, but to my role as a stay-at-home dad. I learned about the privileges of devotion to St. Joseph, including the attainment of virtue, escape from sin, increased love for Mary, the grace of a happy death, filling demons with terror, gaining health of body, and securing the blessing of children. These privileges are not the works of a genie, but gifts from a loving father for the sanctification of his children.

Today, I formalize our bond. Today, I entrust my vocation, health and well-being to his patronage. Today, I consecrate myself to St. Joseph, my spiritual father.

St. Joseph is humble in ways that I will never understand. He lead, protected, and provided for the Holy Family of Nazareth, but he never seeks credit or adoration. He desires nothing more than for the faithful to honor and respect Mary, his wife, and give themselves totally to his son, Jesus Christ.

May this Solemnity, in the midst of a difficult time, be a source of joy, celebration and peace for you and your family. May St. Joseph wrap you in the protection of his cloak and bring your intentions to Jesus. May the work of _Catholic Husband_ continue to be a source of knowledge, inspiration, and guidance for you in the years to come.

Difficult times for Catholics are here. From the founding of our Church, community has been a central aspect of our faith. We gather, from our many walks of life, on a daily or weekly basis to celebrate the Eucharist, together. Increasingly, civil and health authorities are recommending the suspension of large gatherings. How do we celebrate our communal faith when we’re precluded from gathering in our parishes?

As I think about the timing of this pandemic, I can’t help but be grateful for its timing. Major disruptions are only now beginning, but the advancement of technology in the past three decades allows us to be more connected than ever. Just this morning, I spent time in Eucharistic Adoration with my children by watching a livestream on YouTube.

While we may not be able to physically attend Mass for several weeks, we still have the opportunity to attend Mass every day. Many parishes are live-streaming their liturgies on YouTube, and I’ve even found some YouTube channels that record and upload their daily liturgies. Eucharistic Adoration live-streams are widely available, as are many reflections and homilies.

To be sure, watching Mass on YouTube is very different from attending Mass in person. I feel a sense of separation, having been unable to receive the Eucharist physically. We do have to endure this physical separation for a time. However, our faith can still be vibrantly expressed.

Continue to grow in your faith, find new ways of expression, and keep in prayer the sick and suffering throughout the world. There are many Catholics who are home-bound and rarely able to attend Mass. Let’s remember them in a special way as we share the unity of this burden.

In late December and early January, the Wuhan virus was a distant trouble. It was an outbreak isolated to a province of China that few of us had ever heard of. As the virus crosses borders and continues to spread, we can now see the clouds forming on our own horizon. No longer is this a problem for people we’ve never met; it’s rapidly approaching our own communities.

I, like most people, have been giving this idea of a global pandemic quite a bit of thought. Covid-19, this new coronavirus, is rather mild. It’s less deadly than other recent outbreaks, such as SARS and Ebola. For many people, they have a mild course and recover. So why is this outbreak so frightening and disruptive?

On the one hand, it’s because we’re defenseless. Modern medicine can provide supportive care, but as of now, it can’t stop it. Vaccines are in development and, hopefully by this time next year, we’ll have one. For right now, all we can do is sit by and watch.

Covid-19 also inspires fear because we still don’t understand it. It’s totally new, and while we understand some of its cousin viruses, we don’t fully understand how this one spreads. Until we do, stopping it will be a major challenge.

All of this brings me back to two thoughts. First, we are called to care about those suffering around the world. If we ourselves cannot go and minister to them, then we must commit our resources to support those who can. Giving to missionary societies or Catholic Relief Services shoudn’t only be done during Lent and at the end of the year. Our help is needed daily. Second, this is a perfect reminder of the theological virtue of hope. Hope is the belief that God will do all that He has promised. Trying closely into the virtue of hope is the necessity to place our trust in God. God is our provider and He alone sustains us.

These are challenging times, and while there is hope that we will soon have a handle on this pandemic, its effects are likely to be felt in the months to come. In this season of Lent and this time of uncertainty we have the perfect reminder to place our trust in a God who loves and cares for us.

I’m always caught off guard by my kids gaining new abilities. They rarely tell me that they’re ready to take on new challenges. Then one day, O ask them to do a job, and they just go off and do it. Teaching them about our faith happens in the same way.

Kids experience tremendous growth from year to year. So as we start Lent and the springtime of the Church, your kids and mine are probably ready for deeper spiritual experiences than they were last year. It also means that we are in the perfect position to teach them the truth about Lent.

Lent is a penitential season, but it’s also one of preparation for the greatest joy of the year. Think of it like spring cleaning your yard. After the harshness of winter, weeds crop up, sticks that feel lay in the yard, and the flowerbeds are a mess. We spend time, working hard, to bring our yard back up to standards. We do this so that we can see the flowers and fruits blossom and grow as a result of our work.

Lent is spring cleaning of our souls. It’s an annual reminder that we need to drop what must be dropped and eliminate what must be eliminated. We don’t do it for sadistic purposes, but as a part of our process of constant renewal. We shouldn’t present Lent to our children as a season of sacrifice, but rather as a season of preparation. Sacrifice is a part of that preparation and they help us to refine ourselves, even if it means giving up temporarily something that God has given to us.

Catholicism and theological principles are never easy to break down for children, but our kids are incredibly receptive listeners. Thankfully, at the center of the teachings of the Church are simple truths. We are fallen creatures, and Lent is an annual opportunity to get rid of the clutter in our spiritual lives.

I spent a few hours on Saturday morning at a men’s retreat. The theme of this year’s retreat was “faith alive.” As a part of Morning Prayer, we prayed Psalm 122. In that Psalm, the people are rejoicing because they are going to God’s house.

Every week, thousands of Chinese citizens flout their authoritarian government to attend underground Catholic Churches. They risk arbitrary arrest and detention because they are aflame with the Spirit and they are totally committed to life as a Catholic Christian.

Yet in the West, where the practice of our faith involves little risk, people are streaming out of the Church. We’ve fallen into the trap of complacency. Most Catholics in America don’t even bother to make it to Mass every week, or even every month. We squander the riches of our faith that so many have fought and died to live out to the fullest.

The Psalmist describes people who are overcome with joy at the mere suggestion that they got to the temple. It’s time for us to wake up from our deep slumber and let that joy fill our hearts on Sunday mornings once again. Lent is a great time to spark that fire.

Ash Wednesday is a little more than two weeks away. The joy of the Christmas season is fading as we prepare for forty days of fasting and penance. Not quite as exciting. The truth is, Lent isn’t gloomy at all. It’s like the Catholic New Year, an opportunity not to flippantly give up something, but rather to become better people.

St. Francis of Assisi was not the hippy that we make him out to be. He took an intentional, hard core approach to refining himself in the image and likeness of God. He did nothing half-way, and in fact, desired to endure humiliation and mortification than any of us would be willing to undergo. At the center of his belief, of his lifelong pursuit, was a spirit of constant renewal. He wanted to take each day and do the things necessary to make him a better follower of Christ than he was the day before.

We have to stumbling blocks in Lent. The first is perfectionism. Like at the new year, we set out a rigid schedule to radically reshape our spirituality and daily life. We plan out what we’ll give up and what we’ll add, only to fall apart by the first Friday. Then, having failed, we give up and let the opportunity of Lent pass us by.

Maybe we need a jolt, maybe we need to fix a spiritual sickness that we’ve ignored for too long. Far better to be focused and make progress than to overturn the cart under the weight of expectation.

The second stumbling block is the tyranny of the daily. Every Lenten observance should be practiced regularly, but not necessarily daily. If you never pray the Rosary now, setting a goal of praying it every day is going to be a real stretch. Making it a part of your regular habit of meditation or praying the Rosary with your family once a week might be a better fit.

The spirit of Lent is not the 40 day timetable with breaks on Sunday. The spirit of Lent is the same one shared by St. Francis, constant renewal. What is the one area of your spiritual life that needs a boost? Plan your Lent around that, and when Easter comes, keep renewing.