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<\/p>\nThere is a statue of St. Joseph holding the Sacred Heart. The heart is clearly visible on the child Jesus. I have always considered this to be the proper image of St. Joseph because of his title, \u201cmodel and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The popularity of St. Joseph seems to be increasing in the media. There is a modern icon of St. Joseph with the child Jesus in front of St. Joseph\u2019s heart. Jesus is blessing with his right hand while holding a dove with his left hand. A recent Nativity scene depicts St. Joseph as an important figure in the birth of Jesus. St. Joseph gently holds Jesus in his arms as Mary rests. Modern movies also highlight St. Joseph\u2019s important role as the father of Jesus and the guardian of the Holy Family.<\/p>\n
The members of the Chevalier Family invoke St. Joseph daily as a \u201cmodel and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart.\u201d However, it seems little has been written on his role in Sacred Heart spirituality. Scripture describes St. Joseph as a just and righteous man. The Jerusalem Bible describes him as a \u201cman of honor.\u201d As a just person, St. Joseph was a follower of the Mosaic Law. As a \u201cman of honor,\u201d St. Joseph was a man of integrity and compassion. He had the opportunity to expose Mary on the grounds of committing adultery. Instead \u201cunwilling to expose her to shame, [he] decided to divorce her quietly.\u201d With this in mind, St. Joseph must have had a deep love for Mary. His love and compassion transcended the law. He could have had Mary brought to shame and even death.<\/p>\n
Jules Chevalier and St. Joseph <\/strong><\/span> _ <\/p>\n Joseph, I do not wish to detract in any way from the honor due to you nor from the greatness of your prerogatives. I know that the angel said to you also, of the child to be born, that you would call him Jesus. You were present at the circumcision, giving assistance to Mary, and as a representative of God the Father, you joined with her in conferring the name of Jesus on the savior of the world. Besides, the glories of the Virgin of Israel are, in a sense, your glories\u2014to praise her is to praise you.<\/p>\n It is interesting how Jules Chevalier also identifies St. Joseph, who \u201cdistributes the treasures of the Heart of Jesus and wishes to enrich us with them.\u201d Additionally, the Founder honors St. Joseph as one to whom we \u201ctoo should have full confidence. St. Joseph is \u201cwilling and able to protect us . . . he regards us as his own children.\u201d He surrounds us with the ineffable tenderness of a real father.\u201d It seems our Founder had no doubt of St. Joseph\u2019s intercessory prayer for the Chevalier Family.<\/p>\n St. Joseph and Sacred Heart Spirituality<\/strong> Union with the Heart of Christ <\/strong> Pilgrimage of Faith <\/strong> Obedience and Charity <\/strong><\/span> Fidelity <\/strong> Go to Joseph <\/strong><\/span> First, we go to St. Joseph with prayer. We place ourselves under his guidance and protection.<\/p>\n Second, we go to St. Joseph and with him place ourselves in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, those suffering from illness and oppression, the homeless, the unemployed and those displaced persons who are forced to abandon their homes and move to foreign soil because of conflict, persecution, or natural disasters. St. Joseph is very much aware of these things. He and his family were not part of the rich class of his time. He had to live under a regime that forced him to travel to Bethlehem for the census. Later, he, Mary and Jesus became a displaced family. They left their home to escape Herold\u2019s rage. They migrated from Judea to Egypt a foreign land, until the death of Herod. In these difficult times today, St. Joseph offers us hope and presents to us the compassionate and liberating Heart of Jesus whose Spirit empowers us to seek and to work for the cause of justice and peace in the world. But St. Joseph\u2019s example also reminds us that commitment to the work of justice in the world must always be for the love of God and for the love of God\u2019s people.<\/p>\n We go to St. Joseph to be faithful to our vocation. Saint Joseph offers to us the gift of perseverance. Saint Joseph is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household. Daily, St. Joseph as a faithful disciple \u201cembraced his vocation day after day, in the tough spots and in the continued demands of self-forgetfulness that his vocation entailed. Indeed, this is our vocation as members of the Chevalier Community.<\/p>\n We go to St. Joseph that we might have the inner dispositions to desire to do God\u2019s will. True obedience to God\u2019s will \u201cconsists in allowing the grace of God to have full play in us.\u201d St. Joseph testifies to this as he answers the call to take Mary as his wife, to be the earthly father of Jesus, to go to Bethlehem, to go to Egypt and to Nazareth. At all times he was open to God\u2019s design for participating in the work of God\u2019s redemption through God\u2019s Son. Bishop Cuskelly notes that obedience involves mission (service), listening and sacrificing. We can see this in the life of St. Joseph. He listens to God\u2019s voice in his dreams and obeys God\u2019s voice. He serves his Divine Master by taking on the responsibilities of fatherhood, and he sacrifices and renounces his own will to the will of God. The Heart of God was always kept before his eyes. The Chevalier Family is called to do the same.<\/p>\n Our Founder wrote in 1897, \u201cIn the Society no one is a stranger, no one a foreigner, but all are brothers in the Heart of Christ.\u201d In this vein, St. Joseph invites us to his household. He welcomes us into a family united in love as one heart. But the focus is not on St. Joseph, nor Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Both he and she offer us their son, Jesus who loves us with a human heart. It is in his love that we have our vocation, and it is in his love that we are called to reach out to the human community. Both St. Joseph and Mary invite us to reproduce the sentiments of the Heart of Christ who is the \u201cwhole of perfection. It is unity, stability and peace.\u201d In His heart, in His peace and in His love, we find peace and love in the depths of our own hearts and in the hearts of others.<\/p>\n I am sure when St. Joseph met his Divine Master in heaven, he was greeted with a hearty, warm embrace and he heard the words, \u201cWell done good and faithful servant.\u201d Warren Perrotto, MSC. USA Province<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Model and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart There is a statue of St. Joseph holding the Sacred Heart. The heart is clearly visible on the child Jesus. I have always considered this to be the proper image of St. Joseph because of his title, \u201cmodel and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart.\u201d The popularity of St. Joseph seems to be increasing in the media. There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":3902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3916"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3925,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions\/3925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ametur-msc.org\/website\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhile there have been many theological reflections in recent decades\u2014and rightly so\u2014on Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and her closeness to the Heart of her Son, this does not mean that St. Joseph is to be excluded from our charism and spirituality. Jules Chevalier saw him as a \u201cFriend of the Sacred Heart.\u201d (In 1860, the Founder purchased a stained-glass image of St. Joseph, which expressed this title.) It was to be placed in the chapel dedicated to St. Joseph. The founder wanted the feast of St. Joseph to be celebrated as the patron saint of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. When the side wall collapsed at St. Joseph\u2019s altar in 1857, the Founder and Emile Maugenest prayed for assistance to the \u201cglorious Spouse of Mary, to that friend so faithful to the heart of Jesus\u201d to obtain funds for the chapel\u2019s repair. St. Joseph heard their prayers: \u201cA charitable friend, without expecting it gave the amount sufficient to repair the disaster.\u201d Indeed, they prayed to their \u201cpowerful Protector,\u201d and \u201cSt. Joseph procured it.\u201d In later years, the Founder changed the title to the present one: Model and Patron of Those Who Love the Sacred Heart \u201cin accord with the dignity of the Glorious Patriarch.\u201d While writing his book on Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, our founder might have realized that St. Joseph also needed to be recognized. He seems to interrupt his writing with the following interjection:<\/p>\n
\nWe go to St. Joseph with prayer. We place ourselves under his guidance and protection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nSt. Joseph holds an essential position in the charism and spirituality of the Chevalier Family.<\/p>\n
\nThere is no doubt that St. Joseph was close to and held a deep love for and devotion to his son Jesus. Like Mary, there is no doubt that St. Joseph was united with the Heart of Jesus. In the Holy Family, there was a \u201cunion of souls\u201d and \u201ca union of hearts with consent.\u201d It would also be fair to say that St. Joseph held many things in his heart, as did Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Close to Jesus, he must have gone through a formation process to understand the will of the Father better. St. Joseph was \u201cinvolved in the same salvific event: he was the guardian of the same love, through the power of which the eternal Father \u2018destined us to be his sons through Jesus Christ.\u2019\u201d From the depth of his soul, in love to do the will of God, St. Joseph freely entered the Marriage Covenant, giving of himself to Mary and to the Heart of Christ. The Holy Family was marked by the free giving of self to one another in love. As a truly human family formed in Covenantal Love, it is certain that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph shared joys, wonder, and awe among themselves before God and others.
\nWe can be assured that St. Joseph lived a \u201cSpirituality of the Sacred Heart.\u201d As one who listened to God\u2019s will and desired to act upon it, the Heart of God profoundly touched St. Joseph. From the depths of his heart and soul, St. Joseph \u201ccooperated in the fullness of time in the great mystery of salvation and is truly a minister of salvation.\u201d He desired to please God and those with whom God has entrusted to his loving care. He experienced and believed in God\u2019s unconditional love.<\/p>\n
\nLike Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, St. Joseph made a pilgrimage of faith. From the beginning, Joseph must have spent time praying and reflecting on the wonderful events he was experiencing. As was noted earlier, Joseph must have been like Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, pondering things in the depths of his own heart. He must have also talked to Mary about these events. He must have been saddened when he heard the words to Mary at the Presentation in the Temple and wondered about how this prophecy would be fulfilled: \u201cBehold this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.)\u201d Additionally, Joseph surely must have feared harm from Herod to Jesus and to Mary and so took extra precautions to protect them.
\nJules Chevalier wrote, \u201cI am in his hands; he will do with me what he judges fit; I will drink of the chalice he gives me; and I will always submit to his most holy and adorable will.\u201d We can surely apply these words to Joseph\u2019s sentiments. He was not discouraged by events in his life. His desire to do God\u2019s will and the mutual love of Jesus and Mary sustained him in hope.
\nMission
\nSt. Joseph was called to a profound and unique mission. He was called to participate in the mystery of redemption. It was he whom God had chosen to take Mary as his wife and to be a father to the human Jesus. His mission was one of fatherhood in the fullest meaning of the word. This relationship places him very close to the Heart of Christ and to his Blessed Mother. As a son, Jesus gained knowledge and grew in grace from his parents. As father and mother, St. Joseph and Mary received knowledge and grace from their son. In the depths of their hearts and souls, there was a formation of an interior life based on the mysteries of the Incarnation, the mystery of Divine Love and the mysteries of what it means to be fully human. Indeed, \u201cinserted directly in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Family of Nazareth has its own special mystery. And in this mystery as in the Incarnation, one finds true fatherhood: the human form of the family of the Son of God, a true human family, formed by the divine mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nOur founder wrote, \u201cThose who enter our Society may perhaps suffer others to surpass them in learning, in mortification, and in poverty, however they will not allow themselves to be outdone by anybody in obedience and mutual charity. In that way they will show themselves to be genuine sons of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.\u201d St. Joseph is a model of consecrating \u201cour will and intellect entirely to God.\u201d St. Joseph accepted as truth coming from God the very thing [Mary] had already accepted at the Annunciation. By this obedience of faith man [woman] freely commits himself entirely to God, making the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals and willing assenting to revelation given by him. This statement, which touches the very essence of faith, is perfectly applicable to Joseph of Nazareth.
\nThe temperament and sentiments of St. Joseph were indeed, \u201cTo do your will is my delight; my God, your law is in my heart.\u201d The interior life of St. Joseph was one of readiness and openness to serve his Master. St. Joseph most likely put aside his personal dreams and aspirations as husband and father. God chose him and called him to a new and unique relationship as husband and father. God called him to be a shepherd and guardian of Mary and her son. He was called to be guardian of the mystery of God. You find no argument or protest against the angel\u201d s message: \u201cWhen Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.\u201d What St. Joseph did was the \u201cclearest obedience of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nBishop Cuskelly, MSC notes that true fidelity \u201cconsists in being ready to follow in whichever ways God may lead. It does not rule out fidelity to the past, or observance in the present, but it puts the accent on the personal gift of oneself\u2014a personal surrender\u2014in trust to a personal God.\u201d Does not St. Joseph reflect these words as a model example of one who is the faithful servant of the Father and the faithful servant of the Son? Saint Joseph did not forget his heritage as a son of Abraham. St. Joseph brings his child for circumcision and confers on him the name Jesus. With his spouse, he presents Jesus in the Temple to fulfill the law, \u201cEvery male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord.\u201d Each day, St. Joseph was ready at every moment to surrender his will to the will of God\u2019s plan of salvation. In St. Joseph, we see what Bishop Cuskelly describes as a \u201creadiness to take risks to follow the loving God wherever he leads.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIn some churches, one can still see the message, \u201cGo to Joseph,\u201d on the cloth, that covers his altar. St. Joseph, Model and Patron of Those who Love the Sacred Heart, invites us to come to him and like Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, he will lead us to the Heart of Christ. Like our founder, we can approach St. Joseph in confidence, love, and hope.<\/p>\n
\nMay the Sacred Heart of Jesus Be Loved Everywhere! Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Pray for Us. St. Joseph, Model and Patron of those who love the Sacred Heart, Pray for us.<\/p>\n