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VI. PATRON OF THE CHURCH IN OUR DAY
28. At a difficult time in the Church's history,
Pope Pius IX, wishing to place her under the powerful patronage
of the holy patriarch Joseph, declared him "Patron of the
Catholic Church." For Pius IX this was no idle gesture, since
by virtue of the sublime dignity which God has granted to his most
faithful servant Joseph, "the Church, after the Blessed Virgin,
his spouse, has always held him in great honor and showered him
with praise, having recourse to him amid tribulations."
What are the reasons for such great confidence?
Leo XIII explained it in this way: "The reasons why Saint
Joseph must be considered the special patron of the Church, and
the Church in turn draws exceeding hope from his care and patronage,
chiefly arise from his having been the husband of Mary and the
presumed father of Jesus ... Joseph was in his day the lawful
and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family ... It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph's dignity that in
the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family
of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly
patronage the Church of Christ."
29. This patronage must be invoked as ever
necessary for the Church, not only as a defense against all dangers,
but also, and indeed primarily, as an impetus for her renewed commitment
to evangelization in the world and to re-evangelization in those
land and nations where--as I wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles
Laici--"religion and the Christian life were formerly
flourishing and... are now put to a hard test." In order to
bring the first proclamation of Christ, or to bring it anew wherever
it has been neglected or forgotten, the Church has need of special "power
from on high" (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8): a gift
of the Spirit of the Lord, a gift which is not unrelated to the
intercession and example of his saints.
30. Besides trusting in Joseph's sure protection,
the Church also trusts in his noble example, which transcends all
individual states of life and serves as a model for the entire
Christian community, whatever the condition and duties of each
of its members may be.
As the Constitution on Divine Revelation of
the Second Vatican Council has said, the basic attitude of the
entire Church must be that of "hearing the word of God with
reverence," an absolute readiness to serve faithfully God's
salvific will revealed in Jesus. Already at the beginning of human
redemption, after Mary, we find the model of obedience made incarnate
in Saint Joseph, the man known for having faithfully carried out
God's commands.
Pope Paul VI invited us to invoke Joseph's
patronage "as the Church has been wont to do in these recent
times, for herself in the first place, with a spontaneous theological
reflection on the marriage of divine and human action in the great
economy of the Redemption, in which economy the first--the divine
one--is wholly sufficient unto itself, while the second--the human
action which is ours--though capable of nothing (cf. Jn 15:5),
is never dispensed from a humble but conditional and ennobling
collaboration. The Church also calls upon Joseph as her protector
because of a profound and ever present desire to reinvigorate her
ancient life with true evangelical virtues, such as shine forth
in Saint Joseph."
31. The Church transforms these needs into
prayer. Recalling that God wished to entrust the beginnings of
our redemption to the faithful care of Saint Joseph, she asks God
to grant that she may faithfully cooperate in the work of salvation;
that she may receive the same faithfulness and purity of heart
that inspired Joseph in serving the Incarnate Word; and that she
may walk before God in the ways of holiness and justice, following
Joseph's example and through his intercession.
One hundred years ago, Pope Leo XIII had already
exhorted the Catholic world to pray for the protection of Saint
Joseph, Patron of the whole Church. The Encyclical Epistle Quamquam
Pluries appealed to Joseph's "fatherly love... for the
child Jesus" and commended to him, as the "provident
guardian of the divine Family," "the beloved inheritance
which Jesus Christ purchased by his blood." Since that time--as
I recalled at the beginning of this Exhortation--the Church
has implored the protection of St. Joseph on the basis of "that
sacred bond of charity which united him to the Immaculate Virgin
Mother of God," and the Church has commended to Joseph all
of her cares, including those dangers which threaten the human
family.
Even today we have many reasons
to pray in a similar way: "Most beloved father, dispel
the evil of falsehood and sin... graciously assist us from heaven
in our struggle with the powers of darkness... and just as once
you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God's
Holy Church from the snares of her enemies and from all adversity." Today
we still have good reason to commend everyone to Saint Joseph.
32. It is my heartfelt wish that these reflections
on the person of Saint Joseph will renew in us the prayerful devotion
which my Predecessor called for a century ago. Our prayers and the
very person of Joseph have renewed significance for the Church
in our day in light of the Third Christian Millennium.
The Second Vatican Council made all of
us sensitive once again to the "great things which God
has done," and to that "economy of salvation" of
which Saint Joseph was a special minister. Commending ourselves,
then, to the protection of him to whose custody God "entrusted
his greatest and most precious treasures," let us at
the same time learn from him how to be servants of the "economy
of salvation." May Saint Joseph become for all of us
an exceptional teacher in the service of Christ's saving mission,
a mission which is the responsibility of each and every member
of the Church: husbands and wives, parents, those who live by
the work of their hands or by any other kind of work, those called
to the contemplative life and those called to the apostolate.
This just man, who bore within himself
the entire heritage of the Old Covenant, was also brought into
the "beginning" of the New and Eternal Covenant in Jesus
Christ. May he show us the paths of this saving Covenant as
we stand at the threshold of the next Millennium, in which there
must be a continuation and further development of the "fullness
of time" that belongs to the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation
of the Word.
May Saint Joseph obtain for the Church and
for the world, as well as for each of us, the blessing of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit.
Given at Rome, in St. Peter's, on 15 August--
the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary--in
the year 1989, the eleventh of my Pontificate.
Joannes Paulus II
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