By: Pastor Doug
Today is the Remembrance Day of St. Joseph. Guardian of the enfleshed yet very vulnerable Word of God – Jesus. Jesus too had the experience of having an earthly father. What was Joseph like ? We know almost nothing about him. Matthew’s gospel tells us the most – he listened for God in his dreams. He wrestled with his conscience. He was loving. In Luke he is frightened by the disappearance of the boy Jesus who, it turned out, was in the temple.
My own father became a changed man after suffering a heart attack in his forties. Coming near to death woke him up from the dream he lived; work addiction, stony silence, emotional withdrawal. I got the miracle of seeing him open his mind and his heart to others.But not for too long. He died at 58. In the last of the living years he used to ask me to “ say a prayer” for him. Our relationship with our earthly fathers is a complex thing. Grace and grief ground together. Where is God in your memories, your relationship with your father?
What do you still have the chance to do, even if he is no longer here? Perhaps St. Joseph Day is a ‘thin place’ to reflect and to ‘say a prayer’.
