Denver, Colo., Mar 8, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- One of the most prominent people in the life of Jesus Christ, St. Joseph, his foster father, is also one of the quietest. And as such, he can be one of the most overlooked people in the Bible and in the Holy Family.
But Fr. Donald Calloway is hoping to change that, because he thinks the world needs St. Joseph now more than ever. Calloway told CNA that he thinks people today are confused about meaning.
People often approach the priest “so confused about the times we’re living in when it comes to marriage and family, and you’ve got all this gender ideology stuff today. People are just really confused about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman.”
Because he has personally had a devotion to St. Joseph for a long time, Calloway said he started wondering several years ago whether there was a consecration to the foster-father of Jesus, similar to the popular consecration to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort.
If such a consecration already existed, Calloway wanted to promote it – he thought St. Joseph’s intercession and example were the antidotes to the confusion people were experiencing. But when he asked at the Vatican and various religious orders, he found that a consecration to St. Joseph did not yet exist in the Church.
“They said, no Father, that’s a great idea. But they said, no, we’ve never heard of anything like that. And so I said, well, I’m going to do it then,” Calloway said.
For the next three years, Calloway started researching, praying, and compiling a consecration to St. Joseph, the earthly husband of Mary and the foster-father of Jesus.
Because of the popularity of the Marian consecration, Calloway said he’s had Catholics ask him whether the consecration to St. Joseph would somehow take away from their consecration to Mary.
“The word (consecration) technically means setting something aside for a holy purpose. We consecrate altars, for example, because we’re going to use it for Mass. Or we consecrate people we have in religious communities and such,” he said.
“So when we consecrate ourselves to Mary or Joseph, we’re basically entrusting ourselves to their spiritual care because they’re our spiritual parents. …and the answer is no, because we’re not members of a one-parent spiritual family,” he said.
In his book, Calloway writes that consecration to St. Joseph means “that you acknowledge that he is your spiritual father, and you want to be like him. To show it, you entrust yourself entirely to his paternal care so that he can lovingly help you acquire his virtues and become holy…St. Joseph, in turn, will give those consecrated to him his loving attention, protection and guidance.”
The first person to entrust themself to the spiritual care of Joseph and Mary was actually Jesus, he added.
“And so we give ourselves to their care, just like Jesus did when he was growing up. He lived under their roof, he was under their care, and he didn’t just go to his mom, you know, he went to his dad as well to St Joseph. So that’s what it is, entrusting ourselves to St. Joseph’s spiritual fatherhood to help us grow in virtue and closer to Christ.”
The consecration to St. Joseph also shares some similarities to the consecration to Mary by Louis DeMonfort, Calloway added like the length (33 days) and the general format, which consists of daily reflections on the life and virtues of St. Joseph, as well as special prayers.
“In the 18th century, when (DeMonfort) came up with his method, he made it 33 days, which is really good (because) if it was only like five or nine days, it’s not enough, you’re not going to really be able to cover a lot of material,” Calloway said.
On the other hand, “if it’s like three months long, people are going to be like, yeah, this is too much. So one month is a good amount of time. On a daily basis you go through some readings, you unpack some of the titles, the honors, the privileges associated with St. Joseph… and then you end every day with some prayers. And by the end of that, you’re like, wow, I really know this guy now. I really feel that I want him as part of my spiritual life.”
Like the Marian consecration, the St. Joseph consecration can be done individually or within a small group.
John De Guzman, a seminarian for the diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, told CNA that he found out about the consecration to St. Joseph through Fr. Calloway’s social media pages. He started doing the consecration by himself, and then was joined by one of his fellow seminarians.
When he spoke with CNA, he was on the 10th day of the consecration, and is set to finish on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph.
De Guzman said he was inspired to do the consecration because he felt that St. Joseph was the member of the Holy Family with whom he was the least familiar.
“They are the perfect model of a family, and why would I not want to get closer to the father? I’m getting closer to the mother. I’m getting closer to the son. Well, then why not get closer to the father, make this a perfect trinity?” he said.
De Guzman said he thinks the consecration has been so popular because the world is desperately looking for examples of manhood, fatherhood, and loving families.
Many of the issues that adults deal with today stem from some kind of instability in their own family of origin, he added.
“It can stem from tensions with the father, or a lack of a father, or the lack of some spiritual and emotional intimacy…the lack of human interaction and relationship with a father,” he said.
The consecration, on the other hand, is bringing to light “that Saint Joseph is your human father that you can really develop a relationship with,” he said.
“Saint Joseph was not immaculately conceived. Saint Joseph was not a perfect human being,” he said.
“If anything, Saint Joseph probably was in one of the more difficult situations of his time, being married to the most beautiful woman out there, (his foster) son is the Lord. For me, that would probably be a playground for temptations where the devil can attack. But Saint Joseph triumphs. And the beautiful thing is he’s not God, so there’s that human relationship, the human aspect that you can connect to.”
Robert Morgan and Sarah Kalonick, who are engaged to be married in June, told CNA that the consecration has helped them prepare for marriage and family life.
In their regular marriage prep, they are given a mentor couple with whom they can meet and ask questions about married life. Kalonick said they’ve started to look to Joseph and Mary as their “other mentor couple.”
“(The consecration) really, in a very accessible and simple way, lets you focus on this hidden Saint,” she said. “What are his qualities? What are his virtues? Who is he?” Like De Guzman, Morgan said he found it easier to relate to St. Joseph than to Mary when it came to the Holy Family.
“I think some of it is trying to reclaim a masculinity that’s been lost over the years in our faith,” he said. “And also as a man, it’s a little easier for me to get the perspective of St. Joseph in Jesus’s story, than it is for me to look from Mary’s side of things.”
On the other hand, Kalonick said that as a woman, growing closer to St. Joseph has been a “healing experience” for her in light of some of the hurt she experienced in past relationships with men.
“It helps heal and form my own perspective of (good relationships),” she said. “Here is a man who is pure-hearted, and virtuous, and loving the Lord, and loving this lady.”
Kalonick said the point is not to “idealize” St. Joseph or to set “false expectations” of real men, but to “get to know the realness of Joseph and who a man can be, who he is, what man is, and to start looking for that in the relationships that you seek out.”
As someone studying for the priesthood, De Guzman said the consecration has inspired him to learn more about the earthly father to whom Jesus himself was entrusted.
“Christ was consecrated to these two, Joseph and Mary were his father and his mother here on earth. Jesus grew through the fatherhood of St. Joseph. For me, I’m studying to be a priest (and) as a Christian, I want to be more like Christ. What better way to be more like Christ than to develop the same kind of love and relationship with his father?”
Like the Marian consecration, the consecration to St. Joseph is becoming very popular among Catholics – even though it was just published on January 1.
“So far people are loving it, and parishes and places that are doing it, they’re loving it,” Calloway said. “It’s unbelievable…we almost can’t keep up with the demand.”
Calloway said he thinks part of the reason the consecration has been “flying off the shelves” is because the world is starving for good fathers. According to 2017 U.S. Census Bureau data, more than one in four children are growing up in a fatherless home.
“We’ve got a lot of people with a lot of father wounds and absent fathers,” he said. “They don’t know what a father is and they’ve never experienced their loving father or a father who’s present in their lives.”
Besides a crisis of fatherhood in families, the Church itself is also experiencing a crisis of spiritual fathers today, Calloway said, referring to the priests and bishops and cardinals who have been found guilty of both “sinful and criminal things” in recent sex abuse scandals.
“(They’ve) hurt a lot of people caused a lot of scandal,” he said. “And so people right now are thirsting for a good father.”
“Part of what I would like the fruit of this to be is the affirmation that we do have a loving father in St. Joseph, and he’s never going to hurt us. He’s there for us and a good father who wants his children to make it to heaven. And he’s ultimately, like Our Lady, not going to point to himself, but point us to Jesus and help us to grow.”
Another aspect of St. Joseph’s sainthood that may not be well known are the various patronages and titles he holds, Calloway added, and each day of the consecration is dedicated to one of these.
Perhaps one of the only well-known St. Joseph traditions, that leans more superstitious than spiritual, is the burying a St. Joseph statue upside down in the yard, with the belief that he will then help one’s house sell faster. “It’s kind of spiritual bribery,” Calloway said.
“They’ll say, ‘I’m not going to turn you right-side up until you sell my house. Well what kind of craziness is that?” Rather, there are much more profound things for which St. Joseph’s intercession can be invoked, such as for a good death.
“He’s the patron of the dying, because the tradition says that when he died, he died in the arms of Jesus and Mary. You won’t get a better death than that, so when you pray to him for a happy death…we pray that we would be embraced by our Lord and our Lady,” Calloway noted.
St. Joseph is also the patron of virgins, Calloway said, because he never had marital relations with Mary.
“We live in a world that’s just filled with lust and perversions of every kind, and we’ve got this pornographic plague right now. And I think that’s something that we can look to him for as well. Not just for virgins, but also for marriages, for couples to be chaste within their marriage…and to have that dignity for each other and that respect for each other.”
Some of Calloway’s other favorite titles for St. Joseph include Pillar of Families and Glory of Domestic life, he said, but the “money title” is: Terror of Demons.
“Because you know, a lot of times you look at (artwork of St. Joseph) and it doesn’t look too intimidating. He looks old with the cane,” Calloway said. “But the reality is he wasn’t some old man. And that’s really not a cane – it’s like a staff of a warrior.”
“Satan knows the power that (St. Joseph) has because he has such familiarity and intimacy with Christ. Just like when our Lady asks Jesus to do something, she’s asking as his mother, well when Joseph asks, he’s asking Jesus as his father, and so there’s power in that petition and Satan is terrified that.”
Besides the 33 days of reflections, the Consecration to St. Joseph book contains reflections on the “wonders of St. Joseph,” which include descriptions of miraculous places and events attributed to St. Joseph’s intercession. The book also includes additional prayers, such as the Litany of St. Joseph, the Holy Cloak novena, and other prayers from saints and popes dedicated to St. Joseph, as well as guides for those leading small groups with the consecration.
The website for the consecration to St. Joseph also contains a chart which shows when one can begin the 33-day consecration in order for it to end on specific feast days or holy days related to St. Joseph.
Consecration books can be ordered through the website as well – but order quickly, they are going fast, Calloway noted. De Guzman said he would encourage anyone interested in growing closer to St. Joseph to do the consecration, or any other devotion that would bring them closer to the saint.
Even though the saint is known for his silence and humility “it seems like now is the time for his fatherhood to really shine in our lives, and so I would encourage people to really respond to that.”
[…]
His Holiness’ top message to Norah O’Donnell, Church and world, “You have to be open to everything. The Church is like that: Everyone, everyone, everyone. ‘That so-and-so is a sinner…?’ Me too, I am a sinner. Everyone! The Gospel is for everyone. If the Church places a customs officer at the door, that is no longer the church of Christ. Everyone.” Yes, when the Church’s mission is to transform the sinner to a life of holiness. Not when it’s prepared to accommodate a sinful life. As if it’s not God who calls sinners [to repent], rather it’s we who call sinners to ourselves . A pontiff cannot pretend to replace God, as if the response to sin rests with himself.
Norah O’Donnell, Catholic, three children smiled charmingly throughout. However the interview was arranged, usually by a preset agenda O’Donnell seemed quite comfortable. Her background may give input. She has a BA philosophy from Georgetown followed by a Masters in the liberal arts. The Jesuits at Georgetown are likely the most heterodox in America. She’s intelligent enough to know the difference between a more traditional response to a liberal. After Georgetown she spent 12 years with NBC, Chief Washington correspondent, a good part as anchor for MSNBC. 60 Minutes has changed from an more objective stance to a more partisan. Norah’s ‘fact finding’ interview was nothing more than liberal messaging for the viewer, a production from what might be called, The Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.
Perhaps I’m wrong about Norah O’Donnell as Morally complicit, and I hope I am. Catholics at large especially in the industry upper echelon, particularly the media and politics where there’s greater exposure give indication that they sold their soul to the devil, not quite like Biden, rather simply being compliant with their employers moral zeitgeist. The pressure is enormous when you’re talented, present well, and there’s opportunity to advance making life easier when raising children, wishing to enjoy the many good things, restaurants with friends, vacations. How many would succumb and learn to be omnilikeable? Our road carrying the Cross is a difficult one for laity to follow and very demanding for clergy to live and to preach with virile conviction. We, the priests of Christ of this world must realize we were not promised a rose garden. Rather something much better.
Interesting responses to the questions the Pontif gave. The last question, his response not quite what one would expect from a Christian..follower of Christ. When asked “what gives him hope”? I guess he was being honest… he gives himself hope. As a Christian, my HOPE IS IN My Savior, Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ. The Pope should have advised people to seek our Lord God. Not once did he Glorify our Savior. Not for HIS glory.. he interviewed for his own glory.
His Holiness Pope Francis is a messenger of the Good News. Mercy, compassion, solidarity, fellow feeling, peace and justice are dear to the Pontiff. May he be blessed with good health.
As in the movie “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) where the prison warden explains to the chain gang and the irrepressible Luke Jackson (Paul Newman): “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”…
We read: “All ideology is bad…” Yes! And, of Fiducia Supplicans, “What I allowed was not to bless the union” [now a union?]. Yes! And, “You use the adjective ‘conservatives.’ That is to say, a conservative is one who sticks to something and does not want to see anything else. It is a suicidal attitude. Because one thing is to take tradition into account, to take into account situations from the past, but another is to be closed inside a dogmatic box.” Say what?
What of the progressive ideology (!) against those labeled/libeled as “backwardists”?
As compared to, say, subliminal photo-ops for Jeanine Gramick of New Ways Ministry and for Father (“father”?) James Martin—whose staged and “spontaneous” blessing and broadcasted commentary remain uncorrected?
What of the intact fact that Fiducia Supplicans is clearly worded to bless “the couple,” and, indeed, as a special case (!) breezily camouflaged within the inclusive (!) range of merely “irregular” situations?
What does it mean to characterize guardianship of the perennial Catholic Church’s living “[T]radition” (the Magisterium) as a closed “dogmatic box”?
That is, how should the “position” of faithful clarity inform and reform the fashionably progressive and erosive “predisposition”—the deepest ideological rut of all?
What does it mean, really, to “take into account”? Why so repetitively and excludingly (!) discount the fully human moral absolutes? Defended in Veritatis Splendor against the Fundamental Option, proportionalism, and consequentialism, and—it would seem—the synodally ambulatory “time is greater than space” (Gaudium et Spes, 2013).
Perhaps a direct “dialogue” with backwardist/constructive critics, and not merely a monologue with a scripted/media talking head? Could this prevent what after eleven years might be only a “failure to communicate”?
About being “dogmatic” and “suicidal”. . . at the eve of the first so-called Reformation, the layman THOMAS MORE said it this way:
“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And, we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought [!], and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little—even at the risk of being heroes” (Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” Act II, 1960).
Substitute for “heroes,” the labels “closed” or “conservatives.” And, for “standing fast” the business of only “walking together” (the vademecum).
So, about the near-impossible mission of evangelizing a SENSATE WORLD that no longer even understands the vocabulary of the Christian cosmos…are we served well by breaking coherence with the real Council/St. John Paul II/Benedict XVI—and between faithful “thought” (concepts) and concrete practice?
How to BOTH stand fast and walk together?