The St Joseph way: Goodness, faithfulness and perseverance

Hello friends, I'm at St Peter's Parish in Keilor East at the moment. We’ve just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the parish and the local school so you might hear in the background, some kids screaming and running around and that's all lovely. I'm just inside of the beautiful church and you might see the image of the Holy Family behind me, of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and I wanted to just film in front of this image, particularly of Joseph.

I'm filming on this weekend which is the feast day of St Joseph the Worker, and being that beautiful feast day of St Joseph the Worker on the 1st of May reminds me of all of those who may look to their circumstances at this moment, coming out of COVID where there's still a lot of unsurety in our own circumstances in Melbourne, and people still perhaps looking for work and being able to work through the circumstances, so that they—so that you; I should stop saying “they”—so that you might be able to effectively and carefully with love, support your families.

St Joseph, as a worker it's worth remembering, that he and Mary had to leave Bethlehem at the time of the persecution of Herod, looking to destroy the son of David, the son of God, Jesus Christ, and had to go to Egypt. So there's something about that it's, I think, well worth our attention that Joseph as the, in those days I’m sure, the breadwinner of the family, had to go to Egypt into a foreign land, speaking a foreign language, needing to be able to find work, so that he could support his family. And so, the way in which Joseph without fanfare — we don't have much fanfare about Joseph — but in goodness, in faithfulness and perseverance, he showed the way.

So may St Joseph be with all of us at this moment and fill us with a sense of his guardianship, that we might ourselves be guardians of those that we are responsible for. Until next week, every blessing to you.