In a couple of days memoirs of nationwide lockdown! The lessons learnt: the turmoil, the ordeal; the loss and pain; the most throbbing situations moreover with the loss of loved ones even without a glance and unimagined scenes of the death bodies. The Pandemic has spoken to us in millions ways and have taught us to live more disciplined lives, to be satisfied with the least minimum one could say. I personally too have had an experience having things to live without them by just managing with the couple of them as I got stuck due to the border crossing hiccups!
Since the beginning of the Pandemic, Pope Francis reached out by his kind polite gestures being one in heart and mind to the humanity. At a time when a global pandemic had forced millions to live hidden away, isolated and alone, the Pontiff surprised the Church by declaring a year of St Joseph – (the most hidden/silent personality in the Gospels) on the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pius IX declaring St Joseph as Patron of the Catholic Church on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Joseph’s spouse, on December 8, 2020. Yes, Joseph, befits the grim situation, as a model of hidden life, to the millions of people in troubled waters, homeless, and spread out, separated from their loved ones.
His hidden life is intimately shared by millions of people making their way through the pandemic. The health care worker on the frontlines whose sacrifices are hidden even from her family; the single parent who cannot confide to anyone her intense worry about her children; the adult child of an aging parent living in a nursing home terrified about the spread of illness; the widow lone and forsaken.
The hidden life of Joseph also speaks to those overwhelmed by the pandemic, who wonder if God is with them, if God sees. Appearing only briefly in the Gospels, given no words at all to speak, Joseph leads a life of quiet service to God, a life that remains almost totally unknown to us. And yet his life filled with countless hidden, unseen, unrecorded acts of love, was of infinite value.
Joseph’s life says to all of us, God sees, do not neglect to do good; share what you have with others, for God is pleased with this kind of sacrifices. Because God sees even those gruesome deadly acts done in hiding as he questioned Cain ‘where is your brother Abel’? Joseph was a shadow of the Heavenly Father with a Father’s heart in relationship to Jesus and Mary be the nativity woes; the flight to Egypt, etc.
The attributes of St Joseph challenges us to emulate and hail him by being radical witnesses of hidden/silent acts of mercy. St Joseph, the father in the shadows, portrays a hidden fatherhood that we need to learn how to live as the Pope describes him and attributes these seven ways how he shadowed Jesus with a Father’s heart being a:
Beloved Father, a tender and loving Father
An Obedient Father, An accepting Father
A Creative Courageous Father, A working Father and a Father in the Shadows
Let us emulate the hidden/silent, righteous, humble man, who shadowed the heavenly Father and imitated his virtues and zeal. St. Joseph, Patron of hidden life, pray for us.
