In 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis declared 2020/2021 to be the Year of St Joseph. He wrote, Each of us can discover in Joseph – the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence – an intercessor, a support and a guide in times of trouble. Saint Joseph reminds us that those who appear hidden or in the shadows can play an incomparable role in the history of salvation.
Today, as we, too live in a suffering world and in uncertain times, Pope Francis encourages us with these words: Joseph teaches us that faith in God includes believing that he can work even through our fears, our frailties and our weaknesses. He also teaches us that amid the tempests of life, we must never be afraid to let the Lord steer our course.
Fr Julian Tenison Woods and St Mary MacKillop, our co-founders understood that if their fledging Sisterhood were to flourish it would be because it was God’s initiative. The Sisters were to consider themselves, like St Joseph, ‘but instruments in the hands of God’.
That they sought the protection of St Joseph can be seen in the writings of both Julian and Mary. Julian wrote on 12 June 1867, in his last letter to Mary MacKillop before she left Penola for Adelaide:
Human resources are so weak and what we aim at so high; and then, everybody says. ‘What can you expect from colonial girls without any knowledge of a religious life, and no one to train them?’ Without St Joseph, I should know what I should expect, but with him and his Divine Foster Son, I am sure of placing the work right amid the Holy Family, and they will do what we cannot.
Mary writing on the months leading to the inaugurating of St Joseph’s Institute in Adelaide said:
To Father J.E. Tenison Woods is due the honour of arousing devotion to the “most hidden though the greatest Saint” by placing this new family which he trusted would do so much good in the Church under the protection of him, to whom the Incarnate God ‘was subject’. (Mary MacKillop, Julian Tenison Woods: A Life, Strathfield, 2010, 93)
Returning the Apostolic Letter Patris Corde, we pray:
Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer,
Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
To you God entrusted his only Son;
in you Mary placed her trust;
with you Christ became man.
Blessed Joseph, to us too,
show yourself a father
and guide us in the path of life.
Obtain for us grace, mercy and courage,
and defend us from every evil. Amen.
