Resentment.

It's St. Joseph's feast day again! St. Joseph is my confirmation saint, and a very good one to keep an eye on, especially for those of us going through Lent. 

As I've noted before, we don't know much about St. Joseph, but we are confident that he fulfilled the mission of his life uprightly, and therefore that he didn't have resentments about the way things turned out. He certainly could have. There he is, perhaps the most decent man on earth, and he has to devote his life to a mission he did not choose, fleeing to Egypt, fleeing back from Egypt, hearing terrifying prophecies, losing Jesus in the temple, etc. But when he was told to do something by God, he did it without arguing. You can't say that for most of the prophets and saints.

I was thinking about resentments this week, and how giving them up has been a major work of my adulthood. This week I was watching a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz on Ascension Presents about having to do things we don't like, and how this often leads to the same ol' place: resentment. The point that stuck with me seemed quite psychologically sound: 

Resentment is that anger, that frustration, solidified. It's not a living thing. Anger is a living thing; frustration is a living thing; grief is a living thing. Resentment is a frozen thing. It's something ... frozen in time. And it can't move. It can't grow. It's not a living thing. 

While strong and negative feelings from unhappy events can change and pass away, in other words, resentment can't, and that's why it's so awfully destructive.

So, for the rest of Lent, I think it'd be good for me to unfreeze my resentments and let them pass along the way, and stop new ones from forming like dirty hunks of ice on the side of the road. Hey, spring is almost here -- time to end the freezing and start new life. 

The just man.

As every Catholic knows, or ought to, Advent is a period of hope, not penitence like Lent. But Advent and Lent are both periods of preparation. Today we mark the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, as a reminder that our expectation is coming near, that our hope may become stronger as we wait for the child in the manger who is God among us. 

Which brings me to St. Joseph, which you may recall is my Confirmation saint and a model for the worker and the head of the Holy Family. Look at it this way -- his wife is perfect and his foster son is God, yet he's the head of the household. Must be a pretty special guy.

And that is why I am cheered beyond measure that Pope Francis has proclaimed this to be the Year of St. Joseph:

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2020 / 04:08 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis announced a Year of St. Joseph Tuesday in honor of the 150th anniversary of the saint’s proclamation as patron of the Universal Church. 

The year begins Dec. 8, 2020, and concludes on Dec. 8, 2021, according to a decree authorized by the pope. 

The decree said that Francis had established a Year of St. Joseph so that “every member of the faithful, following his example, may strengthen their life of faith daily in the complete fulfillment of God’s will.” 

I can't think of a better saint to look to at this miserable juncture in history than St. Joseph. He was a stalwart man, a provider, a protector, a hard worker, obedient to God and God's law, a just man, faithful to the end. He is the antithesis of everything we've endured in 2020 -- the constant lies, the destruction of businesses by our political class, the violent assaults on innocents, the attacks on families and faith from our cultural elites. The pope went on to write, “Our world today needs fathers." (A recent analysis in First Things would agree with that.) "It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” 

This may be the first time I've been thrilled by anything coming from the Holy Father. 

I sure wasn't thrilled by the 2020 Vatican Playskool Nativity.

Pope Francis's silence over the horrors of China's oppression of religious groups, even Catholics, has frustrated me; his attacks on our president and our country have annoyed me; his endless taunts about "opening" the church to modernism -- that send the cardinals flocking to explain that what the pope said wasn't what he meant -- has worn me out. But this time I think he knocked it out of the park. 

Have hope, and if you're of a bent to do so, ask St. Joseph to pray for us. We need his example and his prayers to try to right the mess we're in now. Let us not be afraid, but rejoice and be brave.

For all those who work, or want to.

Just last year I dedicated my May 1 blog post to St. Joseph, patron saint of all who work. May 1 is the day we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, a much better celebration than May Day, which is enjoyed in dictatorial nations like the one that recently gave us all the deadly virus that has caused some to be horribly overworked and many more to be completely jobless.

It's funny that St. Joseph is so important, since he doesn't get a word in edgewise in the Bible. Really, no dialogue recorded. But that means when he is called on to do something, he does it without comment or question, unlike almost every other figure in the Bible, including Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus Himself in His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Also, something that only occurred to me this year: When Jesus was brought as a baby to the temple for dedication, St. Simeon declares to Mary that “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” He says nothing about Joseph, which had to make Joseph think, And where will I be when all this is going on? And I'm sure he knew what it meant.

To those so inclined, it would be a good day to ask St. Joseph to intercede for all workers affected by this horrible COVID-19 virus -- those who have been stricken with it, those who have died, those who have worked long hours to help the sick, those who have seen their jobs or businesses evaporate or trickle down to nothing, those who have no idea what the future will bring and see only bleak horizons. Individually the value of work is crucial to our mental and even spiritual well-being, not to mention our survival and that of our families. Together, we desperately need to get back to work to lift our nations and our civilization back from the brink of economic ruin. Most of us are trying to do whatever we are asked in this quarantine, but the price is getting steeper by the day.

As I've said before, St. Joseph, the Protector of the Holy Family, really comes through for us, at least in my experience, although maybe not in the ways we expect (or even want). He's my Confirmation saint, because I love his stoicism in the face of peril and struggle -- unlike me -- and because he was a hard worker -- and at heart I'm lazy and need someone to kick my behind.

I hope we can get past this soon and get back to our jobs. As the saying goes, pray for potatoes but pick up the shovel.

Workers.

Today is a day that the Universal Church celebrates one of its great saints, one very important to me, St. Joseph. His traditional feast day is March 19, of course, but today we celebrate St. Joseph the Worker, in honor of his role as supporter and protector of the Holy Family and to stick it to the Reds.

May Day is of course the day that the International Godless Commies chose for their big holiday, so the Church decided that A) the workers of the world ought to have a holiday but B) Commies are godless and cruel and so there ought to be a better choice for the workers on that same day. Or in other words, "to foster deep devotion to Saint Joseph among Catholics, and in response to the 'May Day' celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955."

Back in 1955 the Church understood that these God-hating Year-Zero types were no friends of Jesus, however many smiley faces they plastered on their violent plans for world domination. I'm not so sure the Church is as rigorous in this understanding anymore.

I suppose this is a day to celebrate the worker, then, which Labor Day is not anymore. Labor Day is now the day to celebrate the barbecue and the closing of the beach house. So, let's celebrate today. Yay, workers!

So in honor of St. Joseph the Worker, here's ten Dad Jokes about working from around the Web for you:

🔨 I can’t believe I got fired from the calendar factory. All I did was take a day off.

🔨 Some people say the glass is half full. Some people say the glass is half empty. Engineers say the glass is twice as big as necessary.

🔨 To the guy who stole my copy of Microsoft Office: I will find you. You have my Word.

🔨 The Invisible Man got a great job offer but turned it down. He couldn't see himself doing it.

🔨 I got a job as the director of Old MacDonald's Farm. Yeah, I'm the CIEIO.

🔨 Our IT guy got mad because I downloaded all of Wikipedia. I said, "Wait, I can explain everything."

🔨 There was a terrible explosion at the French cheese factory. Nothing left but de brie.

🔨 My pal Fred just wrote a history of Krazy Glue. I can't put it down.

🔨 Want to hear a joke about construction? I'm still working on it.

🔨 They told me my son, the road crew manager, was a kleptomaniac. I refused to believe it. But when I got to his house, all the signs were there.


You know, maybe it's just as well that we have no record of anything St. Joseph ever said. No wonder he's considered the model father.

Gnome man is an island.

One of my earliest memories is going into a lawn center in Brooklyn and being surrounded by every kind of artwork known to man . . . that was made out of cement and rebar. Birdbaths, angels, big giant flowers, deer, bunnies, and what perplexed me at the time, the classic that came to be known disrespectfully as Mary on the Half Shell.

I knew she was nice.

One thing I do not recall seeing then or in neighborhoods around us for years afterward was the garden gnome. I may be wrong, but I believe the garden gnome was an Eurocism that didn't really come to our shores until later, after the American publication of Gnomes, by Wil Huygen, in 1977. I can't begin to tell you how omnipresent this book was if you weren't around then. While the rest of the country was getting its collective freak on in discos, the bookstores were taken over by gnomes.

Small but  mighty: 62 weeks on the Times best-seller list.

Along with the persistence of the Tolkien oeuvre (given a shot in the arm by the publication of The Silmarillion, also in 1977), it marked a change in speculative fiction from a focus on science fiction to a focus on fantasy. I have no stats to back it up, but I would guess that it was the first time fantasy overtook science fiction since the emergence of SF as a distinct genre.

Anyway, we've had gnomes for our gardens ever since, and jolly little chaps they are, too. Found a couple at Lowe's last week, in fact.

The gnome on the right is seated, with one leg up and the other crossed in front. In case you were wondering.

There are still many things that you can get for your yard, but small as he is, the gnome stands tall. After all, how many other things in the garden store inspired an animated movie?

We're not really gnome people here, but we respect the gnome and all his garden pals. Carry on, gnome! You may be small, but in the world of garden statuary, you're 15 feet tall. (Except for one 17-foot-nine-inch gnome in Nowa Sól, Poland---that's rather a bit too much gnome, don't you think?)

One last word on Mary: She deservedly gets a place of honor on many Catholic lawns, but what do they do with my man St. Joseph? Bury him upside down when they want to unload the joint. They even sell kits for the purpose now. Bad enough he has to be in a family where his son is God and his wife is perfect---try winning arguments in that house---but now he gets buried in the sod when you want to ditch the real estate. Awesome.

I love St. Joseph.

I do. We don't know too much about him, and much of what we do know about him were legends made up centuries after his life. For the record, Joseph was not an old man who'd been married before when he met Mary, okay? In some art he's depicted as being quite elderly, but in some art Moses apparently has horns. Don't believe everything you see in art.

We do know St. Joseph was just, no small thing in any age; he was obedient to God; he loved Mary and sought to protect her, even when he had reason to suspect the worst of her pregnancy; he guarded and loved his little family enough to flee to Egypt to protect them, a hard journey to a place that was not exactly the Catskills in their heyday to the Jewish people. He was faithful in dire circumstances, and even in dull circumstances. He was a hard worker and provided for his family---there was no workers' comp, unemployment insurance, or disability back then. We may not know much, but everything we know is good.

He ranks behind only Mary among the saints. Catholic Online says:

Joseph is the patron of the dying because, assuming he died before Jesus' public life, he died with Jesus and Mary close to him, the way we all would like to leave this earth.

Joseph is also patron of the universal Church, fathers, carpenters, and social justice.

We celebrate two feast days for Joseph: March 19 for Joseph the Husband of Mary and May 1 for Joseph the Worker.

He's still a busy guy.

St. Joseph's feast day is today. The Italians love him, but in the U.S. his day gets shoved off the stage by that Irish feller two days earlier. But I always want to take the time to thank St. Joseph.

Years ago I was having a horrible problem, a really deadly one, and I found a flyer from the Josephites, a Catholic group founded in 1871 to minister to the African American community. The pamphlet had a 30-day prayer to St. Joseph to ask for his intercession. I was desperate enough to do it. Within a month of completing it I had the exact answer to my prayer.

It was awful. It was the last thing I would have wanted. It was nothing, in fact, that I wanted. But it was the only thing that would have worked.

And St. Joseph is still a worker.

I wanted an easy answer. Well, St. Joseph never had an easy day in his life. What else should I expect?

When I tell people about this I warn them to be careful with that prayer; it's loaded.

Thanks. St. Joseph.