Good morning! If you want to get Fr. Jared going (and it really doesn’t take much!), show me a picture of St. Joseph as an elderly man with grizzly beard and wrinkled face. “That is not St. Joseph!” I am wont to declare in precise and slightly elevated tones. Being the pastor of St. Joseph Parish I am inclined to give some history on the matter.

We celebrate our feast day as March 19th, which was difficult this year because it fell on the Saturday that was the vigil of Palm Sunday. So, I am taking May 1, (the Feast of St. Joseph, the Worker), even though we lose this day because it is a Sunday, as a moment to expound on our patron!

I do have some backing for this claim that St. Joseph was not an old man. The earliest depictions of St. Joseph show him to be a strong, young man of about 25 years of age, what you might picture if you thought of a man in his youthful prime, ready for marriage, and who worked at a very physical job, much like the beautiful image we have in our school gym. In fact, the first three centuries of the life of the Church depicted him this way. Then, all of a sudden, in the fourth century, he became an octogenarian.

Did he enter a time machine and seem only gone for a moment but returned having lived a full and happy life in another time? No. There was a heresy afoot at the time that attacked the perpetual virginity of Mary, which made the claim that Joseph was the physical father of Jesus. Having stamped down that heresy, artists (blessed artists! - thank you for all that you do for the Church) started depicting St. Joseph as a 80 year old man suggesting that man of such advanced years would not become a Dad.

There are two problems with this. The first that I hear confessions and I know that being 80 does not necessarily have anything to do with a decreased desire or ability to do certain things that one did when he was twenty-five.

Secondly, it is a greater story, a more touching story, a more extraordinary inspiration, a more fitting idea (especially to this celibate) that St. Joseph was a man like any other man, in his prime, and having the same strong desires that any other man in that position would have. Why? Because it is a far greater thing to overcome your temptations than to have them simply taken away. And now, more than ever, that is the example we need with this great saint.

After all, what makes us great men and women is not that God would take away our free will and therefore, our temptations. What merit is there in that? Would be becoming comatose for the rest of our lives be more virtuous than moving about and possibly sinning? No! What makes us great is, like St. Joseph, we become stronger than our temptations.

In this, the 185th anniversary of our parish, and I have commissioned someone to paint a picture of St. Joseph, both the saint and the parish. I will have prayer cards made of the image and pass them out to everyone so that we can continue to celebrate our wonderful parish here in the Falls!

God’s Blessings, Fr. Jared Orndorff