A blessed and joyous solemnity of Saint Joseph to all our readers!
The strong and silent saint from the Gospel is a fitting one for our troubled times: Husband of the Virgin Mary, and foster father (protector) of the Christ, was proclaimed the patron of this country at its very origins, by none other than Samuel de Champlain, on this day, March 19, in 1624, a choice later ratified in a more Magisterial manner by Pope Urban VIII, the same one who would authorize the Jesuits in their mission to Canada (Jean de Brebeuf arrived here the following year, in 1625), and the same Pope who would be embroiled less than a decade later, sadly, in an historically significant tiff with his former friend and confidant, Galileo. (For a fine history of devotion to Saint Joseph, which did not really begin until the later Middle Ages, and took off with Saints Bernardine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Francis de Sales, please see here).
Canada has gone through many trials of late, and seems to heading for many more, under the ideological increasingly-dictatorial regime of Justin Trudeau, who marches on with the culture of death. He and his Dad are both graduates of a Jesuit high school named after Brebeuf, but has not exactly followed in the great martyr’s noble footsteps. Rather, he – and many others -have seemed bent on undoing the Faith the blood of the martyrs sowed, or what little of it there is left. May he be converted to the way of Life!