*Image: Saint Joseph and the Christ Child by Jusepe de Ribera, 1630-35 [Museo del Prado, Madrid]
By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, April 27, 2021
Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. ..
I understand that when this year of St. Joseph is done, I should have a deeper, more constant, more fervent devotion to St. Joseph. I understand that I should have spent time meditating on his role and his life, so as to be more familiar with him, and, going forward, to be a closer child and associate.
But how should devotion to St. Joseph change my character? How should it correct how I embrace the faith and approach this task of being a Catholic in the contemporary world?
Do these questions have an urgency with you, as they do for me? Do you sense that there is something maybe harsh and raw, some kind of tone of desperation perhaps, at least, a serious incompleteness – or for others, something dangerously superficial and ignorantly optimistic – about Catholic life in general today, which is in serious need of repair? …
St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans. Principle facade, view from Jackson Square in 1849. Author Jacques Nicolas Bussière de Pouilly (1804–1875). Public domain. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.