‘St. Joseph, give us your silence’ this Lent
As we journey through Lent, accompanying Our Lord in the desert by fasting and praying in union with Him, it is good to have a saintly companion as our guide.
St. Joseph, whom St. Teresa of Avila called “the patron of people who seek to grow in prayer,” is an ideal saint to accompany us as we seek to grow in holiness.
Carmelite Father Michael-Joseph Paris studied in Avila, Spain for a year. He offered a reflection on St. Joseph and how St. Teresa of Avila teaches us to take St. Joseph as a father and a companion who will help us on the intense journey of the spiritual life.
He reminds us that there are no recorded words of St. Joseph in the gospels. This protector of the Holy Family and protector of the Universal Church is seen as the example of a strong, quiet presence, with a silent receptivity to the presence of God in Jesus.
“He too had a life of deep silent prayer. Always united to the presence of Jesus, nourishing and caring for Him in all of His needs, just like the body, the Church,” Father Paris said. “Because of this, St. Joseph is our model and our guide who makes sure we always stay on the right path in our prayer.”
St. Teresa says in her autobiography that, “Especially persons of prayer should always be attached to St. Joseph. Those who cannot find a master to teach them prayer should take this glorious saint for their master, and they will not go astray.”
For us too, who seek to grow in our spiritual life, we can entrust ourselves to St. Joseph as the best guide on our own unique path to divine union, Father Paris added.
This Lent we can take as our motto, “San Jose dame tu silencio,” which means “St. Joseph give me your silence.”
“We can ask for his intercession for the grace of an inner silence which listens for the will of God, and which helps us serve quietly in love without trying to be noticed or to seek our own glory,” Father Paris said. “This grace of silence will keep us united to Jesus through all the struggles of this life and will gradually transform us into Christ’s very image.”
As we move through these 40 days of Lent, let us walk in silence with St. Joseph, contemplating Christ’s love for us and ultimately His death and resurrection, which will lead us to the joys of Easter.
— SueAnn Howell
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Father Michael-Joseph of St. Therese is a Carmelite Friar of the Washington Province who resides at Holy Hill at the Basilica and National Shrine of Mary Help of Christians in Hubertus, Wis. His full reflection is available on YouTube at www.discalcedcarmel.org/blog/from-avila-spain-st-joseph-give-me-your-silence.
Feast day: March 18
On March 18, the Roman Catholic Church honors St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a fourth-century bishop and Doctor of the Church whose writings are still regarded as masterful expressions of Christian faith.
St. Cyril is also remembered for his exhaustive Biblical knowledge, and his endurance in the face of misunderstanding and opposition. Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, who likewise celebrate him as a saint on March 18, also remember him on May 7 – the date of a miraculous apparition said to have occurred soon after his consecration as a bishop.
What is known of Cyril's life is gathered from information concerning him from his younger contemporaries, Epiphanius, Jerome and Rufinus, as well as from the fifth-century historians, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret.
Cyril was most likely born in Jerusalem around the year 315, shortly after the legalization of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.
Although that legalization put a stop to many of the persecutions that threatened the Church for two centuries, it indirectly gave rise to a number of internal controversies – both in regard to theology, and the jurisdiction of bishops – in which Cyril would find himself involved.
Cyril received an excellent education in classical Greek literature as well as Scripture. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Maximus of Jerusalem, and succeeded him as bishop in 348.
During his early years as a bishop, most likely around 350, he delivered a series of lectures to new initiates of the Catholic Church. Twenty-four of the lectures have survived and are studied today. In a 2007 general audience, then-Pope Benedict XVI praised the saint for providing an "integral" form of Christian instruction, "involving body, soul and spirit." St. Cyril's teaching, the pope said, "remains emblematic for the catechetical formation of Christians today."
In 351, three years after Cyril became the Bishop of Jerusalem, a large cross-shaped light appeared for several hours in the sky over the city – an event that many interpreted as a sign of the Church's triumph over heresy. It could also, however, be understood as a sign of the suffering the new bishop would undergo in leading his flock.
Unlike many other Eastern bishops and priests of the fourth century, Cyril did not allow his classical learning to lead him away from believing in the full humanity and divinity of Christ.
However, the man who consecrated Cyril as a bishop, Archbishop Acacius of Caesarea, was an ally of the Arians – who claimed that Jesus was a creature and not God. Because of his connection to the archbishop, Cyril himself was unjustly suspected of heresy by many of his brother bishops.
But he also found himself at odds with Archbishop Acacius, who claimed to have jurisdiction over the birthplace of the Church. Altogether, these disputes led to Cyril being exiled from Jerusalem three times in the course of 20 years. Cyril first took refuge with Silvanus, bishop of Taraus. He appeared at the Council of Seleucia in 359, in which the semi-Arian party was triumphant. Acacius was deposed and St. Cyril seems to have returned to his see. But the emperor was displeased at the turn of events, and, in 360, Cyril and other moderates were again driven out, and only returned at the accession of Julian in 361. In 367, a decree of Valens banished all the bishops who had been restored by Julian, and Cyril remained in exile until the death of the persecutor in 378. In 380, St. Gregory of Nyssa came to Jerusalem on the recommendation of a council held at Antioch in the preceding year. He found the faith in accord with the truth and expressed admiration of Cyril's pastoral efforts, but the city was a prey to parties and corrupt in morals.
In 381, St. Cyril participated in the Second Ecumenical Council, which condemned two different forms of Arianism and added statements about the Holy Spirit to the Nicene Creed of 325. St. Cyril of Jerusalem died in 387, and was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1883.
— Catholic News Agency