The feast of St. Joseph is also the feast of anyone named Joe.

Thursday, 3/19/15

Today we honor St. Joseph, husband to Mary and father to Jesus.  This feast of St. Joseph is also the feast day of all those named Joseph. You might celebrate the day by giving a thought and a prayer for everyone you know who has been worthy of the name Joe.

Joseph English was for thirty years the pastor of the parish where I grew up. Father English was not a glad-hander. Just the opposite, he was an aloof gentleman. A great size of a man, he slept on a very narrow cot on a bedroom with no furniture other than a chipped white hospital cart. He spent his one day off at the rectory of an Irish priest friend where he rocked on the porch, eating his way through a bag of apples, reading through a selection of lassical literature.

Our family chided a Protestant friend named Joe Kelley. Joe always tore up his tax return checks, saying he owed his country so much more. (I tell you, Joe, that is not a common attitude.)

I have a blind niece for whom the highlight of each day is the phone call from her brother Joe. They  had a homosexual cousin who could say, "Joe actually looks up to me!"

I flipped through our school's Year Book, but didn't find any Joseph. Any one know St. Scott and St. Curtis's feast day. They are the patron saints of some of our kids.