Family No Longer Practicing the Faith? Go to Joseph.

Susan Windley-Daoust, Director of Missionary Discipleship

You may have heard that the Church, at the order of Pope Francis, is celebrating the Year of St. Joseph. From December 8, 2020, to December 8, 2021, we are called to remember St. Joseph’s model and example as a man of great humility, strength and purity of heart, and as protector of the Christ child and his mother. Further, we are called to seek his intercession in prayer to the Father—and, as Joseph is “hope of the sick, patron of the dying,” this is an opportune way to pray powerfully for an end to the pandemic in so many countries around the world.

August is also a month when we are called to rededicate ourselves to praying for family members who have drifted from practicing the faith. We do this through the intercession of two other saints, Ss. Monica and Augustine (August 27 and 28). As you may know, Monica was Augustine’s mother, and her witness, engagement, and fervent prayer helped Augustine return to the Catholic faith and request baptism. He became one of the most influential theologians and holy men the world has known. His writings still bless and challenge us today.

What does it mean to engage a month of prayer for family drifted from active faith in the Year of St. Joseph? I hope it means that we have an especially powerful advocate in our prayer, one who knows that family relationships are a gift of God, essential to our call, important to each other’s faith walk, and sometimes hard.

1. Family relationships as gifts of God: Joseph’s marriage to Mary, the Mother of God, and raising the Christ Child was a true gift of God. There is no clearer example of being given family as a pure gift of the Father. Gifts are meant to be cherished.

2. Family relationships as essential to our call: Joseph’s relationship to God, and his acceptance of the role as husband of Mary and foster father to Jesus, defined his life. Yes, he was a carpenter and by Biblical account a righteous man. But his relationships to Mary and Jesus are essential to the call that was on his life.

3. Family relationships are important to each other’s faith walk: in the United States, we tend not to value family as highly as ancient cultures or even other current world cultures. We may love each other, but do we realize that we are called to walk together to God? Joseph certainly knew and modeled that truth. None of us have the Holy Family as our direct relatives, but we can count on St. Joseph’s intercession for family members who are no longer practicing the faith.

4. Family relationships are sometimes hard: Sacred Scripture records that Joseph was “deeply troubled” when Mary became pregnant with the Christ child. But he trusted in God. We can also follow Joseph’s trust in God when family relationships are hard…and ask for his intercession for our loved one, and for our increased faith in God’s work “behind the scenes.”

If you have a family member who has stopped practicing the faith, I strongly recommend Brandon Vogt’s book "Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to Church" (Word on Fire Press, 2021). He has many great insights but it is grounded in consistent prayer to God, the giver of all good gifts. Perhaps we can all spend this month in the Year of St. Joseph asking for his intercession for the conversion of our loved ones, focusing on these invocations in the Church’s Litany to St. Joseph, remembering that the “us” means your non-practicing loved one and yourself:

Saint Joseph, pray for us. Minister of salvation, pray for us. Head of the Holy Family, pray for us. Mirror of patience, pray for us. Glory of family life, pray for us. Cornerstone of families, pray for us. Support in difficulties, pray for us. Comfort of the sorrowing, pray for us. O God, who in your inexpressible providence were pleased to choose Saint Joseph as spouse of your most holy Mother, grant, we pray, that we, who revere him as our protector on earth, may be worthy of his heavenly intercession. Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.