Joyful in Hope

In our reflections on the primacy of prayer, we noted that Saint Paul and Saint Padre Pio, nearly two millennia apart, exhorted the faithful to exercise essentially the same three traits. We have already shown that Saint Joseph relied greatly upon prayer. Now, recall that Saint Paul called for early Christians in Rome to “Be joyful in hope, patient in adversity, and faithful in prayer.” (Romans 12:12), while Saint Padre Pio urged the faithful to “Pray, Hope, and Don’t worry.”

Fatherly Leadership

The hope to which we are called is a joyful anticipation, by God’s grace, of all that remains possible. (And therefore there is no natural limit to hope.) Hope is impossible without faith. And hope, rooted in faith, may be the single greatest characteristic of fatherly leadership. In defining leadership, it can be helpful to begin by describing its opposite. Whereas demagoguery is characterized by a populist appeal to the worse fears and lowest inclinations of a crowd, often at the expense of divisiveness and scapegoating, true leadership appeals to the best hopes and higher aspirations of a populace, usually uniting a diverse group of persons in pursuit of a common vision for a better future. The world needs more fatherly leadership, first in our marriages and for our children, then in our communities, and ultimately among our nations.

For a definitive guide to fatherly leadership, one need look no farther than to the Litany of Saint Joseph, in which we find that more than a dozen of the titles by which Saint Joseph is known refer to traditional manly roles, such as “head”, “provider”, “cornerstone”, “defender”, “guardian” and “protector”.

Saint Joseph exemplified fatherly leadership. First, he was chosen — by God, incapable of error — to lead the Holy Family. Can there be any greater vote of confidence? Second, Saint Joseph is known almost exclusively for having exercised three significant roles of fatherly leadership in the experience of the Holy Family. Specifically, (i) he was a man of action who did not hesitate to re-locate his family when he perceived threats to their safety; (ii) he worked tirelessly as a carpenter to provide a humble income for the family, and (iii) he was so selfless and self-disciplined as to remain entirely chaste throughout his marriage to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Hope for a future in which Jesus would bring salvation to the chosen people and to all the nations, rooted in a faith that recognized the Real Presence of God as the central meaning in their lives, gave Saint Joseph the authority, graces, and obligations of fatherly leadership. And exercising that fatherly leadership was the vocation to which God called Saint Joseph.

Faithful Citizenship

One of the defining characteristics of fatherly leadership is to discern the existence and immediacy of dangers to the family, and then to determine an appropriate path toward family goals that must engage the world and navigate the threatened harms posed. Saint Joseph was the public face of his family’s engagement in the world. He travelled to Bethlehem to register for the census, took his family into exile to escape the violent rages of Herod, and returned to his homeland and established the price of his carpentry craftsmanship in the Nazorean marketplace. All of these actions engaging with the broader world were undertaken through the prism of his faith and the goal of maintaining faithfulness to God. Saint Joseph, then, illuminates a particular component of fatherly leadership, and it is a component of perhaps even greater need of pondering for citizens of a self-governing republic such as America. The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops has referred to this obligation as “faithful citizenship”. The Sanctus Josephus Society posits that the Catholic wisdom concerning the sanctity of life, the sacred design of human sexuality, and the sacramental unity of a potentially fruitful marriage between a man and a woman, as well as traditional Church teachings on subsidiarity and just war theory, must guide us all in exercising fatherly leadership in the political sphere.