This 30 day Novena Prayer to Saint Joseph prayed with confidence, in honour of the 30 years he spent with Jesus and Mary, has been known to draw great graces and even miracles from heaven.
Revised and enlarged by LG Sleiman, 5th March 2023
To take part in this Novena, say this prayer every day for 30 days:
Ever blessed and glorious Joseph, kind and loving father, and helpful friend of all in sorrow!
You are the good father and protector of orphans, the defender of the defenceless, the patron of those in need and sorrow.
Look kindly on my requests. My sins have drawn down on me the just displeasure of my God, and so I am surrounded with unhappiness.
To you, loving guardian of the Family of Nazareth, do I go for help and protection.
Listen, then, I beg you, with fatherly concern, to my earnest prayers, and obtain for me the favors I ask of you.
I ask it in virtue of the purity of heart and excellence of love with which you committed your life to the service of God.
I ask it in virtue of the joy and beatitude that filled your heart when you were betrothed to the holy Virgin Mary.
I ask it by the infinite mercy of the eternal Son of God, which moved Him to descend from Heaven to earth and to be clothed in human nature because He delights to dwell among the children of men.
I ask it by the joy that filled your heart when the angel revealed to you that Mary‘s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
I ask it in virtue of your holy matrimony, the joyful harmony of your lives, and the blessed union of your hearts.
I ask it by the weariness and suffering you endured when you found no shelter at the inn of Bethlehem for the Queen of Heaven and, being everywhere refused, you were forced to take shelter in an abandoned cave.
I ask it in virtue of your joy when you witnessed the peace that quietly descended upon a sleeping world when the Son of God was born of the holy Virgin Mary on a cold winter night in Bethlehem.
I ask it in virtue of your joy in seeing the Divine Child visited by angels, shepherds, and wise men from the East.
I ask it by the loveliness and power of the sacred Name of Jesus which you conferred on the adorable Infant.
I ask it by the painful torture you felt at the prophecy of holy Simeon, which declared Jesus and Mary future victims of our sins and of their great love for us.
I ask it through your sorrow and pain of soul when the angel declared to you that the life of the Child Jesus was sought by His enemies, so that you had to flee with Him and His Blessed Mother to Egypt.
I ask it by all the suffering, weariness, and labors of that long and dangerous journey.
I ask it by all the care and solicitude with which you embarked upon your return journey home with Jesus and Mary, when you were instructed to come out of Egypt.
I ask it by your peaceful life in Nazareth where you met with so many joys, ever new infusions of divine grace, and so many tokens of God’s loving kindness.
I ask it by your great distress when the adorable Child was lost to you and His Mother for three days after your visit to Jerusalem.
I ask it by your indescribable joy at finding Him in the Temple, and by the comfort you found at Nazareth, while living in the company of Jesus and Mary.
I ask it by the indescribable humility Jesus manifested in His submission and obedience to you.
I ask it in virtue of the love and fidelity with which you continued to serve Jesus and Mary all the days of your life.
I ask it by the perfect love and obedience with which you accepted the Divine order to depart from this life, and from the company of Jesus and Mary.
I ask it in virtue of your sacred and holy and happy death, because you died in the arms of Jesus and Mary.
I ask it by the joy which filled your soul, when the Redeemer of the world rose from the dead, took possession of His Kingdom, and led you therein with special honors.
I ask it through Mary’s glorious Assumption, and through that endless happiness you share with her in the presence of God.
O good father! I beg you, by all your sufferings, sorrows, and joys, to hear me and obtain for me what I ask. (Here name your petitions or think of them.) Obtain for all those who have asked my prayers and all those who pray for me everything that is useful to them in the plan of God.
My dear patron and father, be with me and all who are dear to me in our last moments, that we may eternally sing the praises of JESUS, MARY and JOSEPH.
“A blameless life, St. Joseph, may we lead, by your kind patronage from danger freed.”
In the midst of my plight, I turn to you, O holy Mother of God, my Mother, begging you to turn the gaze of your merciful eyes upon me, surround me with your love and protection, and lead me to know and love your divine Son, Jesus Christ my Lord.
A loved one of mine was going through a difficult time in her life and, as I looked on, I sought to pray for her in the same measure as her difficulties were great.
My prayer was guided by what I had recently discovered about the intimate union of our Lady with the Sacred Heart of her divine Son, in the midst of His most difficult moments, through the revelations of Sister Maria of Agreda (a 16th century Franciscan nun in Spain).
Sister Maria writes that holy Mary, through a special grace, was given the privilege of “seeing” all that her divine Son suffered during His Sacred Passion, as well as perceiving the unceasing acts of love and prayer of His Sacred Heart.
Christ had long promised His Mother that “in return for the new human existence which she had given Him in her virginal womb [the Incarnation], He would, by His almighty power, give her a new existence of divine and eminent grace above all other creatures”, and this promise of Christ “was continually fulfilled [in the course of her earthly life].”
“To this favour was due also her deep science and enlightenment concerning all the operations of the sacred humanity of her Son, none of which ever escaped her knowledge and attention.”
But whatever Mary “perceived” in the interior of her Son’s Heart, she also ”imitated” with fidelity:
“Whatever she thus perceived she imitated; so that she was always anxious to study and penetrate [Christ’s interior acts] with deep understanding, to put them promptly into action, and to practice them courageously and zealously during all her life. In this neither sorrow could disturb her, nor anguish hinder her, nor persecution detain her, nor the bitterness of her suffering weaken her.”
As a consequence of her “deep science and enlightenment”, Mary “felt in her own virginal body all the torments of Christ our Lord, both interior and exterior.”
But within such a hidden mystery, “there was concealed therein another mystery. This was, that the desire of Christ to see His exalted love and [goodness] as exhibited in His Passion copied in all its magnitude in a mere creature, was fulfilled in her, and no one possessed a greater right to this favour than His own Mother.” (Mystical City of God, volume 3, Chapter XXII, 670)
Thus was Mary increasingly conformed to the likeness of her divine Son, both in His suffering and in His acts of mercy—even in the midst of His most difficult and painful torments.
Filled with these thoughts, I pondered, how much more can Mary’s vision penetrate the depths of our own experiences, trials, and struggles?
With each glance of her soul, Mary understood the depth of Christ’s suffering as well as the unfathomable love which moved Him to suffer. If her gaze can penetrate all the depth of the Son of God’s suffering, love, and interior movements, how much more can Mary penetrate all the depth of our own hearts?
Do we not pray in the Salve Regina, “…turn then, O most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus”?
Just as Mother Mary was fully present to Christ in His suffering, she is also able to be present to me in the course of my earthly pilgrimage, and nothing is impervious to the turn of her merciful gaze.
By a special grace from God, the one who is “full of grace”, with one glance of her eyes, understands me better than I understand myself. And with that understanding, Mother Mary sees clearly all the depth of my struggles, the nature of my pain, and the desires of my heart.
I therefore resolved to make the following prayer for my loved one, and to entrust her, and all the dimensions of her quest, to the holy Mother of God:
I beseech you, holy Mother of God, my Mother Mary, to turn your loving gaze upon my loved one, surround her on every side with your unfailing protection; cover her in your holy mantle; press her to your holy bosom; and receive all the depth of her needs, struggles, and intentions in your Immaculate Heart—both those intentions that are spoken, and those that remain hidden—with the same love with which you never failed to watch over your divine Son, unto peace, joy, and eternal life.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Theology is the study of God’s relations with humankind, God’s intervention in human affairs, God’s Self-revelation, especially in the Incarnation, when the Son of God became man and entered human history as Jesus, the Christ.
God’s Self-revelation was complete when the Father sent His only begotten Son into the world, because the Son of God is “the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance.” (Hebrews 1:3)
Theology seeks an understanding of God’s revelation, or as St Anselm put it, theology is “faith seeking understanding”.
The revelation of Jesus Christ is summarised in the Apostles’ Creed, elaborated in the dogmas of the Church, and further expounded in the teachings of the Church Councils, the Fathers, Doctors, and Saints of the Church.
The word “dogma” does not mean “an obstinate insistence upon a certain point of view” (the modern day, pejorative sense of the word), but actually means a teaching that is both (1) revealed by God; and (2) defined by the Church as an integral part of God’s self-revelation.
Therefore, a “dogmatic teaching” is a teaching that is always and everywhere true, because it rests on the authority of the God who reveals Himself, and the authority of the Church which testifies to God’s self-revelation.
Some of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church include Saint Paul the Apostle, Saint John the Beloved, Saint Augustine, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint John Damascene, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and others.
The Bishops of the Church today face the most difficult crisis in the entire history of the Church–a crisis greatly magnified by a series of crises layered one upon another, a crisis that manifests on every level of the Church’s existence: spiritual, ecclesiological, theological, liturgical, and pastoral. But the Bishops, successors of the twelve Apostles of Christ, also have great potential to transform the Church and the world.
In this letter I propose to give a brief outline of the origin of the Bishop’s Office, the range of challenges which confront the Bishops, the heart of the present crisis, the spiritual danger that souls are facing, and, last but not least, the power and efficacy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Origin of the Bishop’s Office
In the year 33 AD our Lord Jesus Christ, having risen from the dead, ascended into heaven in the sight of His holy Mother Mary and His Apostles and was seated at the right hand of the Father. Ten days later the Holy Spirit came upon them amid the sound of a rushing wind and tongues of fire which sat upon their heads.
The twelve Apostles were empowered to teach the Gospel, govern the Church, sanctify souls for heaven, and to pass on their mission in an unbroken succession of shepherds until the end of the world.
The Apostles launched their evangelical mission with little more than the rigorous training, the spiritual gifts, and the Divine authority which Christ had bestowed upon them. The Church which they helped to establish (Ephesians 2:20) had, within three centuries, transformed virtually the entire world.
The Present Crisis
Fast forward 2,000 years and it appears that today there are powerful forces both in the world and in the Church hierarchy which would seek to reverse everything that the Apostles worked so hard to establish.
From the Second Vatican Council to the effects of the sexual revolution to the threat of totalitarian regimes to the ever widening influence of relativistic ideologies to the advent of Pope Francis to the widespread contestation of the definition of marriage to the present day Covid Crisis, the Church has suffered so many assaults within the space of just a few, short decades.
The Church is being tossed to and fro in a severe storm that threatens her very life, the teaching of the faith, the objectivity of moral values, authentic pastoral practice and, it seems, the very foundation of her Divine authority.
Will she survive? Will she emerge unscathed? “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
A Real Pandemic?
Today we are witnessing a world thoroughly shaken by an alleged health crisis.
Given the near global response to the virus, as the life and activities of the Church have undergone significant reconfiguration, the nature of the Church and her relationship to her children are implicitly called into question.
But who is pulling the strings of history? Is it the global elites who seek to build an earthly utopia on their own terms and conditions? Or is the Covid Response Team simply reacting to a worldwide health crisis? Or is it fair to say that, in the greater scheme of things, any and all such manoeuvres and machinations, regardless of their origin and purpose, are subordinate to the omniscience and omnipotence of a benevolent God, who determines the real course of history in mysterious ways?
Whatever you think about these matters, what is undeniable today is that we are witnessing the most universal and pervasive forms of intervention in the state of human affairs that the world has ever seen.
So what is really happening? Is the pandemic really real?
The Two Narratives
There are basically two competing narratives playing out on the world stage.
On the one hand, there is a narrative that says the new coronavirus is highly dangerous, that we ought to practice widespread lockdown measures in order to save lives and to completely eradicate the virus from society, and that we ought to suffer whatever the cost to our social, economic, and political freedoms in the meantime.
This idea was based upon theoretical contagion models—not on real data—which predicted millions and then tens of millions of deaths, was widely promoted by the mainstream media, and was acted upon by (most) governments.
On the other hand, there is another narrative, supported by many scientists and medical experts, which claims that the coronavirus is only about as dangerous as the common flu, that you cannot possibly eradicate it completely from society (no matter how many lockdowns you enforce), and that widespread lockdown measures have caused far more damage than the virus could ever have done.
A large number of governments together with the mainstream media are opposed to this narrative—so much so that many of us have long stared with wide-eyed fascination at how insular the Covid Response Team has been to the well researched and highly reputable opinions of renowned scientists and top medical experts from around the world.
The list is enormously long but it is worth mentioning a few of them:
In May 2020 the UK’s Chief Medical Officer confirmed that covid-19 is “harmless to the majority” of people.
Also in May the CDC (Center for Disease Control) released a statement saying that coronavirus is “nowhere near as lethal as earlier [theoretical] models claimed.”
In August the head immunologist at Tel Aviv University revealed that 99.99 percent of the world’s population has survived covid-19.
And from a medical report in September 2020: “According to the latest immunological studies, the overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) in the general population ranges between 0.1% and 0.5% in most countries, which is comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1957 and 1968.”
Early in October, 9,000 (nine thousand) medical professionals signed a joint document strongly criticising the lockdowns. One could multiply such corroborating reports almost endlessly.
Which of these two narratives will prevail, in the final analysis? That remains to be seen.
Assume For A Moment
But let’s assume for a moment—just for argument’s sake—that there is a real pandemic. What would that mean for the Church?
Even if there were a real pandemic, could the Bishops actually relinquish their responsibility for the care of souls—a responsibility they have assumed in the eyes of God? Could the Bishops’ God-given mandate to save souls be justifiably subordinated to the strictures and demands of a health crisis? Would souls have less need of God in the event of a health crisis?
Let us acknowledge, the choice to close or to restrict Church services in the event of a health crisis is to subordinate the care of the soul to the care of the body, and effectively to reverse the order of priorities mandated by our Lord Jesus Himself:
“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28)
Such a reversal of priorities has consequences for the understanding of the nature of the Church. It reaches deep into the life and consciousness of the Church, undermining traditional doctrines regarding the Divine foundation of the Church, her God-given authority, and her God-given mission.
If the subordination of the soul to the body continues it will lead, sooner or later, to the complete subordination of the Church to the State, forsaking obedience to her Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
The Message of Complicity
When the doors of the Church are closed in the face of believers this fosters an insinuation that the holy Mass and other Church services are no longer “essential”.
When masks are mandated in Church this is counterproductive because, according to Scripture, we come together as the Body of Christ so that “with unveiled faces we may behold the glory of the living God.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)
When believers are denied Holy Communion on the tongue it robs them of a precious opportunity to express due reverence, devotion, and love for the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist.
When Church services are cancelled this deprives the faithful of coming into the sacramental Presence of God and worshipping God.
When the Bishops are all too ready to capitulate to widespread Church restrictions and closures—never before witnessed on such a scale in 2,000 years of Church history—this cannot but give a subtle impression that the Church has been transformed into a social institution, an instrument of the State, and has implicitly denied her Divine constitution.
Such a reconfiguration of the life and activity of the Church cannot help but insinuate that the Church is, in essence, subject to change; that she is no longer the custodian of the Revelation of Jesus Christ; that her role in the economy of salvation is non-essential.
Assault On The Faith
How many souls will be able to withstand the Covid Persecution? How many will emerge with a living faith? In the face of such wholesale surrender to the State, will the Church ever recover her rightful place in society?
This assault on the Faith is rendered all the more dangerous because it follows upon the heels of decades of spiritual devastation: for at least two or three generations vast numbers of Catholics have been deprived of authentic catechesis, secular ideologies have been quietly invading the life of the Church, moral values are ridiculed or altogether abandoned, and the Gospel often suffers dilution and compromise.
The Church and the World
The Church cannot serve both God and the world. She must choose one or the other.
The Lord Jesus said that we are “in the world” but not “of the world.” (John 17: 11-19) And the Apostle John wrote: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)
But we might ask: Ought not the Church to love the world, as “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”? (John 3:16)
Here we come face to face with a profound paradox—a paradox that we ought to embrace rather than surrender to an unholy compromise with the world.
As G.K. Chesterton famously wrote, can a man “hate [the world] enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?” (Orthodoxy)
Ever since Vatican II, when Pope John XXIII’s fundamental impulse was to bring the Church up to date with the times (aggiornamento), the Church adopted what can rightly be called an ambivalent attitude towards the world—an attitude which has rarely been clarified or set right.
Can the Church both love and not love the world at the same time? Yes, but each in a different sense. The Church ought to conform herself, not to the world, but to Christ for the sanctification of the world.
Any suggestion or hint that the Church could possibly learn from the world in matters pertaining to the salvation of souls is not only unwise but thoroughly and grievously mistaken.
It was the Council’s compromise on this point, explicit or implicit, that introduced a basic disorientation into the heart of the Church, a festering wound that has spawned a multitude of errors and heterodox tendencies.
Saint Paul reminds us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
The basic orientation of the Church to the world will feed into everything: the Church’s faith, doctrines, moral teaching, pastoral practice—everything!
Pope Francis
Vatican II’s ambivalent embrace of the world is complicated even further by the advent of Pope Francis, who demonstrates, intentionally or unintentionally, a strong and consistent tendency to engage with heterodoxy.
The Bishops have a grave responsibility to remind Pope Francis what the First Vatican Council taught clearly and unequivocally:
“For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the Apostles.” (Session 4, Chapter 4, paragraph 6)
A Silent Spiritual Holocaust
For all the above reasons, what we are now witnessing is a silent, spiritual holocaust: the holocaust of multitudes of vulnerable and unsuspecting souls on the altar of the Bishops’ silent complicity with the world.
How many will survive?
The Lord declared: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.” (Hosea 4:6)
Jesus said, “the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
Christ came “neither to condemn us in our sins nor to condone our sins, but to save us from them”, as a faithful priest once said. Hell is real. Salvation is real. The Lord takes no pleasure in “the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)
These truths do not change with the passage of time.
A Call to the Bishops
Today in the midst of this crisis, as one crisis has been added to another and again to another, the Church has need of Bishops and priests who will be like the Apostles, their predecessors, who transformed the world by the witness of their word, and most often by the witness of their blood, the Holy Spirit working through them with great signs and wonders.
There is no challenge, obstacle, or difficulty that could prevent our shepherds from achieving what the twelve Apostles achieved.
Saint Paul testified, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)
The Gospel is “ever ancient and ever new”, the fruit of God’s Self-revelation in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the fount of eternal salvation.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8) His message does not change with the changing times.
When proclaimed in its purity and entirety, the Gospel exerts a powerful attraction on the soul—because the soul hungers, consciously or unconsciously, for the word of the Lord, for the truth that will set it free, for the fruits of the Redemption which Christ paid for with His own Blood.
This is not to say that the Bishops are entirely missing in action. A few Cardinals and Bishops have been strongly vocal about the rights, duties, and needs of the Church. But the majority are still silent—so much so that recently Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò noted that such silence is ”deafening”.
When Peter and John were hauled before the council of priests and high priests they were commanded “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.” (Acts 4:18)
But Peter and John responded: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19)
What will the Bishops now say?
We need you, the successors of the Apostles, to rise to the occasion. The Lord is waiting for you. The Church is waiting for you. The world needs your unfailing witness to our Lord Jesus Christ.
LG Sleiman
Lastest revision: 2:00 pm, 7th November 2020. Sydney, Australia.
If God is infinitely merciful then why do we often fear His justice? The fact is that we are always confronted, consciously or unconsciously, with the choice between trust and fear, between faith and doubt. We are never exempt from responding to God’s invitations, we are never deprived of God’s help and grace, and we are never so liberated as when we believe in the Truth.
Yesterday, as I was conversing with a friend regarding this or that course of action in a particular situation, she told me quite sincerely that she would be very careful not to offend God in her choice. That was great, I thought, but something in her voice hinted that she had more fear than trust, that God’s justice loomed larger in her mind than God’s mercy. I wasn’t really sure. In any case, I felt, this is not so much an isolated incident and (perhaps) quite common. In any case, isn’t God’s mercy greater than His justice?
The Divine Mercy Chaplet is prayed on the beads of the Rosary, was taught to Sister Faustina by our Lord Jesus Himself, and carries great promises and graces. Our Lord Jesus dictated this prayer to Saint Faustina on 13th September 1935 (Diary of St Faustina, paragraph 476).
Jesus said that whenever this chaplet of the Divine Mercy is prayed that His Heart is stirred to its very depths, that He will protect all who pray it during their life and especially in the hour of their death, that He will grant anything that is compatible with His Divine will through this prayer, that the whole world is brought closer to God when this Chaplet is prayed (929), and that when this prayer is said in the presence of a dying person that “I [Jesus] will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just judge but as the merciful Saviour.” (Diary of St Faustina, 1541) Continue reading The Divine Mercy Chaplet→
“Why do we suffer? Why does religion say that our pain, hardships, and the insults we face is a good thing?”
What can one say regarding suffering? It is difficult to give a final answer on the question of suffering because each instance of suffering is new. Because only the person who suffers knows how it feels to suffer. Because some forms of suffering are so extreme and unimaginable. Continue reading Why Do We Suffer?→
Jesus Risen 