Dear Friends of Joseph House: Across the land, we see a transformation taking place: buds forming on tree branches, birds chirping in the early morning light, delicate sprouts poking through the earth. After a long winter of nor’easters and arctic cold, Spring is on the way. Our fussing and self-importance do nothing to bring this…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: Home is where our story begins. If this is true for us then it was true for Jesus when He walked the earth, born into the family of Mary and Joseph. He lived in a home created by His parents in the town of Nazareth. The house itself was likely…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: The Hospitality Room has been an essential part of the Joseph House Crisis Center for 20 years. It’s a day shelter for men and women who are homeless. Five days a week, they can go to the Hospitality Room and take a shower and have their clothes laundered. A big…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: To the world, he was John Paul I, a pope known primarily for the shortness of his term (33 days). To Pia Luciani, however, he was Uncle Albino, and in a recent interview she shared her memories of him: Pia: He told stories, sometimes even jokes with a moral ending,…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: In depicting the birth of Christ, Byzantine icons sometimes show St. Joseph sitting away from the manger, either resting with his eyes closed (symbolizing his dreams) or facing the devil (symbolizing the temptation to disbelief). Art in Western culture places St. Joseph inside the stable, usually holding a lantern or…
Every religious community has its own charism, a particular way of life and a spirit that forms its identity. In setting the charism of the Little Sisters of Jesus and Mary, Sr. Mary Elizabeth Gintling looked to an obscure French priest who lived from 1858 to 1916. His name was Charles de Foucauld. Charles spent…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: A few years ago, Fr. Paul Mast, a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Wilmington, spent a six-month sabbatical immersed in the lives of people living on the streets. The experience spoke to his heart, and he wrote about what he learned in a book called Street Sabbatical. In one…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: She was born in Philadelphia and raised in Baltimore. She lived in a house built by her father on the banks of North Point Creek, from where she liked to set out in a row boat and go crabbing. Trained as a registered nurse, she had several “careers,” and wasn’t…
The following was written by Bishop Kenneth Edward Untener (1937-2004), who served as the bishop of the Diocese of Saginaw: Helping the poor is not always a pleasant experience. It’s no picnic helping the poor. There is often no feeling of fulfillment. It’s work — like a lot of virtue is work — like taking…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: A prison can keep someone locked in, and also locked out. In Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, the protagonist, Jurgis Rudkus, finds himself homeless, destitute, and ravenously hungry. He staggers up and down the city streets looking for work, fighting hunger-induced fatigue. His struggle is to no avail: he is…