Dear Friends of Joseph House: Last month, February 14th to be exact, was the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Joseph House Crisis Center. These milestones have a way of sneaking up on us, and this one was no different. We marked the occasion by serving a special cake in our Soup Kitchen that…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: Nine years after starting the Joseph House, our founder thought it needed a change in focus. The year was 1974 and Sr. Mary Elizabeth had just begun forming our community, the Little Sisters of Jesus and Mary, in Baltimore. She thought it was time to provide conferences and days of…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: Last month we presented some thoughts on the Good Samaritan courtesy of Pope Benedict. We’d like to do a little more with help from Pope Francis this time, who wrote an excellent commentary on the parable in his encyclical, On Fraternity and Social Friendship. Francis takes a look at each…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: Here it is November already, and another year is flying by. It’s a special year, too, the “Year of St. Joseph,” which was declared by Pope Francis as a way to promote this saint whose example offers hope during our troubled times. St. Joseph, of course, is very dear to…
Dear Friends of Joseph House: A year ago the pandemic really began to tighten its grip on all of us. Quarantines, lockdowns, and face masks became part of life. There was a long road ahead, but thanks be to God we have made it to this point. Every day has been a surrender to the…
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: 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…
Saint John XXIII had a great devotion to St. Joseph and was sometimes called the Pope of St. Joseph. On this day in 1961, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, he named St. Joseph as the patron and protector of the Second Vatican Council. The Council, an opportunity to “throw open the windows of the Church,”…