Dearest Saint Joseph,
here we are at our usual appointment to spend a while in your company, listen to your silences, feel the caress of the Spirit that caresses our hearts and instills in us confidence and perseverance in facing the hardships of life.
At this moment of vespers, I imagine sitting next to you in the shade of a tree, feeling the comfortable breeze that passes over the Carmel mountains and reaches Nazareth and making the sunset comfortable.
In this season we smell the harvested wheat. The plain of Esdraelon, below the hill of Nazareth, looks like a golden field.
We entered the month of June, before crossing the hill from May to June, I listened to a thought on the radio as a starting point for the day from Professor Chiara Giaccardi, professor at the University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.
This expert reader of the diaries of ancient times but also an attentive observer of the chronicles of our humanity said that the month of "June is the month of the sun, the month of freedom". The month in which children are free from school commitments.
This month inherited its name from Juno, who, in the panorama of pagan divinities, was considered the «Goddess of abundance, depicted as a mother with generous forms, guardian of femininity, strong woman, mother who nourishes men and nourishes the earth who gives nourishment to the living.
A land that explodes in this season like a golden veil dotted with the red of poppies.
June is the month of poppies: beautiful flowers only if left in the ground, mixed with wheat and cornflowers.
Flowers that teach us to contemplate and rejoice, without wanting to tear them and possess them; to seize them, tear them and possess them means to make them die.
The Florentine poet Mario Luzi described the month of June as: «A blaze of poppies under the sky», bright and clear.
June, truly, is the month of light, of those blue, too blue days which when we were children seemed to never end and which as adults we risk no longer being able to savor in their luminous slowness.
Another poet, Ada Negri, defined the month with these words: "June sky, blue youth of the soul".
This month dedicated to the spirituality of the Heart of Jesus begins the summer season. The school holidays begin and people pour into the streets, parks, alleys, courtyards, exploding in colorful forms of joyful sociality. And yesterday more than today they were moments of brotherhood and shared joy.
But today, those who are alone risk feeling even more alone, and those who are excluded even more excluded: everyone is in a hurry to enjoy the blue sky.
We should never forget it, indeed we should find a way to offer a hand, a smile, to carve out some time for attention, to share something of this abundance with those who feel on the margin, almost excluded from the game of life.
June is the month of the beginning of summer and like all beginnings, full of promises, of seeds waiting to blossom with a fullness that is for everyone.
I like these words: «A fruit is always a kiss at the secret altar of the fruitfulness of a seed" which smiles in June, giving tasty and colorful fruits.
Let's return to Saint Joseph. Even in your time, O Joseph, you celebrated the feast of Pentecost which was the feast of thanksgiving for the harvest: it was the fruit that was piled up in the granary before becoming bread and represented the synthesis of the gift of God that in the previous months he had sent the rain, the sun, the wind to fertilize the seeds, health to man for his work and the golden ears were the trophy of the victory of God's goodness and man's work.
For you too, O Mary, and the young Jesus, Pentecost was the celebration of the fruitfulness of nature; it was the experience of a journey marked by God's faithfulness towards his people as well as the faithfulness of the people towards God.
While I was thinking about your person, oh beloved Saint Joseph, a phrase from the Italian playwright came to mind who said: «It is much simpler to be a hero than a gentleman. You can be a hero once in a while; one must always be a gentleman."
Persevering in virtue without fuss and applause is much more tiring. It is like a pearl that captures fragments of light from the water that caresses it to become in the silence of the sea and in the darkness of a shell a concentration of splendor and light.-
You, Joseph, were a gentleman towards God, towards your beloved wife, Mary, and a model father of Jesus.
In the gospel, in which Jesus is the absolute protagonist, not even a word has been reserved for you, O Joseph, but a monument has been built of your testimony of faith in God, creator of the universe, who chose you to a singular and unrepeatable mission.
From your testimony, O Saint Joseph, a very important announcement emerges: you want to teach us that the root of doing is being.
Our actions have their soul in the depths of our thoughts. Every person is truly happy to exist when his actions emerge in harmony and from the agreement between his ideals and his actions.
The prayer of the sleeping Saint Joseph.
Musical break
It has happened to everyone, especially as a child, to hold a shell to their ear with the belief that they could hear the lapping of the water caused by the sea waves.
The silence of that shell elicits the sweet sound of the waves caressing the beach, so it seems to me that it could happen even if we start listening to the silences of Saint Joseph and scroll through our memory the pages of the Gospel that find him present and protagonist of events , and we feel the facts that speak, the faith that sings of joy, the adversities and the labored breathing, and, if we think of the radical change in his emotional life with Maria, his dreamed girlfriend, with whom he was so much in love, we can also feel the sobs of his tears.
Just as an art critic is able to discover the most beautiful face of the painter's faith from a painting, so those who cultivate the spirituality of Saint Joseph are able to grasp from his silence, accompanied and illustrated by the colors of his immediate action which becomes the executor of desire of God, grasps the depth of his faith and from his adherence to the divine will which invests him with a great mission: to be the shadow of the eternal Father who gives him to manage, educate and grow in human qualities his son, sent to redeem humanity.
Just as art speaks the language of emotions, common to all human creatures, so does the silent listening of important events.
I am convinced that those who are capable of attending the cathedral of creation and listening to the silence find the source of light so as not to walk in the darkness.
The Gospels at the birth of Jesus record the words of the book of Wisdom: «While a profound silence enveloped all things and the night was halfway through its course, your almighty Word, O God, launched itself into the heart of the earth.
The phrase of the theologian Romano Guardini makes me think: «Silence is the complete opposite of nothingness: indeed it is the fullness of life». The search for the fullness of life does not make me like a weathervane that changes opinion with every change of wind.
The silence of the soul resembles the silence of the earth which envelops the seed and allows it to bear fruit.
The great Blaise Pascal said that "in faith as in love, silences are more eloquent than words".
Musical cut violin or flute