On greeting Poles during the General Audience on March 20, 2019, Pope Francis enumerated Saint Joseph’s virtues, celebrated the day before: trust, humility, courage and obedience.
“May the protection he gave the Holy Family be a significant example for us,” he encouraged from St. Peter’s Square. As Saint Joseph did, let us protect Jesus in us, when we receive Him today in the Eucharist and in listening to His word.”
“With the same love, let us turn to Mary, asking Her for her support and good counsel in daily life. Let us learn from Saint Joseph trust in God, humility, courage and obedience,” added the Holy Father.
The Argentine Pope is very attached to Saint Joseph. It was, moreover on March 19, 2013, his feast day — six days after his election — that Francis inaugurated his pontificate.
On receiving the Oblates of Saint Joseph in August 31, 2018, he exclaimed: “I love Saint Joseph, he has such ‘power’! For more than forty years, I recite a prayer that I found in an old French Missal, which said of Saint Joseph: ‘. . . whose power is able to make possible impossible things.’ Saint Joseph’s power. He never, never says no. We must draw courage from him.”
The Pontiff also stressed “the simple and essential virtues of Saint Joseph: “humility,” “intimacy with the Lord,” “silence and hidden life,” but also “zeal” and “activity for the benefit of the Lord’s will.”
Before Superiors General in November 2016, he confided the secret of his “serenity.” “I don’t take tranquilizing pills! . . . If there is a problem, I write it on a paper to Saint Joseph and I put it under a statuette that I have in my room. It’s the statue of Saint Joseph sleeping. And, henceforth, he sleeps on a mattress of papers! And I sleep well: it’s a grace of God.
