Skip to main content

 Why Joseph?
Statue of St. Joseph and Child Jesus in front foyer of Motherhouse.

During this Year of St. Joseph in the Diocese of St. Augustine, I thought a blog entry on how the Sisters of St. Joseph received their name would be fitting. Since October 15, 1650, is recognized as the official founding of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, I decided to post this on October 15, 2020, 370 years later. 

In researching this topic, I found a page on the Philadelphia (Chesnut Hill) Sisters of St. Joseph website that was written by Sister Dolores Clerico, SSJ, one of their members who is familiar to our Congregation since she has spoken at our Assemblies, and even led a Congregational retreat one summer at Marywood. 

According to Sister Dolores, St. Joseph was in the shadows before the 16th century. St. Teresa of Avila, the discalced Carmelites, the Jesuits and Franciscans and many newly-formed confraternities of Catholic laity in Europe began to promote devotion to St. Joseph. 

"By the beginning of the 17th century, Joseph was presented as the model of the mystical life - one who lives close to Jesus," Sister Dolores writes on the website. 

Statue of St. Joseph in Motherhouse chapel.

Bishop Henri de Maupas of Le Puy, France was the bishop who first recognized the Sisters of St. Joseph as vowed religious women in the Catholic Church. Sister Dolores explains how in a 1648 document the sisters' ministry in Le Puy bears the name of "House of Charity of Orphan Girls of Saint Joseph." She asks, "Was the orphanage named for the sisters or was it a reflection of Bishop de Maupa's devotion to Saint Joseph?"  No one is sure. 

For Sisters of St. Joseph, the patronage of St. Joseph is beyond simple devotion. Sister Dolores writes, "The oldest copy of our primitive rule in Lyon states that the name of Saint Joseph was chosen because of the 'hidden virtue of this great saint'." She adds, "Joseph is a man who carries within him a holiness that is both vigorous and inconspicuous. He is an ordinary man whose meaningful life without fanfare is wordlessly faithful."

                        Statue of St. Joseph the Worker in Lourdes Convent courtyard.

The Jesuit founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Jean-Pierre Medaille, included relationship with Joseph in the summary of a Sister of Saint Joseph vocation in the same primitive rule (Reglements): 

      "In honor of Saint Joseph, their Patriarch, they will be one in         service of each other, and one in the service of the neighbor without distinction for whom they will try to have cordial charity, as Saint Joseph had for his dear spouse and for the Savior Jesus."

October 15th, Founder's Day for the Sisters of St. Joseph, is also the feast of St. Teresa of Avila, who had a strong devotion to Saint Joseph, and from whom we got the theme of this Year of St. Joseph: Go to Joseph.







 


    








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

October 2018 Do you like to look at old photos? Most of us do, even though the quality of the photos may have faded over time. Here I am at about age 11 or 12 standing with my Mother and my sister Barbara's mother-in-law, Mrs. Leila Ponce, in Mrs. Ponce's front yard in north Jacksonville. My Mother, Grace Stovall, is holding my first nephew and her first grandson, Patrick Ponce, in her arms following his baptism, I believe. This was around 1960 or 1961. See the old cars behind us? My nephew had to find a copy of his baptismal certificate recently because he plans to get married in April in a Catholic church up in North Carolina. He was baptized in our home parish, Holy Rosary, in Jacksonville. At this time I was a student at Holy Rosary School. My parents allowed me to go there after it opened, which for me was when I was entering fourth grade. My first teacher in Catholic school was Sister Philip Neri, an Irish Sister of St. Joseph who died tragically in an automobile cr
2 comments
Read more
Pansies have a way of making me smile. These winter annuals, that tend to die as soon as hot weather comes to Northeast Florida, are welcoming, friendly flowers. As a gardener I prefer to plant perennial flowers that will live year-round as they are a lot less work. But there is something about pansies that makes them worth all the effort for a few months of their beauty in the garden. We all have things in our life that we think are worth the extra time and effort they take to nurture and develop. For some it may be practicing a musical instrument, taking walks or playing a sport, spending time with friends, or reading good books. For others it may be baking bread or painting or some other kind of artistic expression. I have read that a balanced spiritual life has these four elements: prayer, work, study and leisure. Our Puritan work ethic in this country is so strong that many of us have difficulty with leisure. And some people may think that once they finished college or hig
1 comment
Read more
August 2018 What does it mean to live the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as a Sister of St. Joseph today? How do we explain the evangelical counsels to others?  On Aug. 2-5 a meeting was held in Chicago of the CSSJ (Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph) Into the Future Collaborative entitled "Self-Emptying Love: Living the Vows for Our Times." Four Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Augustine attended: Ss. Diane Couture, Mary Kuester, Rosa Lopez and Carol Stovall. The gathering was held at the Felician Sisters central convent in a suburb of Chicago. Sisters Diane Couture and Mary Kuester in front of Felician convent, Chicago. Sister Mary Pellegrino, from Baden, Pennsylvania, spoke on the vow of obedience. In the reign of God , she said, the way things are is that all belong, all have what they need, all are loved and all are free. Religious life is called to model life in the reign of God.  She began by explaining the root of the word obedienc
Post a Comment
Read more