Due to the way the Sundays of Lent fall this season, tomorrow, March 20th, we will celebrate the Solemnity of St. Joseph — Foster Father of Jesus and Patron of the Universal Church. My thoughts go to the Year of St. Joseph and August 1, 2021 — the fourth anniversary of our Parish of St. John Bosco — when we consecrated our parish to St. Joseph. The picture of St. Joseph we blessed that day and the plaque commemorating the consecration hang in the vestibule of the Church. Each day we call on St. Joseph to protect us. He is the Terror of Demons. Remembering this, I want to share with you a true event that is still recalled today in Poland.

    In 1997, the great Pope St. John Paul II visited the Shrine of St. Joseph in Kalisz, Poland. In the crypt of this Church there is a museum dedicated in thanksgiving to St. Joseph for his role in saving the lives of many Catholic priests imprisoned in the Dachau Concentration Camp during world War II.    Dachau was the “priest camp” and records show some 2,579 priests were imprisoned there, and of these, 1,034 died! It was a place of horror. However, the 1,545 priests who survived, attributed their liberation to St. Joseph!

    The first priests began to arrive in Dachau in 1939. As the numbers grew on December 8, 1940, the priests made a communal act of consecration to St. Joseph, asking him to help them survive the hell in which they were living. They frequently renewed this act of consecration and continually prayed and made Novenas to St. Joseph to help them survive. On April 29, 1945 the camp was liberated and the priests testified that they owed their lives to the intercession of St. Joseph. As a sign of gratitude, many of the surviving priests, especially the Polish ones, organized a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Joseph in Kalisz, in 1948. They made another pilgrimage in 1958 and other times after. In 1995, the 37 priests who were still alive were present for the pilgrimage. Today, all of those priests are dead, but the museum remains standing as a tribute to St. Joseph.

    Why this story? First, because it is a clear reminder to us of the powerful intercession of St. Joseph. Those priests survived the horrors of Hitler’s depraved mind — there is no Consecration Camp, and yet, today, we see so many horrors in our world that at one time we could never imagine. It is no longer just the horrors of war, injustice, disregard for all human life at every stage, persecution for the faith, pornography, child sex-trafficking, invasions of drugs, crisis in  manhood and fatherhood, divisions of all kinds — to mention just a few. Let there be no mistake, these things are the work of the devil — the Evil One — and so we live in a time to call upon Joseph, the Protector of Jesus and Mary, to protect us, to protect our families, to protect our Church. The feast of St. Joseph reminds us of this need.

    Second, this story of speaks of St. Joseph’s special care and protection of priests — “Other Christ’s” in this world. We know the need priests have for our prayers — we must pray for our priests every day, that like those priests in Dachau, in spite of the challenges they face, they may remain faithful and strive to be good priests, holy priests. More, we need priests! Young men who will be generous enough to push aside their fears and say “yes” to God’s call to become priests. I have no doubt that there are many such men here, in our parish. This year, as we celebrate this feast of St. Joseph, I want to invite all of us to pray in a very special way, through his intercession, for an increase in vocations to the priesthood, especially from within our parish!

    St. Joseph, pray for us!
    God bless you!
Fr Pat