Dear Friends,

I found myself pondering the Feast of St. Joseph, celebrated on March 19, and its place within the Lenten season. There are many beautiful novenas asking for his intercession, and he has a lot of cool titles, like Terror of Demons, Diligent Protector of Christ and Patron of the Dying. A part of one popular novena I prayed reads:

O Glorious St. Joseph, spouse of the Immaculate Virgin,
obtain for us a pure, humble, and charitable mind,
and perfect resignation to the divine Will.

The word “resignation” caught my attention — it’s defined in a dictionary as “the acceptance of something undesirable but inevitable.” Yes, God’s will is inevitable, this is true. But I struggled with the concept that Joseph accepting God’s inevitable will was undesirable. Then, images of me white knuckling through a difficult situation came to mind. I pondered the heart of Joseph. How would he describe his heart with regards to God’s will? Would it be resigned, or would he willingly surrender his will for the will of God? The more I contemplated St. Joseph, the more that parallel of Lent and Jesus’ ultimate surrender seemed to align in my mind.

We can all resign our mind and our wills to something unwanted, but it takes surrender to move our hearts. St. Joseph surrendered his life, his plans and his heart to the will of God to serve as Jesus’ earthly father.  Lent is an opportunity for us to mortify our bodies in order to free our hearts to follow God’s will with a more perfect surrender.

I pray you live the remainder of Lent—not with resignation of your mind but rather—through your heart.

Yours in the Heart of Jesus,

Donna