Page 118 - Reflections on St. Joseph

pastoral, youth or vocation ministry. In this we way we will create in our lives a great interior
and exterior unity, capable of confronting the vacuous superficiality of the world that
surrounds us and to make us salt that gives flavor and light that illumines history. This interior
and exterior order will also help us to overcome every form of stress and of running in vain, as
St. Paul said.

7. In order to complete well this program, we need to give a theological center to our Oblate life.
The practice of the simple and hidden virtues can become insignificant to our eyes if we do not
live them in light of the Paschal mystery, which is a mystery of death and resurrection. The
hidden life of the house of Nazareth had a redemptive significance for Jesus, since, as the
Imitation of Christ says: “the whole life of Christ was cross and martyrdom”, then all of Christ’s
life had a redemptive significance. The humility of Christ in the house of Nazareth has a paschal
significance of destruction and salvation, and we are invited, according to our charism, to
discover the salvific dimension of the mystery of Christ by living it as did Mary and Joseph
alongside Jesus.

For this reason, the Instrumentum Laboris poses some powerful questions for us: “Do we know
adequately the connection between our Oblate devotion and the mystery of the Incarnation and
of Easter? Do we see the virtues proper to our charism in only a moral light or also in light of the
theology of the Incarnation?”

These are serious questions, which perhaps we have not posed to ourselves enough, and which
are capable of giving a strong push to our spiritual life, above all if from the mystery of Nazareth
we know how to arrive at the mystery of the Eucharist, with its very lofty Christological and
paschal significance.

8. Today, youth have a strong attraction to a person who is rich in values that identify him as a
complete religious and priest. They make of this person a model, witness and spiritual guide.

Instead of the word “complete” it might be better to use a word more full of meaning: Josephite-
Marellian religious identity, priestly identity of true Oblates of St. Joseph. Such an identity has
to be based on the contemplative dimension of our entire life, without all kinds of fractures,
above all between our belonging to the world or to God, to the Congregation or, perhaps, to the
Diocesan clergy seen as an alternative to the insignificant life that is lived within the Oblate
family.

9. We often admire the great spiritual charge of the new ecclesial movements or of the new
religious institutes that spring up in the Church, where fervor is palpable and the spiritual
dimension attracts people to new ways in the life of faith. We ought not to forget that such were
also the sentiments of our Founder and of the first Brothers of St. Joseph, with a strong
christocentric and Eucharistic vision of their life, which led them to dedicate themselves to the
Lord with all of their strength in the House of St. Joseph. Here they “in imitation of that great Model
of the poor and obscure life, found a way to make themselves true disciples of Jesus Christ.”

To carry out the program of the next General Chapter – “Children of Marello, true Disciples of Jesus
Christ” – we need to enter the house of St. Joseph with these same dispositions, where the practice of
humility, poverty, self-denial, hard-work, piety, charity, are not seen only in our outward behavior,

94 Reflections on st. joseph