March 19, 2013

Feast of St. Joseph

Dear People of Christ Church:

It was always a blowout of a party, St. Joseph's Day in Boston, particularly in the heavily Italian and Sicilian North End. Meatless dishes and tables (it's still Lent) on the feast of St. Joseph, or San Guiseppe, overflowed with fishes, shrimps, calamari and roe, fava beans and bread crumbs, limes and pastries - St. Joseph is the patron of pastry chefs, among others who work hard for a living - including the exquisite Neapolitan zeppoli and the world-famous cannoli, best of the staple foods indigenous to the North End. You can get the best ones from Maria's, on Cross Street; Parziale's, over on Prince Street; Lulu's or Bova's, both on Salem Street; or, if you want to do it right, from either the Caffe Paradiso or from Mike's, both on Hanover Street, the main drag through that part of town. It's always crowded; why would you eat in a café or a bakery that wasn't? So you wait. It's worth it. There's nowhere to sit down. It's still worth it. At least one former U.S. president made a special trip to Mike's, just for cannoli. They filled them while he waited; you always wait to have cannoli filled just before you eat it. Then and there was much rejoicing. And wine: lots of wine tends to flow at the Festa di San Guiseppe.

Bread crumbs? The carpenters of Valencia used to sweep out their workshops just before the feast, and the shavings made perfect starters for the bonfires, and the explosive effigies of troublesome people or demons, that lit up the sky in that city on this night. Bread crumbs look like wood shavings. Fava beans? Prayers to San Guiseppe for rain one year in Sicily were most successful, resulting in a bumper crop of these things just in time to stave off famine. Limes? It probably has something to do with what the Holy Family ate to avoid scurvy while on their flight to Egypt, or with the tradition the Sicilians started in New Orleans - many went straight there from Italy in the late 1800s, much to the surprise of the French and the Irish - of setting up altars to the saint, bedecked with whatever was around, and limes being well in season.  

Joseph, as patron saint of people who work hard for a living, worked hard for his living. Carpenters and other artisans often do. Landless, they were in the ancient world cast a little lower than peasants, who at least owned small plots of land, and most other people who weren't slaves. He raised his sons to follow in his trade, as far as we can tell, although some took up other vocations. His eldest, to whom he was actually a surrogate or stand-in, was Jesus, whom we call Christ. Jesus's own father wasn't around very much when he was a kid, and sort of left him and his mother to Joseph to take care of. He never sent a letter, a birthday card, or much in the way of child support, although he did finally let it be known that "This is my beloved Son; with him I am well pleased." But that was when the boy was grown and had set out on his own. What Joseph and Mary told the boy Jesus about his real father is still something of a mystery.

In any event, Jesus did not for long, if at all, take up his father's profession. We, as Christians, do not follow in the footsteps of the carpenter. We follow in the footsteps of one who dropped woodworking like a hot rock and went to work healing bodies and souls, and eventually freeing the world of its sins. After he left home, at the tender age of 30, no less, the next time Jesus saw hammers and nails was when they were used on him. Joseph's eldest natural son with Mary, James, followed in his half-brother's footsteps, trading a carpenter's planes and adzes for standing at Jesus's right hand and leading, after Jesus finally took off, the church in Jerusalem. That didn't always go smoothly - see under "The Apostle Paul Confronts the Brothers in Jerusalem" - and ended with everyone being martyred or running away.  

Next to Job and maybe Cain, Joseph suffered more than any other man in the Bible. Unlike them, he suffered not in his own body, but through watching the pain others inflicted on his family or when members of that family misbehaved. Jesus, when a child, was like so many people with an absent father or a perfect mother: a brat. According to most surviving traditions, Joseph had a devil of a time raising that boy to go in the way he ought, and use his God-given power of being God well. It worked, finally; Jesus finally learned to control his temper and his frustration at slow-witted, immoral persons who couldn't get with his program fast enough. But I don't think it was easy.

As in life, so in after-life. San Guiseppe today still suffers, if mostly in statue form. Plaster or stone casts of the saint are often buried by those seeking to find a new home. To motivate the saint properly, one must follow tradition and bury him miserably: head down, feet up, and for as long as it takes. Recent turnarounds in the housing market suggest that a whole lot of people are motivating this saint quite effectively. I bet it still hurts. Also, how many people remember to dig the saint up, clean him off, and set him up nicely in the new house, once they get it?

Yes, I forgot, too. The statue didn't make it, but the house we bought still stands. I could seriously go for some cannoli.

Blessings,

Fr. Christopher