Two millennia ago, the event that precipitated redemption for all mankind was initiated when the Blessed Mother responded to the Archangel Gabriel with her great fiat, her “yes” to the sacred plan of God. God the Son, the Word Incarnate, would enter into this world as all of us do, with the naked humility and manifest vulnerability of an infant. And the success of the entire plan would depend, firstly, on the Christ Child surviving a particularly perilous period. Initially, the Blessed Virgin Mary would be viewed as having an unplanned pregnancy, potentially an unwed mother, and even after overcoming that challenge, the young parents would be homeless at the time of the birth. As if these dangers were insufficient, the king of their people would issue orders that the Child be murdered outright, and the Holy Family would be forced to live in exile, working hard and carefully guarding both the small treasures gifted to them by the magi and the remainder of their otherwise humble belongings as they struggled to avoid abject poverty. Amidst all these threats to Jesus, the sacred plan was to entrust the Blessed Mother and the Christ Child to the fatherly leadership and faithful stewardship of Saint Joseph.

Today, one might easily compare the perils facing the Church — the mystical Body of Christ — to the perils faced by the Holy Family back then. As Saint Joseph protected Jesus from violence, our new pope will need to protect the Church from Muslim militants and Chinese Communist Party despots alike. As Saint Joseph guarded Jesus in the womb, our new pope will need to guard innocent infant life in all wombs. As Saint Joseph acted directly, in authentic charity, to bring his family to safety and to provide them with shelter, our new pope will need to inspire all Christians to private, direct acts of charity, to assist those who lack shelter or are seeking refuge from harm, without undue intervention in the prudential discretion of government authorities in fashioning policies that may or may not exacerbate or mitigate the challenges faced by the vulnerable. 

Just as Saint Joseph conserved the treasures entrusted to him by the magi, our new pope must implement reforms to conserve the resources entrusted to his care. Most importantly, as Saint Joseph, the Worker, used the skills invested in him as a means to provide for and feed his family, our new pope must make known and fully alive among the faithful the ultimate nourishment found in the Divine Mercy of Christ and the Real Presence of God — in the forgiveness of sins during the sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Holy Communion that arises in the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist. 

Saint Joseph provided the fatherly leadership that the Holy Family required, and his faithful stewardship of all that was entrusted to him permitted the sacred plan for salvation to unfold. Let us pray that Pope Leo XIV looks to the model of Saint Joseph for the fatherly leadership now required in order to provide faithful stewardship of the Church entrusted to his care.