{"id":2445,"date":"2009-12-25T13:37:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T18:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/2009\/12\/25\/a-joseph-two-pack\/"},"modified":"2009-12-25T13:37:12","modified_gmt":"2009-12-25T18:37:12","slug":"a-joseph-two-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/2009\/12\/a-joseph-two-pack\/","title":{"rendered":"A Joseph Two Pack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent I received two books for review that really fit together hand and glove.<\/p>\n

One book I read last year was The Sign of the Times<\/a> by the late Fr. Gilsdorf. I so loved that book and it was one of my favorites of the year. The success of the release of that book got the publisher to also release Go to Joseph<\/a>\"\" a little book that he had written and never published. It is a power packed short book as Fr. Gilsdorf goes through the scriptures in reference to Saint Joseph. The silence of Joseph is well known since we never have any of Joseph words in scripture, but only his decisions fully aligned with the Holy Spirit and that he was a just man. Scripture does not even record his death and after Jesus’ visit to the Temple at age 12 we hear no more details about Joseph. Fortunately this does not mean that we don’t know anything about this great saint.<\/p>\n

Fr. Gilsdorf as an excellent scripture scholar nudges out what can be known about St. Joseph. He does not include any of the apocryphal legends that were written later and has a critical view of what was referenced there. Those sources present Joseph as a older widower and Church art has mainly shown Joseph as an older man. This was done mainly to protect the virginity of Mary, but it seems to me to be almost a sort of slander to St. Joseph and a diminishment of his sanctity. Fr. Gilsdorf expects he was probably a man of 18 or 19 when betrothed to Mary which would fit with the cultural evidence of the time.<\/p>\n

Throughout this book he goes through the reflections available apart from scripture where they apply. Devotion to St. Joseph is a relatively new thing in the Church that developed over time and really didn’t pick up any steam till the 1500’s. The book provides a handy time line in regard to this. It is hard to imagine that there were not churches dedicated to St. Joseph in the first millennium of the Church and the mention of St. Joseph by the Church Fathers is very limited.<\/p>\n

This book also doubles as a source of apologetics concerning St. Joseph and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.<\/p>\n

What Fr. Gilsdorf has done is to give is a short to-the-point life of St. Joseph that tried to avoid speculation and stick to what we can know. So it is as easy but highly worthwhile read. The last part of the book contains prayers to St. Joseph and other appendices. Julie at Happy Catholic was also quite impressed<\/a>.<\/p>\n