The First Class Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Spouse of the BVM is a wonderful opportunity to help turn back the forces of evil throughout the world as communism was turned back in Italy due to the intercession of St. Joseph.

The second Sunday After Easter is commemorated in the Mass.

When Pope Pius XII established the Feast in 1955, it appeared Italy, perhaps all of Europe, would turn communist. After establishment of the Feast Day, the threat just faded away. People could identify with St. Joseph as representing the working person rather than the communists.

At one time on the third Sunday After Easter the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph was celebrated. St. Joseph was head of the Holy Family. Holy Scripture gives us reason to suppose Jesus and Mary obeyed him strictly. He is looked upon as protector of those holy Catholic families who desire to invoke him as their guide and follow the laws conforming to the Will of God.

St. Joseph took charge of the education of Jesus. He was overjoyed to see Our Lord increase in age and wisdom before God and before mankind. St. Joseph is special protector over children and those whose job it is to educate the young. Teachers should look to St. Joseph to help them con-form to God’s Teachings in their work.

 “Bring here thy finger, and see My hands; and bring here thy hand, and put it into My side; and be not unbelieving but believing” (Gospel). Be a witness to the Divinity of Jesus Christ! Thus did the ancient Church speak to the newly baptised on this Sunday.

Since their Baptism on Holy Saturday these converts wore white robes. Now in their everyday dress they must go out as witnesses that “Christ is the Truth” (Epistle). God the “Father” bore “witness” to this at Christ’s Baptism by “water.” God the “Word” became our “Blood” witness on the Cross. God the “Spirit” gave witness when by Him Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary. Yes, this is the triple “testimony of God” which we, too, must witness unto others—that “Jesus is God” (Epistle). To the “doubting Thomases” of all future ages, Jesus gave a new proof of His Divinity in today’s Gospel, “written that you may believe...and that believing you may have life.”

Today is Feast of St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen M., a Capuchin Friar Minor, who was sent to Grisons, Switzerland, was killed by Protestant soldiers who feared his Catholic influence might turn persons back to the Catholic Church. Although not commemorated in the Sunday Mass, pray to the Saint for strength to face an evil world.

As at Christmas, the station is made at Saint Mary Major, on this greatest feast of the whole year. The Church never separates Jesus and Mary, and today, in one and the same triumph, she honours the Mother and the Son.

Before all else, the Risen Christ offers the homage of His gratitude to His Father in Heaven (Introit). In her turn the Church gives thanks to God inasmuch as by the victory of His Son, He has reopened the way to Heaven, and implores Him to assist us that we may attain this, our final goal (Collect).

For this, Saint Paul tells us, just as the Jews eat the Paschal Lamb with unleavened bread, so we must feast on the Lamb of God, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (Epistle and Communion), that is free from the leaven of sin.

In the Gospel and the Offertory we read of the coming of the holy women to the sepulchre to embalm our Lord. They find an empty tomb but an angel proclaims to them the great mystery of the Resurrection. Let us joyfully keep this day on which our Lord has restored life to us in His own rising from the dead (Easter Preface), and affirm with the Church that "the Lord is risen indeed", and like Him, make our Easter a passing to an entirely new way of life.

(Psalm 138, from the Introit of Mass)

This evening, in faith, we have accompanied Jesus as he takes the final steps of his earthly journey, the most painful steps, the steps that lead to Calvary. We have heard the cries of the crowd, the words of condemnation, the insults of the soldiers, the lamentation of the Virgin Mary and of the women. Now we are immersed in the silence of this night, in the silence of the cross, the silence of death. It is a silence pregnant with the burden of pain borne by a man rejected, oppressed, downtrodden, the burden of sin which mars his face, the burden of evil. Tonight we have re-lived, deep within our hearts, the drama of Jesus, weighed down by pain, by evil, by human sin.

What remains now before our eyes? It is a crucified man, a cross raised on Golgotha, a cross which seems a sign of the final defeat of the One who brought light to those immersed in darkness, the One who spoke of the power of forgiveness and of mercy, the One who asked us to believe in God’s infinite love for each human person. Despised and rejected by men, there stands before us “a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity, one from whom others hide their faces” (Is 53:3).

But let us look more closely at that man crucified between earth and heaven. Let us contemplate him more intently, and we will realize that the cross is not the banner of the victory of death, sin and evil, but rather the luminous sign of love, of God’s immense love, of something that we could never have asked, imagined or expected: God bent down over us, he lowered himself, even to the darkest corner of our lives, in order to stretch out his hand and draw us to himself, to bring us all the way to himself. The cross speaks to us of the supreme love of God and invites, today, to renew our faith in the power of that love, and to believe that in every situation of our lives, our history and our world, God is able to vanquish death, sin and evil, and to give us new, risen life. In the Son of God’s death on the cross, we find the seed of new hope for life, like the seed which dies within the earth.

This night full of silence, full of hope, echoes God’s call to us as found in the words of Saint Augustine: “Have faith! You will come to me and you will taste the good things of my table, even as I did not disdain to taste the evil things of your table... I have promised you my own life. As a pledge of this, I have given you my death, as if to say: Look! I am inviting you to share in my life. It is a life where no one dies, a life which is truly blessed, which offers an incorruptible food, the food which refreshes and never fails. The goal to which I invite you … is friendship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, it is the eternal supper, it is communion with me … It is a share in my own life (cf. Sermo 231, 5).

Let us gaze on the crucified Jesus, and let us ask in prayer: Enlighten our hearts, Lord, that we may follow you along the way of the cross. Put to death in us the “old man” bound by selfishness, evil and sin. Make us “new men”, men and women of holiness, transformed and enlivened by your love.
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 Homily given at the Colosseum, 2011.

At Jerusalem, in the fourth century, on the very spot where the Palm procession took place, the Gospel narrative was read in which we see Christ, hailed as King of Israel and taking possession of His capital, Jerusalem, which is really no more than the type of Jerusalem above. After this, a bishop, mounted on an ass, rode up to the Church of the Resurrection surrounded by a multitude carrying palms and singing anthems and hymns.

The Church of Rome, it would seem, adopted this practice about the ninth century and added to it the rite for the Blessing of the Palms. In this benediction the Church prays for health of mind and body for those who dwell in houses where the palms are preserved.

This procession is composed of the faithful, who with palm in hand and songs of Hosanna on their lips, proclaim Christ's Kingship every year, throughout the whole world and in all generations. At the Easter Feast they will be united to this glorious Victor through the Sacraments. It is this that is represented by the procession when it stops at the door of the Church, into which some members of the choir have already found their way. They chant alternately with the clergy, hailing the King of Glory each in his turn. Soon the door opens after the cross has knocked on it three times and the procession enters the church; so does the Cross of Christ open heaven to us and so will the elect one day enter with their Lord into eternal glory.

We should keep a blessed palm carefully in our home. It is a sacramental which will obtain for us graces in virtue of the Church's prayer and strengthen our faith in Christ, who full of mercy, symbolised by the olive branch whose oil soothes our wounds, has conquered sin, death and the devil in a victory of which these sacred palms are the type.
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Source: Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, 1945, adapted and abridged.

The Crucifix over the main altar is veiled today. Think it over in amazement! Jesus is obliged to hide Himself when “humanity” ‘stones” ‘Divinity” (Gospel).

The Jewish synagogue makes its final decision to ignore the miracles, the doctrine and the sinless of Christ, even though all these were prophesied in their own Old Testament. Due to stiff-necked pride and hard-hearted materialism, their part of the covenant had become a dead letter. Jesus makes a terrifying analysis of them: “You are not of God.”

In the Epistle St. Paul indicates how the High Priest of the Old Testament offered the blood sacrifices of victim goats, an offering which acknowledged that man deserves to be done away with for trying to do away with God by sinful rebellion. He now beholds the Altar of Calvary where Jesus, Eternal High Priest, sheds His Precious Blood to “cleanse our conscience” and “to serve the Living God.” Let us not “stone” Christ or cause Him to hide Himself.

The Church begins today on Passion Sunday the most penitential time of the year. During these final two weeks leading up to the holy festival of Easter, we are reminded of the penance of the season by the covering of the statues and images in our churches and in our homes. Additionally, in the Traditional Mass we will notice the further omission of several prayers at the beginning of Mass during the Prayers at the foot of the altar in addition to the Glory Be (known in Latin as the Gloria Patri).

The Gloria Patri is omitted in the Mass and in parts of the Divine Office. Concerning the Divine Office, it is suppressed during the responsories in the Office though kept for most of Passiontide at the end of the Psalms. However, starting with Matins of Holy Thursday said on the night of Spy Wednesday it disappears completely. The day draws close at hand when the whole Church will mourn the Lord's Passion and Death.