Serra Club Vocations Essay

St. Joseph is a model of obedient service in his care for Mary, Jesus

By Elizabeth Daoud (Special to The Criterion)

In a world full of noises, chaotic ideas and misleading conceptions, people try to embrace any idea even if it is wrong, just to fit into a society stained by corruption and false claims.

We see more and more families falling apart, and trailing behind them are kids who will end up confused and segregated between a mother and a father who have chosen to live their life each on his or her own path.

This will create a troubled child striving for peace and settlement. Kids are losing trust in the core of their home.

Pope Francis has proclaimed 2021 as the Year of St. Joseph because the world desperately needs a father figure. St. Joseph raised Jesus as his own child, taught him manhood and taught him the value, dignity and joy of work. Those are values that our world strives for.

“The carpenter of Nazareth,” explains the pope, “was able to turn a problem into a possibility by trusting in divine providence.”

St. Joseph is the true model of saying yes to serve our Lord because St. Joseph trusted when an angel told him about Mary being pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. He took Mary into his home and raised Jesus. St. Joseph trusted and served the Lord when he left his work and home to flee with Mary to Egypt to protect Jesus from being killed by Herod.

Joseph was already protecting the Church by protecting Mary and her child, our Lord. Being an obedient and tender father, he offered himself in love.

I am inspired by St. Joseph to say yes to Jesus and Mary by fully relying on them and by letting the love of God and my full trust in him overcome every obstacle.

I have learned to listen to his calls and his ways in my life. Like St. Joseph, I put everything into the hands of Jesus and our Blessed Mother. I say yes to his will, and I pray that Jesus and Mary will help me to say yes to everything that will happen in my life.

“I don’t know what tomorrow will hold for me, but I do know who holds tomorrow,” Anonymous.

I pray that St. Joseph, protector of the holy Church, will intercede for the unity and peace of the Catholic Church and the purity of her priests, that they will be guided by God’s wisdom.

I ask St. Joseph to protect all the families. Let love, respect, fidelity and faith fill the hearts of every member of each family. Let the kids, by the intercession of St. Joseph, grow up in a loving and caring family. Good families raise solid members, guided by the Holy Spirit. Our world will become more beautiful and more peaceful when family is the core of the society and the whole world.

“As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live,” said Pope John Paul II.
 

(Elizabeth and her parents, Lina and Jauques Daoud, are members of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Richmond. She recently completed the seventh grade at Seton Catholic High School in Richmond and is the seventh-grade division winner in the Indianapolis Serra Club’s 2021 John D. Kelley Vocations Essay Contest.) †