Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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St. Joseph
 


It is necessary to live a spirituality that helps believers to sanctify themselves through their work, imitating St Joseph, who had to provide with his own hands for the daily needs of the Holy Family and whom, consequently, the Church holds up as Patron of workers. His witness shows that man is the subject and protagonist of work.

 
Homily
Feast of St. Joseph
Vatican Basilica
19 March 2006

 
 
 
St. Joseph
 


We plead to God for all workers, especially those who undertake the most humble and sometimes insufficiently appreciated tasks, so that, in the midst of their daily cares, they may discover the friendly hand of God and bear witness to His love, transforming their fatigue into a hymn of praise to the Creator.

 
Homily
Vatican Basilica
23 October 2011

 
 
 
St. Joseph
 


St. Joseph’s greatness, like Mary's, stands out even more because his mission was carried out in the humility and hiddenness of the house of Nazareth. Moreover, God himself, in the person of his Incarnate Son, chose this way and style of life - humility and hiddenness - in his earthly existence. From the example of St Joseph we all receive a strong invitation to carry out with fidelity, simplicity and modesty the task that Providence has entrusted to us.

 
Angelus Address
St Peter's Square
19 March 2006

 
 
 
St. Joseph
 


The silence of Saint Joseph… is steeped in contemplation of the mystery of God in an attitude of total availability to divine desires. It is a silence thanks to which Joseph, in unison with Mary, watches over the Word of God, known through the Sacred Scriptures, continuously comparing it with the events of the life of Jesus; a silence woven of constant prayer, a prayer of blessing of the Lord, of the adoration of His holy will and of unreserved entrustment to his providence.

 
Angelus
December 18, 2005

 
 
 
St. Joseph
 


St. Joseph gave proof of great devotion. For the sake of Christ he experienced persecution, exile and the poverty which this entails. He had to settle far from his native town. His only reward was to be with Christ.

 
Vespers
Basilica of Mary Queen of the Apostles
The Republic of Cameroon
18 March 2009

 
 
 
St. Joseph
 


Joseph took Mary into his home. He welcomed the mystery that was in Mary and the mystery that was Mary herself. He loved her with great respect, which is the mark of all authentic love. Joseph teaches us that it is possible to love without possessing. In contemplating Joseph, all men and women can, by God’s grace, come to experience healing from their emotional wounds, if only they embrace the plan that God has begun to bring about in those close to him, just as Joseph entered into the work of redemption through Mary and as a result of what God had already done in her.

 
Vespers
Basilica of Mary Queen of the Apostles
Cameroon
18 March 2009