Wednesdays for many Catholics are dedicated to devotion to St Joseph, Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster-father of our Lord, Jesus. I’ve been trying to grow my devotion to Joseph by asking for his intercession throughout the day, but a lot of the St Joseph prayers I’ve found are longer, not easily memorized, and often a bit … effusive. Looking for something more like the Angelic Salutation of Mary, aka the “Hail Mary,” I turned to Scripture (what little there is about Joseph) to compose something comparable without sounding totally derivative (it’s admittedly a little derivative…). Joseph has his own Angelic Salutation “Joseph, son of David” (Matthew 1:20) during a dream and in later dreams he is repeatedly called to “Rise” (Mt 2:13, 20) which I made part of the petition. That Joseph names Jesus (Mt 1:21, 25), the name above all other names (Phil 2:9) strikes me as key to Joseph’s identity in addition to his betrothal to Mary. “Shadow of the Father” applied to Joseph, I fi
a pilgrim's regress