St. Joseph feast deserves holy day of obligation

The Catholic Register, 19 March 2021

Why not decide this year to make St. Joseph’s feast a holy day of obligation? It would be a fitting legacy of the Year of St. Joseph.

Is it possible to entrust the cause of one saint to the intercession of another? Would it ever be necessary? If the former was the greater saint, would it be odd to entrust him to the lesser?

I ask because perhaps it is time to entrust the cause of St. Joseph in Canada to St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes.

Please permit a word of explanation. More than 10 years ago, on the occasion of the canonization of St. André Bessette of Montreal, I called for making the solemn feast of St. Joseph (March 19) a holy day of obligation in Canada. He is the patron saint of Canada and patron of the universal Church. St. André’s great work, St. Joseph’s Oratory on Mount Royal, is the largest shrine to St. Joseph in the world.

In this Year of St. Joseph, the pandemic has unfortunately put paid to the annual celebrations for the feast at the Oratory. But why not decide this year to make St. Joseph’s feast a holy day of obligation and celebrate it for the first time next year, when the Oratory and churches across the land will be back to normal? It would be a fitting legacy of the Year of St. Joseph.

The argument that the feast of the national patron, in the country where his greatest shrine is established, should be observed as a holy day like Sunday, does not seem to garner much disagreement in principle. But inertia is powerful.

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