It's been six years.
My small mission church, a part of the SSPX, moved, and between that and a family member needing regular visits that entailed whole weekends, I lost my routine of Mass. I think I also became discouraged that the Church would ever be what it had been in any large sense - but that's a problem for my conscience, not the Church. My dad reminded me over and over: the Church is the Church, the people will be more or less faithful at times.
Since then, I have found some comfort in a Resistance group, dedicated to finding and maintaining what the Church stood for in its most positive way.
Meantime, it occurred to me recently that a dedication to St. Joseph might be a good focus, especially in these times, and especially at an, ahem, advanced age. He is a figure often overlooked - the one standing stoically by at the Nativity, the one leading the donkey bearing the pregnant Mary, the silent partner (we presume) at the wedding feast of Cana, and missing altogether at the Crucifixion. But evidently, he was there, not calling attention to himself, not writing a swashbuckling story, but simply doing what he was asked to do. And it must have been hard. Like most young men, he probably wanted a "normal" family, a wife, some children. He didn't ask to be chosen, and at the time could have easily rejected what he was called to do.
At some point in our lives we realize that this is it: I'm "here." This is what it is going to be. How'm I doing?
I keep a little statue of St. Joseph ( a tiny one, to be precise) on a shelf in the kitchen. When I go to get something to prepare dinner, I see it, and it reminds me to just make the best dinner I can. This is it.
