Rome (Italy). On March 19, 2025 we celebrate the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, whom Don Bosco wanted as patron of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians to teach us to be available to God’s plans and to put ourselves confidently in the hands of Providence.
His presence in the life of the Institute was constantly felt. At Mornese he was considered the protector. Just as he had guarded Mary and Jesus in life, he continued to guard the Church, the Institute, and every single person within the communities.
In this wake, the Servant of God Mother Rosetta Marchese (1922 – 1984), seventh Superior General of the FMA Institute, perceives the figure of Joseph as an example of silence, humility, and union with Jesus who, as Son, lives in perpetual adoration of the Father (Cf. Jn 1:18).
She writes in a letter dated 6 March 1981, to Sister Maria Rina Ronzani:
“I return above all the wishes for the St. Joseph; the dear Saint of silence, humility, deep union with Jesus and Mary. May he help us to understand his silent work, humble and hidden, but lived in intimate union with Jesus and Our Lady. It is certain that the mystery of the house of Nazareth and the thirty years lived there in hiddenness, must speak deeply to our heart and really help us to understand the value of life that lies in the duty performed for love in order to give glory to God, without seeking any human glory and no earthly recognition.”
As a Visiting Councilor, in a good night to the community of Palermo, near the Solemnity, on 17 March 1977, she presented to the Sisters the figure of Saint Joseph as “a man of measured words, capable of listening”, an example to live community dialogue that requires the exercise of humility, charity, detachment from oneself, the willingness to give enough time to allow everyone to speak:
“The practice for tomorrow is to ask St. Joseph to give us a measured word and brings us back the phrase taken from the letter of St. James: “Everyone must be ready to listen, but slow to speak.” “This ‘being ready to listen’, refers to the ability to listen, which is a virtue that is acquired with the grace of God, asking for it insistently, and by the exercise of attention over ourselves; virtue so necessary in our relationships, for the sanctity of common life, so that community dialogue may become a reality.
It is not very easy to have community dialogue, and the ability of listening that favors it, requires the exercise of humility in order to be able to give our cordial, patient, serene, respectful listening. It is the humility that is aware of its own poverty and therefore aware of always having something to receive from others; humility that knows how to grasp from what the other says, the element that enriches us, even if sometimes it can be heavy. It is boring to listen to what perhaps does not correspond completely to our thinking or to what we would like to hear said at that given moment.
It is a fundamental attitude of humility that puts us a little below others in the serene expectation to always receive something. Undoubtedly, in this interior disposition of humility, of poverty, we are more open to listening.”
In the Good Night, Mother Rosetta emphasizes detachment from oneself as an indispensable prerequisite of true listening to the other and as a path of asceticism that forms to true charity:
“The ability to listen requires a great detachment from ourselves, a virginal welcoming capacity, and by virginal, I mean such a total detachment from ourselves, that the others can enter completely into us without already having preconceptions regarding them.”
Saint Joseph was able to hold in his heart even what he humanly did not understand; he remained in attentive listening and believed the word of the Angel who opened God’s plan to him. In the life of Mother Rosetta Marchese, he was a model for welcoming the mystery of God in herself and in the people entrusted to her.
Pope Francis, in the recent Apostolic Letter “Patris Corde” written in 2020, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the declaration of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church, also notes:
“In every circumstance of his life, Joseph knew how to pronounce his ‘fiat’, like Mary in the Annunciation and Jesus in Gethsemane. Joseph, in his role as head of the family, taught Jesus to be submissive to His parents (cf. Lk 2:51), according to the commandment of God (cf. Ex 20:12). In hiddenness in Nazareth, at the school of Joseph, Jesus learned to do the Father’s will” (no. 3).
