Joseph, your love of live brought an engagement - promise to love and share your life with Mary; thus did great Love come from the love between you: God with us, Jesus. Joseph, you stayed with Mary, strangely pregnant; fears fled when in a dream God's holy angel told you to cherish Wisdom born of Mary, naming him Jesus. Joseph, your son's birth, hidden in a cowshed, left only you as midwife for the birthing. You helped and guarded Mary as she labored, bringing us Jesus. Joseph, your anxious caring set you dreaming, dreams full of warning, dreams of death and danger. Trusting your spirit, you were quick and acted, saving your Jesus. Joseph, your loving presence and protection prompted your son to share with his disciples his name for love most freeing, deep and faithful: "Abba, dear father." Joseph, your spirit gives us hope and vision when life is crisis, chaos, or destruction: may we, like you, find, growing up among us, Christ's loving presence.