Dear Friends, Yesterday (the 19th) was the feast day of an often overlooked saint: Joseph, the husband of Mary and the guardian of Jesus. I had occasion to lead a mass twice yesterday, a rather rare occurrence for me. In preparing for the mass it so struck me that Joseph by the manner and circumstances of his life reminds us of how everyone of us is, in a certain way, very ordinary and even insignificant. Like him we did not have to be. The world would hardly be different, if at all, if we had not been born. Yet we were born, and here we are, everyone of us. Like Joseph we become what we are with any value because of a great Love that gave us and continues to give us our life. So often this Love is not noticed or acknowledged. But at sometime in our life, by the Mercy of this great Love, we wake up to it. Often time it is a suffering that is the providential means for us noticing, or it is a loss, a living reminder that we are not in control of our life nor with most of what goes on in it. Sometimes it can be the discovery of a wonderful friend or experience something really beautiful in nature or in the arts. But when we do wake up to the One who gave us our life, to the One who is Love itself, and we start to respond and grow into a living friendship with this Other, then our life takes off. Our life takes on a depth and meaning, a peace, joy and often a happiness that was not there before. This gentle, loving Presence enables us to trust in any situation, to be guided in our truth. This is what is shown in yesterday's Gospel reading from St. Matthew. Mary is pregnant, but not by Joseph. Heartbroken and feeling betrayed, Joseph is ready to divorce her when IN A DREAM he is encouraged to trust his situation. How seemingly implausible what he was asked to trust. Yet he did, and we are all blessed by his choice. It is in situations like this that the greatness of Joseph, a man of very humble circumstances, shines through. It is what makes the people we have known and admire, be anything but just ordinary or insignificant. Joseph, then, for me is the patron of us countless ordinary folks, those who are rarely noticed but on certain occasions, often when they have died or graduate or retire or move away, are finally seen for the extraordinary people Love enabled them to become. I emphasize that is a great Love that brings us beyond our ordinary ordinariness and empowers us to become extraordinarily ordinary; still humble and often unappreciated but filled with a sense of purpose and inner joy in finding what has been called "the pearl of great price." In my previous letter I reflected briefly on the four nuns who earlier this month were executed in Yemen with their hands tied behind their backs and made to lie down on their stomachs and face while their brains were blown out. What thoughts and feelings must have rushed through them in their final moments; to think they were be chosen to love Him in serving the elderly poor, all of them Muslims, but also by the shedding of their blood, to give over their youth and all their dreams and trust Him utterly; just as Jesus did when with tears and bloody sweats begged His Abba to remove the cup He was so dreading to drink. All of them young women who were taken with the ideal of Mother Teresa of Calcutta to serve Him who is this great Love, their greatest Love, which I have referred to by tending to the very elderly and sick. This was their "crime" according to Al Quaida: to be a follower of Christ, to serve Him alive in the elderly poor at a nursing home. Truly, I envy them . . . a lot. We get one life, we walk through this world just once, and what we can choose, a meaning and Love that is there present for us to embrace, is so amazing! This Reality is what makes the great difference in what our lives become. Joseph chose it. Abraham, when he was willing to trust God and give back to God his precious Isaac, chose it. Mary, the teenager, chose to trust the Reality when the angel Gabriel invited her into a much different life than what she was anticipating. I am convinced each of us gets this opportunity, and that it comes to visit us, to invite us more than once until we choose it, finally. I wish each of you the great blessings of Holy Week and of the Easter season. It is my intent to post a letter on this blog next Thursday and another one on Good Friday and still another one on Sunday. Till then . . . Bernie Owens