 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Almighty God, our Father in heaven, we thank you for gathering us to become your family as sons and daughters who share in nothing less than Christ's own divine sonship. More than a symbol, more than a metaphor, your fatherhood and our status in Christ as your children, these truths are more real than the field house we've gathered in. I ask now in the name of Jesus for you to pour out the Holy Spirit, to write this truth upon our hearts so that we can see you for who you truly are, not just our Lord, our creator, not just our law giver and our judge, but truly Abba Father. And so we pray that prayer Jesus taught us, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy will, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Saint Joachim and Anne, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It just seemed nice to have this feast for the parents of the Blessed Virgin to coincide with a presentation that I'd hope to give on marriage and family. I think everybody recognizes that right now in our culture, marriage is getting clobbered, right? TV and movies, the internet, legislation, public policy debates in public schools and even in Catholic schools, so-called. And so we have to learn again how to strategically use natural law arguments, empirical research, social scientific data and all kinds of logical and psychological reasoning to reach people with what used to be considered common sense. I think back to when I was born in 1957 and the month of my birth coincided with the debut of a TV show called Leave It to Beaver. How many of you ever seen Leave It to Beaver? All right, you know, Ward Cleaver and Beaver and all, I mean just white picket fences, suburbs, family and the most trouble of all came from Eddie Haskell. You know, it's like, okay, you fast forward to my high school graduation in 1975, I graduated just in time to see the debut of Saturday Night Live. How many of you remember that? I mean, that indicates something of a seismic shift in cultural plates, I mean, but since 75, the things that have changed with Obergefell and Windsor versus the US, Supreme Court decisions, executive decrees, all sorts of things leave us quite frankly bewildered, right? I mean, even the gloom and doom profits never saw this coming. But I'm reminded of something that happened to me years ago. Long after I graduated from high school, we got married 40 years ago, we're coming up to our 40th anniversary next month and on August 18th, but I remember because, oh, I was exploring the Catholic faith, studying the Bible and things just kept coming up Catholic and so I enrolled in a PhD program at Marquette University to study under Jesuits, one of God's most interesting creatures. But there was one Jesuit in particular that I went to study under, Father Donald Keefe, God rest his soul, he was just called home in January in his 90s and he was working on a massive project at the time entitled Covenant Theology. Can't imagine why Han would be interested in a Jesuit like that, but it was my first semester in the PhD program and I was still a Protestant and I was still thinking that becoming Catholic was a long way off, four or five years. I was taking a doctoral seminar on religion and society, the fall of 85. Now, for some of you, that's a real throwback. Just imagine what it was like in the 80s. John Paul was your pope and he was still young and vigorous. Ronald Reagan was our president. He was very conservative in defense of marriage and family and traditional terms, contrary to his predecessor, President Carter, who had actually founded the White House meeting on the family and they couldn't even come up with a definition of family or marriage, a kind of sign pointing to more troubled times. But it was also an interesting time because in the mid-80s, there was a coalition being formed for the first time. You had evangelical Protestants who always saw themselves as anti-Catholic and you had pro-life Catholics who were boldly embarking upon this pro-life mission at the clinics and elsewhere. And so we found ourselves, not only Kimberly and me, but also all these other evangelical Protestants and Catholics marching, praying. And we'd have to endure the rosary and we knew who they were, but at the same time, Dr. James Dobson had been humiliated on the Phil Donahue show as this up-and-coming scholar with a PhD in family psychology from UCLA. And he went into a darkness for months and out of it came this thing called Focus on the Family. And it was like payback for the humiliation. And so it was John Paul, it was Reagan, it was Jim Dobson, it was Mother Teresa. I mean, it was an interesting time. And there we were in this doctoral seminar discussing the role of religion and society. And this grizzled Jesuit warned us, don't just go off and marry the Republican Party. We made that mistake back in the 30s with the Democratic Party and we've been paying for ever since. Don't trust those promises. And we were discussing what role does religious faith have? What role do religious values play in the public square? And we were reading a book by a then Lutheran pastor by the name of Richard John Newhouse entitled The Naked Public Square. And we were discussing whether or not religious faith values have any voice in the public square. And of course, we could defend that on the basis of the Constitution and our freedom and all of that. We didn't realize at the time that Richard John Newhouse was really diving into the Catholic tradition, natural law. Because just within a few years he became a Catholic convert and a Catholic priest. But this was still a far way off. And as we're debating this in a PhD seminar with people taking just about every side, Father Keefe was lecturing on the importance of covenant and the notion of sacrament and how the primordial form of the image of God is the marital covenant that goes back to the beginning. And it's still with us after the flood, all of these institutions collapse, but the one that still is preserved is the covenant of marriage. And he was basing everything on this nuptial covenant. And then he was debating, he was getting into the debates about public policy. And for whatever reason, we couldn't figure out why. He just interrupted himself. He was looking at his notes and then suddenly he was staring out the window. And so we started staring too. A flying saucer, we weren't sure what it was. It was a blue sky, a sunny afternoon. And suddenly he turned back around and he said, you know, all this discussion, all this debate, I dare say if Catholic couples simply lived the grace of the sacrament of matrimony for one generation, the result would be a transformed culture, a Catholic Christian society. Oh, but I digress, I suppose I digress, you know? And so he went back to his lecture notes and I'm like, what was that? Keep digressing. Were you serious? Was this hyperbole? He wasn't usually given to exaggeration, but when he said it, it just hit me like a thunder clap. It was like, whoa. And the more I pondered it, the less I listened to him, I wrote it down and it just felt like a laser beam landing in the back of my retina. It burned, but it was illuminating. And I talked to him afterwards a lot for years. And I began to realize there was nothing exaggerated about that. The sacrament of matrimony is not just some ritual that we do for God to motivate him to get him to do what we want. No, on the contrary, the sacrament is what God does primarily for us to make up for what we lack, to give us what we need because marriage is not just a contract. This is yours, that is mine. It's a covenant. I had already seen that as a Protestant. A covenant is different than a contract. This is yours, that is mine, contract. You exchange promises, then property, and you can walk away and never have another dealing. But in a covenant, I am yours, you are mine. And it takes three to get married because I give you my word for a contract, but we invoke God's name for a covenant. What do you call that? An oath, which goes beyond a promise. And what is the Latin word for oath, for a covenant oath? Sacramentum as I learned. And so there was something profoundly sacred about the covenant of marriage, which I knew as a Protestant because I was into the covenant, but the idea that it was a sacrament, that there weren't just two, but seven, and that this was not just some kind of external ritual, but a divine mystery. At that time, I must admit, it was enticing. It appealed to my intellect, but at the same time I would go home and Kimberly was getting more and more worried about my wandering heart, not to another woman, but to another denominational tradition because I was looking more and more into the Catholic church and she was looking and wondering why. And so I ended up coming into the church in 86, the next year. She didn't come in for another four years and I wasn't sure she ever would and kind of thought that she wouldn't. And when she did, we were kind of expecting a glorious reunion. We're both Catholic. It's like a holy homecoming to be there at the Easter vigil. But the next few months after she became Catholic, we discovered that all of the bad habits that we had acquired, all of the poor communication, all of the different sort of defensive ways that we were hurting each other were still with us. And so we moved here to Steubenville in 1990 and we discovered even though we were both Catholics now that we still had stress, fault lines in our relationship. And so we took up some advice from friends of ours and we went to a Catholic marriage counselor. I went alone, she went alone and then together over the course of months and he took my theology and he threw it right back in my face to explain why is it a sacrament because you need the grace and the mercy to learn how to apologize with humility and honesty. Instead of, I'm sorry, you misunderstood me yet again. You know, he warned me about weaponizing apologies. I don't know why, I mean. Well, you can be sincere and still be sincerely wrong and insensitive. And he explained that the sacrament will make up for what we lack. It'll give us what we need. We can renew the wellspring. We had fallen in love, it was like spring. We had gotten married, it was like summer. I started looking into the Catholic church, discovering marriage is a sacrament only it was driving a wedge between me and my bride. And then when I became a Catholic, it was like this long winter that just didn't seem to end. And then she became Catholic and we thought while springtime is back and yet like spring in Steubenville, you have a lot of snow still. A lot of cold, a lot of ice. But out of that came a new found friendship, a renewal of our covenant. And I'd like to say ever since the early 90s it's been nothing but summer. But we've been raising six kids here. Five boys, one girl, as I say, one rose and five thorns. And you can't do that as a couple with as much intensity and energy and opinion as Scott and Kimberly have and not have friction. And so what this counselor explained is that all married couples generally go through seasons of life, periods of love where you're falling in and out of love until you finally learn that love is not a feeling, it's a commitment. And it calls for your character to develop the virtues of chastity, of fidelity, of purity, of heart as well as flesh in order to achieve sanctity and true charity. And that this is not something that we do for God but it's something that God does for us and that's why it's not just a contract, it's not just a covenant, it is a sacrament. And it's not the only one. I also learned at that point why there's confession and why frequent confession is not a bad idea, especially for a struggling couple. And I decided since entering the church to go to confession weekly at least, because I heard that's what John Paul did. And I didn't think I was any holier than him. Weekly confession. And now, 33 years later, Kimberly has never even suggested that I go to confession too frequently. Nor of the kids. They can see what a difference this divine medicine can make in our marriage. A kinder and gentler husband, a father, and all of the rest. But I'll tell you, we went through hard times and there were people here in town who were friends of ours who wouldn't have put a dollar on our marriage lasting. And I say that to my shame, because my bride is like the most generous, amazing woman I've ever known. She's not only gorgeous, she is positive. She is kind and generous. She didn't have a temper when I married her. But the two become one, right? And you try to figure out, well, which one? Because I was sure I was the one we were gonna become. She wasn't. And so I was so kind as to impart to her a generous share of my temper. Wow. Not something I was proud or grateful about. But those friends of ours who worried about our marriage did so for good reason. Especially the ones who live close to us in the summer when our windows were open. And again, I apologize to you like I apologized to her, but it was a struggle. And I can say this. It's the sacramentality of marriage that got us through it. It was God's faithful and merciful love that took her fidelity and her kindness to a supernatural level. And imparted to me a growing share in her own kindness and generosity. But our marriage lasting 40 years is a testimony to the medicine of God's mercy and of the sacramentality of our marriage and yours. Now I realize that not all of you can find a woman like Kimberly. I told my boys, I'm sorry, I got the best. Good luck, I'll pray for you, you know? But I tell ya, God has given to us partners. How many of you are married? I wanna tell you that those of you who are not married either because you're widowed, separated, divorced, or just single for life, all of us are part of a marriage. The marriage supper of the lamb. Where Christ gives himself to his church as a groom gives himself to the bride. In fact, in becoming a Catholic, I found myself kind of wondering why I hadn't thought of this one liner. I should have, not to pick her up, but on our wedding night, I wish that I could have said to her, this is my body, which is given up for you. Because that was my desire, that was my hope, that was my commitment, but I didn't think of it. But when I heard a Catholic priest pronounce those words for the very first time at my very first mass, I heard the voice of the bridegroom. And I realized I was part of the church and I was going to receive full membership and thus I was going to receive from Christ the bridegroom as a member of the church's bride, his body, his flesh, his blood, his life giving love. In this covenant, this sacrament that I was entering was like my marriage, designed by God to be permanent. As long as we both shall love, no. As long as we both shall live. I attended one wedding where the vow was changed, as long as we both shall love. And the cringe factor was very visible all over my face. No, it's as long as we both shall live and we live through all kinds of things. It's permanent, it's exclusive. And I'll admit to my shame that our first year of marriage, I was in seminary and she was in Cambridge, Massachusetts studying near Harvard, not studying, but working in a medical institution. We'd come back and touch base at dinner and all of that but I was exhausted and so was she. She had an hour commute from Ipswich down to Boston and we just thought our first year of marriage is just gonna be euphoric, utopian. But we were exhausted night after night. But what was even more disturbing was there was a gal in one of my graduate seminars and I struck up a conversation with her. And I know this sounds stupid but I didn't know that once you got married, other women could still be attractive and destructive. And so I found myself talking to her about the subject matter and I wanted to be a missionary to go teach theology in some third world country and Kimberly was like, no, I wanna be close to family. And this student, oh, she wanted to go and be a missionary. Well, after about a week, I realized what I needed to do. I had to sit on the other side of the lecture hall and I was humiliated and embarrassed because why'd you move? I just can see I can hear better over here. Yeah. Well, Kimberly came to me that weekend and said, I have a confession to make. And she told me that she had just put in for a transfer because she was working with someone and they just clicked too much. And I'm like, seriously, please don't be upset. I'm like, I forgive you but let me ask you to forgive me. And so we learned, okay, it is permanent lifelong. It is exclusive and yet our hearts are weak and wayward and God had to help us recognize the need to really renew our pledge, not just physically but emotionally again and again and again. 40 years in the wilderness. That's how long Israel wandered. I feel like we're finally entering the promised land. 40 years and we are now enjoying a kind of friendship that I didn't even know married couples could have. We're having more fun than ever, more dates now that we're empty nesters. Our last teenager just turned 20 last week. So after parenting teenagers for a quarter of a century, free at last, thank God we are free at last. But you never stop parenting because when your kids have kids, you know, grandparenting still involves diapers at least for Kimberly and all kinds of generosity and sacrifice but our three are married and we see the 18 grandkids from them. We also see two who are in the seminary studying for the priesthood for the diocese of Steubenville Jeremiah and Joseph, please pray for them because we need holy priests like never before. And our son, our son David is gonna be a junior here and I think he has his dad's hormones and so I don't know what his vocation is but please pray for him because we have almost too much fun together. It's a joy to be here but it's also risky business to be married to raise a family in the 21st century. You know, traditional morality is now being described as hate speech and not just in one party but even in our Catholic schools to define marriage in such an exclusive way. You know, and this is where I think we have to learn natural law arguments. We need to do empirical research but as Jennifer Robach Morse just said in an article, secular arguments are not enough. Dr. Jeffrey Meir is a great moral theologian philosopher said, we can't just depend upon the natural law. We need to proclaim the gospel. We need the grace of God. We're not just out to reach them, those pagans who've lost track. We are them. We need to be reached ourselves by the medicine of God's mercy. Every morning I need the grace of conversion when I make a morning offering. Every week I go to confession for that grace of conversion to go more deeply into my heart and my soul and my mind and my body. We also go as a family to daily mass because Christ the bridegroom wants to restore our marriage even more by giving his body to us as his bride. But to those of you who are married, all of us are participating in the mystery of marriage because we are Christians, greatly beloved by Christ. We are Catholics who receive his body, blood, soul and divinity. But for those of you who are Catholics who are now married, I wanna tell you it is a great adventure but it is also a great challenge and it has been forever. It's not just like the last 15 or 20 years. You go back to the beginning and what do you have? You have what looks to be a holy family because God says let us make man and our image after our likeness and he creates man as male and female. And he says what, be fruitful and multiply. You turn the page and in chapter two, the two shall become one, one flesh. And that one flesh ends up becoming the garment worn by our firstborn, Michael. His flesh came from our one flesh union. The two became one and the one we became was so real that nine months later we had to come up with a name for our oneness. We became three in one, that's the mystery of the Trinity. Let us make man and our image after our likeness, male and female. Well, the dogs and the cats had gender differences too but nothing is said about gender for the animals because it's just biological for them but it's theological for us. And so there they are in the garden. Talk about paradise, ideal conditions and yet what happens? You've got a husband who gives into fear and disobedience. Have you ever known a husband who disobeyed the commandment of God? No, that was way back in the beginning, right? No, I go to confession for such things. So God renewed the covenant with Noah and his wife and their three sons and their daughters in law aboard the ark. There were four couples, one household and he's described as righteous and he obeys and he builds the ark and he saves the human race and you know the rest of the story and so in Genesis seven and eight he has disembarked, he builds an altar, offers a sacrifice, God renews the covenant and then in Genesis nine he gets drunk and when he wakes up he pronounces a curse. Now have you ever known a man who had drinking problems or would curse at times? No, again, that's in the Old Testament but this is the one man who was righteous enough to save the human race. God, is that the best you can do? Well no, because Abraham, God makes the covenant with him and he's not only described as righteous but faithful, upright and what happens? Well, Sarah doesn't have a child and so he takes her up on the suggestion to have relations with her maid servant Hagar. Oh, okay, and what happens? Hagar got pregnant and gave birth to Ishmael and who are the sons of Ishmael to this day? The Arabs and who are the sons of Sarah? The Jews, the Israelis. So Abraham is still from heaven seeing the payback, right? We don't understand it except in geopolitical terms. They understood it in genealogical terms. Have you ever known a man who had a problem because there was another woman? So no holy family yet, not with Adam and Eve, not with Noah and his wife, not with Abraham and Sarah but Moses, he is meek, he's righteous, he's faithful. And yet what happens at the end of his life after the Passover, the Exodus, the giving of the law, leading Israel for 40 years through the wilderness, he finally comes to the border of the Promised Land and in a fit of rage strikes the rock that he was supposed to speak to and because of this public display, this kind of mosaic tantrum is thereby excluded from entering the Promised Land. Because back then, men had bad tempers. Again, it's such a good thing to have outgrown all of these problems, right? So Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses were on a roll but it's downhill because the next major mediator is David, a man after God's own heart who meditates upon God's law day and night who writes all of the Psalms and more and then just a little stumble, well, not that little. Adultery and then Uriah, her husband, put him in the front lines, pull back so he dies, murder. Boy, could he repent though. He wrote Psalm 51, the greatest of the penitential Psalms, leading the great Harvard ethicist William James to say, I would sin like David if only I could repent like David. Well, you can't manipulate it because that's put in God of the test. But I mean, David, an adulterer and a murderer? No holy family in sight yet, right? Until what? Until Jesus, until Mary, until Joseph. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We call them the holy family, but we don't recognize that they are a holy family but they're the only one. You know, well, that was in the old times. If you come and visit the Hans, we will show you hospitality, but you will not walk out of our home saying what was that? That was the aroma of sanctity. They're a holy family. Now we wanna be and someday with God's help we will be but so far there's only been one holy family and it was because they had it so easy, right? Wrong. Gentlemen, you know, we always look to Jesus as we should and to the blessed Virgin Mary as we must but I wanna just spend a few minutes looking at St. Joseph because I think he is the unsung hero of the holy family. And not only of that back then, but if you listen to the Eucharistic prayer as Pope Francis has added his name, you realize that in the mass we pray to the blessed Virgin and to St. Joseph, her ex-spouse. No, because in a certain sense they're still married and Jesus is not only their child but all of us through the water of baptism, through the grace of adoption. We become members of a family that originates in God the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit but that Holy Spirit overshadows the blessed Virgin so we become her children as well. And St. Joseph becomes a spiritual father to us but it wasn't so easy for him in Matthew chapter one. The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way when his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Now betrothal as you know is more than engagement because once you're betrothed it is the covenant, it is marriage and though you can't consummate it yet, nevertheless the only way out is through a certificate of divorce. And so what happens? Well, his mother Mary had been betrothed before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. That's an awkward phrase. She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. You look at the English, you're like, oh, you can translate that better. You look at the Greek and you realize, no, it's awkward in the original. She was found to be with child by whom? By the Holy Spirit? Oh, you got a child. Oh, no, it's not the Holy Spirit finding out. It isn't even Mary finding out. Well then who finds out that she is with child by the Holy Spirit? St. Joseph. And that's what Matthew narrates. It goes on and her husband Joseph being a just man, a righteous man and unwilling to put her to shame, that's a bad translation. Unwilling to call attention to her, unwilling to exhibit her is a better way to translate that, resolve to send her away quietly. Now, we assume that he did that because he was suspicious. Like how are you pregnant? Well, the fact is I would propose to you an alternative and superior interpretation. Her husband being a just man and unwilling to put her on display, resolve to send her away quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, that's the angel's first mistake. And angels don't usually make mistakes because they have this intellect that is so powerful. You back up six verses and you realize Joseph's father was not named David. His father's name was Jacob. Does that ring a bell, by the way, just as a little tangent for those of you who are part of the applied biblical study? Where else have we seen a Joseph in the Old Testament? And what was his father's name, Jacob, and how is he described as righteous? And he's accused of being unchaste by those who surround him. So what does God do? He uses him to save the holy family of Israel. Where? By bringing them to Egypt. And why? Because Joseph is the dreamer. God sends dreams to Joseph to provide bread for Egypt and the holy family as well when the Israelites come down. And so here we have Joseph, son of Jacob, described as righteous, viewed as perhaps unchaste, given dreams to take the holy family where? To Egypt, of all places. This is where Mark 21 said history does not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. And that divine poetry is the typology between the old and the new because Joseph has a central role that we often miss. So why does the angel get it wrong? Joseph's son of David, when his father's name was Jacob, because it's not his dad, it's his Davidic lineage, it's his royal prestige. Joseph, son of David, remember who you are, remember whose line you're in. Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife. Notice the angel doesn't say, Joseph, son of Jacob, you shouldn't be so suspicious, you know she's a good girl. Of course he knows that. And turns out that she's even better than he thought because what he's discovering is that she is with child by the Holy Spirit. And he's a righteous man. And so if he's suspicious and a righteous man, he knows exactly what he has to do. He has to follow the law because there's a mosaic statute. If your wife is unfaithful, you have to bring evidence. You have to bear witness. There's a trial. And if Joseph is described as just, why is he being selective in picking and choosing what mosaic law is he's going to keep or not? Because he's not suspicious. He feels unworthy. It isn't suspicion. It's what the early church fathers would call the reverence view. He sees his bride. He knows she's holy. She's upright, but she's with child of the Holy Spirit. Who am I? Joseph, son of David. No, no, it's Jacob. No, it's David. Because you stand in the royal line. You've got dynastic blood. And you're not just going to be an adoptive foster father. You're gonna name the child Jesus because he's gonna save his people from their sins. And in Jewish law, if you name a child, you have become legally, socially, politically his father. Not his foster father, not his adoptive father, but his legal father. Even if this fatherhood is virginal, like Mary's motherhood. Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife for that, which is conceived in hers of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sin for, and all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken. And so when Joseph woke up from the sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife and all of the rest. I want to propose to you that the mystery of fatherhood is not reduced to the physical or the sexual, like our culture makes it seem. The mystery of fatherhood is not primarily physical but spiritual. In fact, it's not primarily human but divine. We don't call God father to domesticate the deity. We call God father because that's who he is from all eternity. It's not just a name, it's not just a noun, it's a verb because he's eternally fathering. That's why the son isn't younger or smaller. He's God from God, light from light, true God from true God, precisely because he's begotten, not made. All of us are creatures of God. We were created and made. I'm a child of Fred and Molly Lohan by nature. I'm not a child of God because I was made not begotten but God the father, father is the son, he's eternally begotten and he images the father's love by receiving that life-giving love and then loving the father back and that life-giving love of the father and the son is what we call the Holy Spirit. This is why St. John Paul said, God is a family. Not God is like a family. The Hans are like a family. Our fatherhood is, well, it's flawed. Our sonship, boy, that's especially flawed. But St. Joseph, a righteous man, is given a grace to accept the Blessed Virgin and this vocation to enter a virginal relationship that is a true marriage, not less than Scott and Kimberly, but far more, opening up to something that is amazing, to show that fatherhood from above is spiritual, divine, but it becomes human and Joseph has a body and he is a male but he's given consent to fathering the holy family and so what does God do? He treats him with kid-glove care. No, he doesn't. He sends him through one trial after another from Nazareth, oh, there's a census. We gotta get to Bethlehem. Oh, you're in labor? I could have made a crib. I'm a carpenter. Instead, he has to put his little baby boy in a manger where angels, where animals feed. Well, the angels come, yeah, but so do the Magi and the shepherds. We think it's quaint, especially in Advent, but in first century Jewish law, shepherds were regarded as thieves. They weren't allowed to give testimony in courtrooms because they were so unreliable. Magi were even worse. They were astrologers from Persia. There's a rabbinic saying that if anybody learns anything from the Magi, let him be accursed and who shows up for the baby shower? Magi and shepherds, property values were plummeting in Bethlehem that week, but don't worry, we'll figure it out, the slaughter of the innocents, the flight to Egypt. Give Joseph a break. And yet, and yet, he's righteous, he's faithful as a father, as a husband. This is a holy family and not just for a while, but for the entire time. We don't know how old he was when he died, but we know that Jesus grew up in Nazareth. He was the son of the carpenter and he's called the son of Joseph. And not just by the neighbors, but in Luke 2 and 3 where Mary and Joseph have got to come back to Jerusalem, you had me and your father, not your foster father, not your legal father, but me and your father were anxious. This is real fatherhood. This is the model of the fatherhood according to the New Covenant. This is why my two sons, Jeremiah and Joseph, as males who wanna be priests, recognize that the perfection of their own masculinity will be in fatherhood like their dad, but it will be sacramental. It'll be supernatural. Not fatherhood according to the flesh, but fatherhood according to the spirit. And where do they find the model for it? St. Joseph. And who are they cultivating a devotion to? St. Joseph. Our priests are spiritual fathers, true fathers. I'm the breadwinner as the father in my home, but I can't confect the Eucharist. I can say, this is great Italian bread, but I can't say this is my body. And so our priests are breadwinners in the family of God in a supernatural way. I'm the instrument of natural birth to my kids, but the priest is the ordinary minister of baptism, becomes the instrument of divine rebirth, drawing all of us into the family of God and the life of the Trinity. So fatherhood starts off here below and then St. Joseph. And all of the priests are like signs that point us to God's eternal fatherhood. That fatherhood is not just, you know, what we thought it was. It's a mystery. And God has given us all fathers so that we can come to know him for who he is, but he's given us all fathers who failed us. I mean, except for my kids. What was so funny about that? All right, I have flaws, but he's given us all fathers who have flaws so that we'll never settle for anything less than the best. God is that perfect father. And the holy family is the beginning of this first society that we now call the new covenant, which is still new 2,000 years later. And we need all the help we can get in order to become holy families. For me to become a holy husband, a father, a father-in-law, a grandfather. God helped me and he does. I think back about 20 years ago when my oldest son Michael had just turned 16, he was getting his license. Now he's 36. Now he just got his PhD from Notre Dame in the theology of Aquinas on the Old Testament of the New and last month. He moved to Maryland to Emmitsburg to begin teaching scripture at Mount St. Mary's seminary to all of these future priests. I'm impressed, I really am. I mean, the guy is brilliant and he's intimidating and he knows it. But rewind 20 years ago because he wasn't there yet. He was reclusive, a typical teenager. He was given mom fits. I was recruited to kind of put an end to that. And so one night after dinner I go up to the room. It's closed, tight. I can hear the music blaring. I knock loud, he opens reluctantly. What is that? The Dave Matthews Band. Can I come in and listen? You won't like it. And he was right. But I love my son and I loved his mom and I wanted to build a bridge so I sat there for between two and three hours listening to Under the Table and Dreaming. And other albums of his and I'm trying to like it. It's an acquired taste. I'm not here to recommend the music but I'm here to recommend doing whatever it takes to reach your son at 16 when he seems to be kind of going off. And so I asked if I could borrow the CDs. I went down, I burned them. I should have just bought them but. And I listened to them again and again until I learned to like a few songs like Ant's Marching and Satellite and others. And Michael walks into my, what are you listening to? Dave Matthews. Whoa. Did you hear he's coming to Pittsburgh and going to concert at Three Rivers Stadium before they blow it up? And I'm like, yeah, I did hear that. Can I go? Let me think about it. No. No. He's like, why? I'm like, because the last concert I went to at Three Rivers Stadium was with Clapton and The Beach Boys. And it was the 5th of July and all you had to do to get high was inhale. Just exhale, inhale. We were behind the dugout. The place was crazy. In the middle of Clapton set when he's playing Layla for whatever reason, we're all standing. I look back and the yellow seats are the upper tier and for whatever reason I see a guy up there hurl something bright and glistening. I follow it all the way down. It's coming right at us. I reached out and I caught a bottle of Mad Dog 2020 half full against the base of my best friend's skull. Roni was like, would you get your fingers out of my hair? Gladly. This is what I caught. Where'd that come from? The yellow seats. Michael, he turned around and he almost fainted. It would have crushed his skull. We sat down. You saved my life. I'm like, I have no idea how. That's the kind of culture you get. Fine. And he's stormed out. Oh, that's gratitude. And for the next few days, it's just awful. You know, I had learned to like Dave Matthews but come on, give me an olive branch. Well, I left and I was glad because I went down to Atlanta and I spoke at a parish. It was kind of fun. And then I come back that night and Michael's gonna pick me up. He just got his license and he doesn't know but I know that the Dave Matthews concert tickets are going on sale on Monday morning, the day after tomorrow. And he hasn't spoken to me for days, for over a week. But he's gonna be Mr. Nice Guy because he doesn't know that I know that the tickets are, but he hopes to change my mind. So I got on board this flight. It's empty Saturday night. Not many people flying. And they're about to close the door when in walks this young priest wearing his collar, no less. And he looks at his boarding pass. I'm sitting right next to you. I'm like, the plane is like nine-tenths empty. Take another seat, you know. Okay. And he sits next to me. And I'm like, oh, so you're a priest. Yes. Where are you going? Pittsburgh, going on my retreat. St. Vincent's can't wait. I need that spiritual renewal. I'm like, wow, thinking good priest. Then he looks at me and goes, wait, are you Scott Hahn? And I'm like, yes I am. He said, oh, I listened to your tapes. I read your books and I'm thinking, great priest. Whoa. I'm not much, but I'm all I think about. And so we get to talking and I share with him, I need your prayer because my son is picking me up and he doesn't know, but I know that the tickets for the Dave Matthews concert are gonna be on sale money. He's gonna be Mr. Nice Guy and I just can't let him. Dave Matthews, yeah. Huh, what do you think of his music? Well, to be honest, you know, some of the great, I mean the violin, the saxophone, some of the lyrics leave a lot to be desired, but I actually have learned to like it. He said, yeah, me too. Like, you know Dave Matthews' band music? He said, yeah, I actually know Dave. I mean, he was here in Atlanta last year. Go on. And so he goes on to share how one of his parishioners used to date him in Charlottesville. She's married now, but when he was coming into town, he didn't know that she was married. And so he suggested they spend the day while my husband's out of town, but my priest could be the chaperone. And so he said, I spent the day with Dave and her and he is just the nicest guy. Got front row seats, backstage passes, we just had a lot of fun. And I'm looking at this empty plane and this priest in a collar going on retreat, listening to my tapes, telling me about what a virtuous guy Dave Matthews is. And I'm like, what do I do with this? He said, I don't know, but I'll pray. And I know that he did. Because in baggage claim, Michael is Mr. Nice Guy, oh, your roller board dad, let me take that. I know you're tired. Oh, give me a break. It's the first time he's been talking to me. I get in the passenger seat he's gonna drive, get some more driving time. And on the way out of the Pittsburgh airport, I'm like, I wanna tell you about a funny thing that happened to me on the way back from Atlanta. I'm sitting in empty plane next to a priest who happened to go to the Dave Matthews concert last year in Atlanta. Seriously, yeah, yeah. And in fact, I told the story of how he ended up spending the day with Dave Matthews. He's like, seriously, he says a really nice guy. Huh, how do you like that? Yeah, yeah, he said he was backstage pass and I'll keep your eyes on the road there, you know? And I said, I've been thinking about it, I've been praying about it. I happen to know that the tickets are going on sale Monday. He said, is that right? And I will let you go under one condition. I will pay for the tickets because I wanna go with you because I've actually enjoyed the music more than I'll let you know, and I wanna be there with you the day before they blow up three or a stadium. Get back on the road. He's like, you're gonna buy the ticket? You know how much, I know how much they are. They're not cheap. And so he's like, whoa. And he got quiet, which is not typical for Han men. And after a minute or so, he's like, you know, Dad, I have something to tell you. And he said, hmm, it was really rough the last week and a half. Oh, I said, I know, we haven't talked. He said, you have no idea how rough it was. You have no idea how ticked off I was at you. Only he spelled it with a P. Like, yes, I did. He said, well, it got so bad, I went to confession. I'm like, thank God, you knew what to do. And he's like, and father was trying to convince me that you love me and you respect me, but I just didn't feel the love. I'm like, okay, you don't have to tell me about the confidential seal. He said, well, my point is, he gave me this penance. Well, you don't have to tell me that. No, he gave me this penance. He said, you do no venus, don't you? Well, you do. Well, you and mom do, I don't. And so he gave me this novena to St. Joseph to pray for nine days to St. Joseph for your father to become holy and to show you love and respect because I know he feels it. I'm like, well, that's beautiful. He said, that's not the point, dad. Today is the ninth day. And I'm like, okay. And I mean, I was just sitting there thinking, this is an amazing grace. And we ended up going to the concert and we had an awesome experience and we've become better friends that night and ever since. And I'm so grateful because I needed all of that fatherly help beginning with God the Father through St. Joseph and that priest who happened to sit next to me on that flight and he prayed for me and he shared with me. And I didn't tell anybody about this for a while. And then 20 years ago at defending the faith for whatever reason on a Saturday night, it came out. And at the end of the talk, I was just sort of done, okay. And Micah was okay with that. And then Sunday night, you're all gone. The conferences are over. We're exhausted. The phone rings. Should I get it? I pick it up. Hello, may I speak to Scott? This is Scott. This is Father V. I'm like, from where? Atlanta. I'm like, oh wow, long time. He said, I have been praying for you and for your son for the longest time wondering whatever happened. And he said, some parishioners came down from Steubenville. They attended defending the faith. And when they heard the description, they put two and two together. They called me up and they told me your prayers were answered. And I'm like, Father V, thanks be to God for your prayers. We are here to become holy. It isn't hard, it's just humanly impossible. We need God's help in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen. Holy Mary, our hope, seed of wisdom, pray for us, Saint Joseph, guardian of the Holy Family, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, real briefly, I just wanted to mention that the presentation I just gave was drawn extensively from a book called The First Society, the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order. And I have a whole chapter on the Holy Family and Saint Joseph and all of that. But I wanted to mention another book that just came out a few days ago. I am so grateful and privileged to be the publisher of Emmaus Road. Father Carter Griffin, one of the most amazing priests I've ever taught, wrote a book that just came out. We published it called Why Celebrity? Reclaiming the Spiritual Fatherhood of the Priest. He asked me to write the forward. It is an amazing book. Why Celebrity? Not that people ask these days. Everybody understands right, wrong. I also wanted to mention another book called Joy to the World, How Christ Coming Changed Everything and Still Does. I have a chapter that I was drawing from called Silent Night, Holy Night, only I spell night, K-N-I-G-H-T, because I'm talking about Saint Joseph, the Silent Night, the Holy Night. Thank you so much for your attention, for your prayers, God bless you.