“The most practical thing for the month of March is something key that we have to take back from our elders: talk to everyone about the month of St. Joseph! The month of March is the month of St. Joseph," says Fr. Rafael Pascual Elías OCD, new director of the Josephine Spanish Center Valladolid, with March 19 in perspective. The life of St. Teresa cannot be understood without Joseph, says the Discalced Carmelite.
Rafael Pascual Elías (Logroño, 1984) entered the Order in 2006, was ordained a priest in 2013, and has ministered in El Burgo de Osma, Alba de Tormes, Calahorra, Logroño and Zaragoza.
Much of the interview focuses on the life of St. Teresa, who cannot be understood without St. Joseph, because it was he who cured him and became a father for his whole life in every way, says Fr.
P. Rafael, can you summarize in two or three lines what will be your task at the head of the Spanish Josephine Center of Valladolid?
- Greetings to all Omnes readers. To begin with it is good to clarify that everything has come without being at all in my plans. Luis Javier Fernandez Frontela, died unexpectedly at the end of January and the Provincial, Francisco Sanchez Oreja, knowing my devotion to St. Joseph, invited me to be the new director of the Center. I said yes and now with great joy I assume this task knowing that the work that awaits me is not little. First of all I have to join the community of Valladolid, where the headquarters of the Joseph Center is located. That will be shortly before the beginning of the novena to St. Joseph.
The task is mainly focused on managing the journals published by the Josephine Center: a scientific one, Josephine Studies, and another popular one, St. Joseph's messenger. In addition, there is a large library with publications of all times and languages related to St. Joseph. There is also a sector with images and all kinds of realities related to St. Joseph.
Antonio J. Benéitez and Fr. Arturo Beltrán, who form the board of directors. The first and foremost for this whole project will be to present it and leave it in the hands of St. Joseph.
You are a Discalced Carmelite, what would you highlight in the life of St. Theresa in relation to St. Joseph? How did she treat him, how did she pray to him?
- The life of St. Teresa can not be understood without St. Joseph because after many doctors and pleas to various saints, it is this saint who cures him of his illness that had no apparent solution. Before this fact St. Joseph becomes a father for her whole life in every way.
Everything that follows has the gaze of St. Joseph. The first foundation he made was dedicated to St. Joseph; it was the famous monastery of St. Joseph of Avila. In addition, most of the rest of his foundations are also dedicated to this glorious saint. He even guides him in his travels and always carries with him an image that he leaves in every house he founds.
St. Teresa of Jesus speaks of the great mercies that St. Joseph has made her...
- Much more could be said about the importance of San Jose in the life of St. Teresa, but the best of all is what she herself writes in her book of Life where she tells us how she prays to him, how she invites people to pray to him and to put their lives in his hands as a true father. Let St. Teresa speak:
“And I took the glorious Saint Joseph as my advocate and lord, and I entrusted myself to him. I saw clearly that from this need as well as from other greater needs of honor and loss of soul, this my father and lord brought me out with more good than I knew how to ask of him.
And he went so far as to say that he could not remember anything that he had not stopped doing....
- I do not remember until now having begged him for anything that I have failed to do (said the saint of Avila). It is something that frightens the great mercies that God has done to me through this blessed Saint, of the dangers that he has freed me, both in body and soul; that to other saints it seems that the Lord gave them grace to help in one need, to this glorious Saint I have experience that he helps in all and that the Lord wants us to understand that just as it was subject to him on earth that as he had the name of father, being a godfather, he could command him, so in heaven he does whatever he asks of him. I tried to make his feast as solemn as I could.
I would like to persuade everyone to be devoted to this glorious Saint, because of the great experience I have of the good things he obtains from God.
St. Teresa advised us to take St. Joseph as our teacher of prayer.?
- I continue with the words of St. Teresa, and there is the answer. It seems to me that for some years now, every year on his day I ask him for something, and I always see it fulfilled (...) I only ask for the love of God that those who do not believe me try it, and they will see by experience the great good it is to entrust themselves to this glorious Patriarch and to have devotion to him. In particular, people of prayer should always be fond of him.
Whoever does not find a teacher to teach him prayer, let him take this glorious Saint as his teacher and he will not err on the way. (Life 6, 6-8).
Can you name 4 or 5 titles of San José that we can benefit from?
- Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, a great devotee of St. Joseph and faithful defender of the Teresian charism, who supported St. Teresa of Jesus with great tenacity in the beginnings of the Discalced Carmel.
At Josefina, Gracian presents St. Joseph under 5 headings that I think are the ones that can best help us to know and love St. Joseph.
The first is a husband, the second a father, the third a righteous man, the fourth an angelic man, and the fifth a contemplative man.
Which San José title would you choose?
- I will keep this one: father! St. Joseph is father, father of all, father of every child who wants to be united to his Son! Let us always approach St. Joseph as father and our life will change completely!
Why is St. Joseph the patron saint of the universal Church?
- The answer is clear. Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1870, with the decree Quemadmodum Deus declares St. Joseph patron of the universal Church. These are very stormy times and it is necessary to seek refuge and defense in the one who defends Jesus and Mary in this world.
This is what Pius IX himself says in the same decree and which is also useful today: “In these sad times the Church herself is attacked everywhere by her enemies and is oppressed by such grave calamities that it seems that the wicked make the gates of hell prevail over her, the venerable bishops of the entire Catholic world, raised their prayers to the Supreme Pontiff so that he would deign to make Saint Joseph the patron of the Church” (Pius IX).”.
Shortly after, Pope Leo XIII will arrive with his well-known and widespread prayer to St. Joseph asking for the protection of the whole Church. As the years went by, and on the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of St. Joseph as patron of the universal Church, Pope Francis dedicated the year and the letter Patris Corde to him.
Tell us something about the most recent Popes and St. Joseph.
- I focus on those I have known, which at the same time serve to summarize my spiritual relationship with St. Joseph. We cannot speak of St. Joseph without the Apostolic Exhortation Custodian of the Redeemer of Pope St. John Paul II. It is a brief but very complete treatise on a Pope that I had the good fortune to meet in person when I entered the seminary and participated in the great celebration of May 4, 2003 in Madrid where 5 Spanish saints were canonized.
At that time, when I was 19, St. Joseph begins to be a somewhat more beloved saint as he is the patron of the seminary and vocations, but not a devotion to any great extent.
And Benedict XVI?
- With Benedict XVI something very curious happens, one of his homilies, that of December 22, 2013, is dedicated to St. Joseph. It had remained hidden in secret until it came to light years later. It is no coincidence that the date is very significant for me because I had barely been ordained a priest for two months.
I notice a phrase that helps me a lot in my priestly life: “It is important for us to have this sensitivity to God, this ability to perceive that God is speaking to me, and this ability to discern. Of course, God does not normally speak to us as he spoke to Joseph through the angel, but he also has his ways of speaking to us. They are gestures of God's tenderness”. As I read it, I am filled with joy and I realize that St. Joseph was already preparing something, but as always, he speaks in silence.
- We arrived at Pope Francis...
- Indeed. When the Apostolic Letter Patris Corde Pope Francis, my life is turned upside down with St. Joseph. When I read it and meditate on it, I feel something special. I begin to pray to St. Joseph in a different way and more frequently, I buy books about St. Joseph, I make his novena from my heart as never before, I invite people to pray with St. Joseph to his Son in adoration in the convent where I am..., and in the end I end up in Valladolid at the Joseph Center.
Finally, something practical for March, or about your party..
– The most practical thing for the month of March is something key that we have to take back from our elders: to speak to everyone about the month of St. Joseph! The month of March is the month of St. Joseph! Just as June is the month of the Sacred Heart, May is the month of Our Lady, July is the month of Mount Carmel, in March we should all look to St. Joseph. Although it is also true that it is the time of Lent.
You speak of devotionals or booklets about St. Joseph. .
- Just as we have devotionals for the month of May for the Blessed Mother, there are also devotionals for St. Joseph for the month of March. Let us look in second-hand bookstores or in the homes of our grandparents for little paperbacks with “Month of St. Joseph” on the cover! And to this let us add the novena, united in our homes or in the church we go to on Sundays if they celebrate it; and let us live in a very special way the feast of our Father St. Joseph as a family. What would the family be without the protection of St. Joseph...?
Do you accept collaborations?
- If any reader wants to write a study on St. Joseph or how is his devotion to the glorious patriarch, the doors are open to him at the Joseph Center of Valladolid.
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