On the Feast of the Holy Family, 27 December 2020, Pope Francis announced the Year dedicated to Amoris Laetitia Family. It began on the Solemnity of St. Joseph, March 19, during the year dedicated to the patron of the Universal Church, and five years after the publication of the apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. These two important occasions demonstrate remarkable continuity.
Many people have taken up special devotions to St. Joseph, especially the Consecration to St. Joseph, to grow in the spirituality of Joseph. It would be an opportune time to consecrate our families to him. The patron of Christian families would guard our families from the dangers that destroy love, peace and fraternity.
The year of Amoris Laetitia Family is set to end on 26 June 2022, on the occasion of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome. St. Joseph and the family form a bond of tenderness as Joseph, a loving and caring father was entrusted with the task of heading the family of the Son of God.
Pope Francis looks to the “icon of the Holy Family of Nazareth with its daily life that had its share of burdens and even nightmares” such as Herod’s violence, which even today is renewed on the skin of so many refugees. He also holds up its “covenant of love and fidelity” which “illuminates the principle that gives shape to every family and enables it better to face the vicissitudes of life and history.”
In Amoris laetitia, the pope quoted the speech of Pope St. Paul VI in Nazareth on 5 January 1964: “Nazareth teaches us the meaning of family life, its loving communion, its simple and austere beauty, its sacred and inviolable character. May it teach how sweet and irreplaceable is its training, how fundamental and incomparable its role in the social order.”
In Patris corde, Pope Francis wrote that it is St. Joseph who watches over this treasure of the family, “as head of the family.” It is he who teaches us, “Having faith in God also includes believing that he can work even through our fears, our frailties, our weaknesses.” He adds: “It is the true miracle by which God saves the Child and his mother,” trusting in Joseph’s “creative courage.”
Kevin Cardinal Farrell, head of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, explained, “It was providential that the Holy Father dedicated this year to St. Joseph, husband and father, who was so loved that he was chosen by God to care for the Holy Family.”
The cardinal said, “The pandemic has had very painful consequences for millions of people. But the family itself, despite being hit hard in many respects, once again showed its face as ‘keeper of life,’ as was St. Joseph. The family remains forever ‘guardian’ of our most authentic and original relationships, those that are born in love and make us mature as people.”
