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St. Joseph, mirror of patience, pray for us!   ST. JOSEPH Charles L. Souvay Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and foster-father of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The chief sources of information on the life of St. Joseph are the first chapters of our first and third Gospels; they are practically also the only reliable sources, for, whilst, on the holy patriarch's life, as on many other points connected with the Saviour's history which are left untouched by the canonical writings, the apocryphal literature is full of details, the non-admittance of these works into the Canon of the Sacred...

The Embryonic Jesus Story At this time of year, we focus on Christ's birth, but there is a fascinating incident the Bible describes near the beginning of Jesus' human life, several months prior. It is the Embryonic Jesus Story.Luke 1 tells about the first person besides Jesus' mother and earthly father who recognized He was extraordinary – Jesus' cousin John, while John was yet a fetus, and Jesus was but an embryo. When John was a preborn 6-month-old, his Aunt Mary came to visit John's expectant mother Elizabeth, her cousin. Mary was newly pregnant with Jesus. Luke 1:41 says when...

....In a shift whose ideological breadth is unusual in the fragmented Protestant world, a long-standing wall around Mary appears to be eroding. It is not that Protestants are converting to Catholicism's dramatic exaltation: the singing of Salve Regina, the Rosary's Marian Mysteries, the entreaty to her in the Hail Mary to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." Rather, a growing number of Christian thinkers who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox (another branch of faith to which Mary is central) have concluded that their various traditions have shortchanged her in the very arena in...