Cardinal Dolan says St. Joseph taught Jesus ‘work, work, work,’ but also the value of silence and the need to obey the Father
By Tom Maguire
Associate editor
The Cardinal recollected, instructed and joked, but singing was out.
“The last guy that spoke sang, didn’t he,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said. “Well, I’m not singing, OK? Because I gave up beer for Lent; I need a couple if I start to sing. So don’t expect me to break into song, all right?”
Hundreds of men attended the IGNITE 2023 Catholic Men’s Conference, sponsored by the Diocese of Syracuse, on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, at the SRC Arena and Events Center at Onondaga Community College. “Empowered” was the slogan for a “day that empowers us and sends us back into the world at full force,” Bishop Douglas J. Lucia said in his written welcome.
“I learned a lot about decency, and devotion, and goodness and virtue from my dad,” who died at 51, said the 73-year-old Cardinal Dolan. “And here’s my proposition to you this afternoon. I propose that Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, I propose to you that Jesus learned a lot from his earthly father, St. Joseph.”
Matthew 7:21 says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”
“I would propose to you guys,” Cardinal Dolan said, “that our Lord had his foster father in mind when he said that.”
Matthew 1:20-21 says: “Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.”
Obeying the angel
St. Joseph did exactly as the angel had told him, “doing the will of God, not just talking about it,” the Cardinal said.
Here is another thing the Cardinal said Jesus would have learned from his foster father, St. Joseph: “Joseph was a man of silence.” The Cardinal said a little fella asked Padre Pio: What language does God speak? What language does God understand? “And Padre Pio said, ‘Son, the language God understands best is silence.’”
Cardinal Dolan cited Lesson 3: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me” (John 14:1). As a boy growing up, the Cardinal said, would not Jesus have been “made aware of his foster father’s courage and trust in the face of immense adversity?”
When the young Jesus was lost in the temple, Cardinal Dolan said, “imagine the stress and anxiety that Joseph had. … And yet he [Jesus] saw in his foster father a remarkable serenity and trust in God’s providence.”
Cardinal Dolan’s Lesson 4 of Jesus’ instruction by Joseph was evident in the miracle at Nain, when Luke 7:11-17 says Jesus “was moved with pity” for the mother of a dead man, and so he touched the coffin and the dead man sat up and began to speak. Jesus would have seen his foster father lovingly caring for his mother, Mary. And he would know that the day would come when he would look from his cross on Calvary and see his sorrowful mother, Cardinal Dolan said. He asked the audience if they have a tender, loving loyalty to Mary in their home — “is she ever a jewel in the Catholic crown of devotion.”
“Fifth lesson. Mmm,” Cardinal Dolan said. “The value of work, work, work. Joseph was a carpenter. … He was a worker. Jesus … would have grown up in a workshop, he would have seen his father immersed in his trade, in his work, and he would have admired the beauty of Joseph’s creative work. John Paul II tells us that work is God’s continual re-creation of the world. And we are his agents in doing that. … Jesus would have seen the fruits of his father’s labor.”
Speaker Gus Lloyd says, “We need champions, we need mighty men of God to stand up for our faith.” (Sun photo | Tom Maguire)
‘Are you afraid?’
Lesson 6: “The patron saint of a happy death; you knew Joseph was that, right? Why?
“Well, we don’t know much about it, but we figure when Joseph died, guess who was there with him: Jesus and Mary, and boy, you couldn’t get a happier death.”
“Brothers,” the Cardinal continued, “Are you afraid? Are you afraid to think of your death? Don’t be. … You old-timers like me will remember, why did God make you? God made me to know him, to love him and to serve him in this life and — da-dahh! — to be happy with him forever in the next.”
When he arrived at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to be the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Dolan had his predecessor, Cardinal Edward Egan, show him the crypt below the main altar.
“Cardinal Egan says to me, ‘There’s the spot where I’ll be buried.’ And he looks at me and he says, ‘There’s the two where you’ll be buried [laughter from the crowd]; I thought Oh my lord, he’s already criticizing me for the weight.
“But to be mindful, brothers, of our death, now, and at the hour of our death. Not morbid at all. The final reparation, the final release.”
After a standing ovation, the Cardinal headed to catch a plane for “a big Mass tonight” in northern Manhattan for the persecuted church in Nigeria.
The speaker who did sing, with intensity and without a stated beer requirement, was the towering Michael McGlinn, who was an offensive lineman at the University of Notre Dame. He would interrupt his talk to sit down and play the keyboard while singing in a high register. The IGNITE booklet says McGlinn is an international award-winning filmmaker and founder of Sistine Films and Face of Mercy. In 2020, he launched AdoreHimDaily.tv, a website and app that features short films, podcasts and materials to help families to seek holiness through Eucharistic Adoration. McGlinn and his wife, Beth, are raising their family in Kansas City, Mo. He said he is “not a caveman, you know, I’ll clean stuff up.”
A ”frequent adorer of our Lord,” McGlinn said the Lord “loves to see his mother honored.” He goes to Holy Hour, he said, because he is fighting for his children and his wife and his parents, and he is also making reparation for himself. In fact, he began to experience benefits as he adored; it was radically changing his life.
Speaker Michael McGlinn is committed to Eucharistic Adoration. (Sun photo | Tom Maguire)
A tip on Adoration
In a Q & A session moderated by the MC, Father Joseph O’Connor, someone asked how we make time for Adoration.
Making time for Eucharistic Adoration is very simple, McGlinn said: Take five, 10 or 15 minutes after Mass to stick around and pray.
The day’s third speaker was fast-talking Gus Lloyd, whose bio says he has been in Catholic radio for over 30 years. Lloyd, who grew up in Ohio, hosts “Seize the Day,” the morning talk radio show on Sirius XM’s “The Catholic Channel.” He and his wife, Michelle, regularly lead pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Europe and other destinations. Gus has authored six books and he writes a daily 60-second reflection at www.GusLloyd.com.
“I think I can speak with pretty good authority here,” he told the conference, “when I say, Men, if you’re married, your wife wants you to be a hero. She wants you to be the champion. She wants you to be the spiritual head of your household.”
God wants us to sow grace in the world, and let God do what he wants with it, Lloyd said. He told the men to thank everyone who has sowed the seed of grace in their life, and to look at every interaction with another person as an opportunity to plant a seed of grace.
Their final homework assignment that he gave the men is to pray with their bride, preferably while holding hands, for 60 seconds: “That’s it. One minute a day.”
Attendee Angelo Puccia, who goes to St. Lucy Church in Syracuse, described the conference as “very powerful, very powerful.”
“I need the day to take a break to empower my faith and to be with other gentlemen,” said attendee Patrick Powers, from St. Agatha Church in Canastota.
Deacon William Matts, of St. Anthony’s and St. Joseph’s in Endicott, said the IGNITE conference is a great opportunity “to meet other men who are in love with Jesus as well. So I’ve looked forward to this day for a while.”
Seminarian Joseph Ryan, who is in his pastoral year of formation, said it was “amazing to see all these committed men of all ages … really just sharing our faith and able to reflect and come together for confession, for fraternity and really just a great time. So I really hope the energy and the spirituality here can go back to the parishes and ignite a love of Christ all around our diocese.”
