My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

As I write this letter on the observation of the Feast of Saint Joseph, March 15, on the cusp of Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, I pause a little in my Lenten journey to reflect on the great mysteries we are about to celebrate. Tradition tells us that Saint Joseph did not live to see Jesus'  glory; so then, with what joy must he have awaited his foster-son's undoing of the bonds of death! Do we share this joy, as we should?

Saint Joseph was a model father. He loved and served his family in every way. He gave up his livelihood and his homeland without hesitation, in order to protect them from Herod's wrath. In his piety, humility, charity, and tenderness, he gave an enduring example of fatherhood, not only to Jesus, but also to us. Fathers of both the domestic Church and the local Church should imitate that example, and cultivate a devotion to the intercession of this great saint, who is also patron of our Diocese.

Now, since Jesus is in fact God, He knows everything already, and indeed that knowledge remained His in the Incarnation. But, as St. Paul says, quoting one of the very earliest hymns of the Church, "He did not regard being God something to be grasped at, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave..." (Phil 2:6-7). This "emptying out" of His divinity in the assumption of a human nature is called "kenosis." It does not change the divine nature of the Son of God, but voluntarily allows its power to be muted. In this way, aspects of His assumed humanity could be more visible to others than His full divinity. Thus, "He was known to be of human estate" (Phil 2:7), and "grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men" (Lk 2:52). This growth, just like our own long maturation, was in His human nature, not in His divine nature. But, as the Church has always taught, what is said of one nature in Jesus Christ is also said of the whole, single person of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus prays to His divine Father with that delightful Aramaic word of tender affection, "Abba, Father," He is joining together the experience of tender love that He knows eternally in His divine Sonship, and that He has learned historically in His human family. Saint Joseph likewise deeply loved as father the God whom he worshipped devoutly all his life, as his ready obedience to the angel's messages clearly shows (Mt 1:19-24; 2:13-15).

The joy of Saint Joseph's waiting for Jesus' Resurrection stems also from this devotion to God's fatherhood to Israel, indeed to the whole of creation. Saint Joseph has the "childlike faith" (Mt 18:3) in God that each of us needs, in order truly to be His son or daughter. He accepts God's fatherhood, His providential care and governance, revealed especially in the Law of Moses, and, "in the fullness of time," in the Incarnation of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The loving trust of sincere faith gives rise to joy, because in both the delights and the sufferings of this life, we repose in the tender care of God. We know that our trials are meaningful, both because they purify and strengthen our faith, and because they unite us with the Passion of our Lord, filling up in His members "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" (Col 1:24).

"What is lacking in Christ's afflictions" is not anything objectively necessary for our salvation. Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, the Paschal Mystery which we celebrate at Easter, is complete and eternal, sufficient for the salvation of every person who has ever or will ever live. But, God never does anything to us without asking us to cooperate with the effects of His love. Thus, "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" is not anything lacking to Christ, but precisely something lacking to us: we need to become like Him. We need to imitate Him in the perfection of His humanity, which we call "virtue" and "holiness," and which we become only by the power of grace and the struggle to be His disciples. We need to imitate Him in His kenosis, which we do by learning to "love our neighbor as ourselves" (Mk 12:31), putting their needs above our own, sacrificing our own selfishness for them. We need to imitate Him in His Passion, which we have the opportunity to do each time we suffer. We fill up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions, only when we "take up His cross, and follow Him" (Lk 14:27), by means of our discipline, our humility and charity, and our martyrdom.

Tradition tells us nothing about the manner of Saint Joseph's death. But I would say that he might be considered a martyr for Christ in two extended senses. First, he suffered persecution because of his love and devotion to Christ, most clearly in the flight to Egypt and the rage of Herod which slaughtered the Holy Innocents. Second, he died as one of the just, before the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord had thrown open the gates of Hell. Under the old dispensation, because of sin, none of the dead, even the just, were admitted to the full presence of God, "seeing Him face-to-face" (1 Cor 13:12); but with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power of death was broken, and the just, that is, those who are "justified by faith" and obedience to God's paternal love, enjoy the beatific vision (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1023-29). Saint Joseph, in death as in life, awaited the fulfillment of all the promises of faith which God had made in the eternal covenants with Noah, and Abraham, and Moses. He had joy in that waiting, the joy of loving God, and especially the joy of knowing Jesus Christ, the young man he had cradled and loved and raised as his own son.

Unlike Saint Joseph, we have no need to wait, either in this life or after we die, for the fulfillment of the promises that pertain to our life in Jesus Christ. This is the great mystery of Easter: that we are already saved even now, in this life! This is the joy for which our Lenten discipline again prepares us: that Christ died and rose for us, for each of us in person, so that we could be free from death! The death from which He frees us is not the death of the body, in the sense that we will not have to die physically because we are Christians. We will still have to die in body, just as He did; lest, as Tertullian chided, we think ourselves superior to our Master. Rather, our freedom from death consists first, in being free from the full effects of sin, even though we have not yet ceased to sin altogether; and also, in being free from the eternality of bodily death. "We believe in the resurrection of the dead," as we affirm continually in the Creed. This means us! We stand in the face of the reality of sin and suffering with hope, born of our faith in the power of Jesus's Resurrection; we do not despair, as the pagans did and do.

In this new season of Easter, as we begin to celebrate with the universal Church the Passion, the death, and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, I urge you all to reflect on this profound, joyful, glorious mystery of your own life. In the waters of Holy Baptism, we died and rose with Christ. In the liturgy of the Triduum, we experience again His, and our own, dying and rising. Let us find true and lasting joy in the exaltation of the Vigil Mass, in which we find again the empty tomb and the unexpected, joyful Rising of the Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of God and true man; and in the jubilation of Easter Morning, in which we rejoice with all the faithful, always and everywhere, over the victory "His right hand and His holy arm have won" for us (Ps 98). Let us be transformed in the radical newness of Easter. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." Let us be worthy of this transformation, and put off the darkness of sinful deeds. Let us put on the light of Christ, which shines so brightly from the Cross and the Tomb. Let us glorify Him who is glorified forever by the Father. Let us belong truly, and only, to Him, and cease to be disciples of the prince of this world, as we have pledged.

My brothers and sisters please pray for the Church: for each other, especially, and for your servants in ministry, the clergy of the Diocese. Please pray especially for me in this Easter season, that I might be a better shepherd for Christ. Know that I pray for all of you constantly, for your needs and trials, and especially that your faith may always increase in strength and fruitfulness. Wishing you every joy and grace of life in our one Lord Jesus Christ, I am at all times,

Your brother in Christ,

Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless
Bishop of Sioux City