Fathers of Saint Joseph – Meeting Notes

Date: Saturday, 13th December 2025

Location: St. Mary’s, Pope’s Quay, Cork, T23 P8ER

Context

This was our last meeting of the year. We began with Adoration, followed by our group discussion. After the meeting, many of us stayed for Mass. Later, a few of us went for coffee in the city with two Dominican priests who supported our group throughout the year. We finished the gathering at the recently opened Emmaus coffee shop.

Reflection Reading

Book: LEAD: The Four Marks of Fatherly Greatness by Devin Schadt

Pillar 2: Embrace Your Essence (Embracing Woman)

Reading 66: A Map for Marriage (page 176)

Notes by: Willie Hayes

Joseph taking Our Lady as his wife. Stained glass artwork from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Randwick, Sydney. Photography by Glen McCullough. Source: https://www.maristmessenger.co.nz/2016/09/01/marys-life-stained-glass/

Reflection Notes

Pope St John Paul II spoke of the mutual complementarity and need that man and woman have for each other, and of the dignity and balance of who she shall be for him and he for her. This depends on having a coherent map for marriage, where the needs of each other are understood and ordered toward their true meeting. Authentic and selfless giving and receiving between husband and wife includes a willingness to enter into vulnerable conversations.

While it is best to turn to the map itself, we can point to some of its features.

Marriage Map. Reproduced in PowerPoint from LEAD: The Four Marks of Fatherly Greatness by Schadt, D. (Reading 66: A Map for Marriage, p. 176), Pillar 2: Embrace Your Essence (Embracing Woman).

First, it is a triangle, with wife and husband in relationship with God at its apex.

Second, the key needs of wife and husband are distinct: to be cherished for the woman and to be respected for the man.

Third, these needs progress from the physical to the spiritual and naturally lead to the Holy Trinity — the unity and communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We may have heard that the sacrament of marriage involves three persons, with Jesus as the third, but this teaching expands our focus to the Father who created us, the Son who redeems us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us.

Fourth, the woman’s need to be cherished — for her beauty, emotional intimacy, partnership, and discernment — is shown to interact and intertwine beautifully with the man’s need to be respected — for his strength, physical desire, mission, and authority.

Fifth, there is the link St Paul made between the marriage of man and wife and the mystery of Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as His Bride. This is expanded through Mary’s role at the wedding feast of Cana and Christ’s final words on the Cross.

At Cana, Mary notices and names the need: “They have no wine.” In the context of the time, this was significant. It was the bridegroom’s responsibility to provide the wine, and running out would have brought shame and doubt about his ability to provide. Jesus steps in to supply what is lacking. Mary’s grace, tact, and influence with her Son release the couple from future shame and instead bring joy, honour, and gratitude.

On the Cross, Christ’s words “I thirst” lead Him to drink the “fourth cup” of the Passover, carrying Him from this life to the next (see Scott Hahn’s teaching on this). Christ drinks the cup of bitterness at the end of His mission, which outwardly appears as failure, as He dies between criminals. Yet Christ’s thirst is for our souls. His joy, and ours, is to be with Him forever in paradise. This is the victory we seek for ourselves and our families as we strive to know, love, and serve the Lord, sharing in His victory over sin and suffering.

The challenge for us as husbands, fathers, leaders, and disciples is to be willing to enter these conversations — to have the courage to be vulnerable, the patience for the time it takes, and the humility to be corrected. Scripture gives many examples: the woman at the well, the paralysed man on the stretcher, the tax collector in the tree. These encounters lead to clarity and unity of purpose, as when Jesus asks the blind man, “What do you want?” and he replies, “Lord, that I may see.”

We are called to go beyond transactional cooperation in daily tasks, responsibilities, and exhaustion, and to seek the Lord’s path — the path that leads our families and communities toward unity and communion with Him.

“When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.”— Matthew 1:24

Associated Reflection

Page 446 – Embrace My Wife

• Do I honour my wife as an image and symbol of Christ’s Church, encouraging and edifying her?

• Or do I tear her down through discouragement, degradation, or demands?

• Do I compliment or demean my wife in the presence of our children?

Shared Thoughts from the Group

• We discussed how women are treated differently across cultures and countries.

• We reflected on how man and woman are complementary to each other.

• We noted that by paying attention to God and to our children, we build healthier marriages, create more opportunities to support one another, and develop deeper connections.

Personal Reflection & Final Thought

This area of reflection is something I have only begun to understand in recent years. I always knew that marriage and family life were important for holiness, but I struggled to see how this worked in practice. Coming from a Latin culture, where men and women are often objectified and where marriage can be measured by appearances or achievements, encountering the Catholic vision of marriage has been a positive surprise.

This reading captures ideas that are very meaningful to me. Men and women are different. They have God-given, authentic needs. They complement each other, and through this complementarity, they offer one another a path away from selfishness and toward love, responsibility, and communion.

I am grateful for this conversation and for the shared reflections as we closed the year together.

References

Hahn, S. (n.d.) The Fourth Cup: The Sacrament of the Eucharist. [Online] Available at: https://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m4/4cp.html (Accessed: 22 December 2025).

Summary of The Fourth Cup: The Sacrament of the Eucharist

Scott Hahn explains that the Last Supper, the Cross, and the Eucharist form one single Passover event.

In the Jewish Passover, the sacrifice was not complete unless the lamb was both sacrificed and eaten. At the Last Supper, Jesus celebrates Passover but appears to stop before the fourth and final cup, saying He will not drink again until the Kingdom. This suggests the Passover is intentionally left unfinished.

That Passover is completed on the Cross. When Jesus says “I thirst,” receives sour wine, and then declares “It is finished,” Hahn interprets this as Jesus drinking the fourth cup and consummating the Passover through His sacrifice. The Last Supper begins the sacrifice; Calvary completes it.

The Eucharist, therefore, is not a repetition of Christ’s death but a re-presentation of the one, once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary. Just as the Passover required eating the lamb to restore communion, Christians are called to receive the Eucharist, the true Passover Lamb, to enter fully into the New Covenant.

This understanding explains why the Eucharist is central to Catholic worship and why adoration is a fitting response: Christ, the Lamb who was slain, is truly present and continues to offer Himself for the life of the world.