Prayer

To you, O Blessed Joseph, do we come in our need, confident that you will hear our prayer. Through the tender and chaste love that bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you to look upon us with the same affection and through your power and strength aid us in our necessities. (mention petitions)

O glorious St. Joseph, spouse of Mary our Mother, obtain for each of us a pure, humble, and charitable mind, and perfect resignation to the Divine Will. Be our guide, our father, and our model through life, that we may merit to die as you did in the arms of Jesus and Mary. Amen.

O glorious St. Joseph, through the love you bear to Jesus Christ and for the glory of His Name, hear our prayers and obtain our petition.

Reflections excerpted from Guardian of the Redeemer, by St. John Paul II.

"Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took his wife" (cf. Mt 1:24). Inspired by the Gospel, the Fathers of the Church from the earliest centuries stressed that just as Saint Joseph took loving care of Mary and gladly dedicated himself to Jesus Christ's upbringing,  he likewise watches over and protects Christ's Mystical Body, that is, the Church, of which the Virgin Mary is the exemplar and model. 

Joseph of Nazareth "shared" [in the mystery of the Incarnation] like no other human being except Mary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word. He shared in it with her; he was involved in the same salvific event; he was the guardian of the same love, through the power of which the eternal Father "destined us to be his sons through Jesus Christ" (Eph 1:5). 

"Joseph, Son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Mt 1:20-21). 

[May] the whole Christian people not only turn to Saint Joseph with greater fervor and invoke his patronage with trust, but also keep before their eyes his humble, mature way of serving and of "taking part" in the plan of salvation. 

During this novena, we beg St. Joseph to intercede with his foster Son, Jesus, to obtain for us the grace to take part as Passionist Nuns in the mystery of human redemption in a humble, mature way as he did.