A SUMMER DAY

It was a blistering summer day
when all those who shivered
complaints against temperatures
as low as cabin-fever moods
now complain the scorching heat
as they seek the unctuous cool caves
of chirping air conditioned rooms.

An old man in a heavy, ragged coat
toppled spinelessly to the pavement
like a dip of ice cream off a cone.
He lay there as still as
the cement that sizzled
like a frying pan on an open fire.

People stepped aside as they dashed by
rushing off in a veering frenzy
to whatever goals they had to achieve
no matter what calculated aggression
or insidious hypocrisy they had to use.

Then a little girl clutching her mother’s hand
pulled back from her mother’s end run.
“Look, Mommy, that man!”
she exclaimed with the force of fireworks,

“We don’t have time, Honey,” her mother
replied with straitjacket practicality.
“But, Mommy, we were taught to stop
even if there is no ditch,
even if a friend has only broken her doll,”
the little girl argued
with the practicality of gospel learning.

So the woman bent down and
felt the man’s pulse beating
as slowly as the beads of sweat
that inched down his truant face.

Then she went to a pay phone
and with the finger she used
to point the way to her daughter
she dialed 911.

The passersby slowed down
for a gawking moment
of plastic curiosity,
then accelerated as though
responding to the spit of a starting gun
in a marathon race.

The woman and her daughter stayed
until the ambulance screeched to the curb
like a baseball player sliding into second.
After the ambulance rolled off in siren speed
the mother bent down with kinetic joy
and hugged her daughter –
the only warmth on that summer street
was a mother’s love
for her child who had led the way.

St.Joseph the Worker

This feast was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 to counteract the Communist holiday "May Day." This was a day set aside by the Communists to highlight the "Workers' Paradise."
Pope Pius IX named St. Joseph the patron of the universal church. Pope Leo XIII named him the patron of fathers and families. Pope Benedict XV named him the patron of working people.
Pope Pius XI named him the patron of social justice.
St. Joseph was a carpenter and, as such, probably was either middle or upper middle
class.
Then what about Jesus' claim, "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head"?
This had nothing to do with poverty. Jesus was emphasizing the urgency of his mission.
Also the transitory nature of his life here on earth viz., that he was in the world but not
of the world.
He was telling those who wanted to crown him king and even his disciples who argued
as to who would be most important in Jesus' kingdom that his kingdom was not a worldly
kingdom.
What we can learn from St. Joseph from the brief mention of him in the gospel story is that holiness is in the ordinary.
We learn this from many saints. The Little Flower comes immediately to mind.Then there is Blessed Gianna Baretta Malla, beatified by John Paul II in 1994 who was a wife, mother and medical doctor. St. Zitta of the 12th century was a housekeeper and nanny for the same family for 48 years.
St. Joseph reminds us to avoid the stereotype of saints doing extraordinary things.
G.K. Chesterton in one of his usual paradoxes said, "What separates a saint from ordinary people is his rediness to be one with ordinary people."
St. Joseph guides our attention to the fact that becoming a saint is not that exceptional or extraordinary. We only have to fulfill the responsibilities given to us as well as we can.
Not even the best we can, but as well as we can which is quite ordinary.