Happy Father’s Day!

Due to this being the earliest Easter of most of our lives (the last Easter on March 23^rd was like 90 years ago—the next some 200 years from now) good old Saint Joseph gets bumped this year by Holy Week.

Here he went to all that trouble of censusing in Bethlehem, fleeing into Egypt, building go-carts or whatever it was in Nazareth, and then 2008 rolls around and he’s just clipped right out.

Something had to be done about that, of course, wrongs like that couldn’t be left unrighted, so with all due decorum the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Husband of Mary was moved from March 19^th to the pre-Holy Week Saturday of March 15^th. Now you may think it an easy thing to move a Solemnity, but when’s the last time you tried doing it?

That’s right. This momentous occasion should in no way be misunderestimated and all stops should be pulled out: in honor of Saint Joseph drink that cup of joe, toll that celebratory bell, and give all Joe’s in your company a hearty slap on the back, or whatever the customary congratulatory greeting may locally be.