Today is our last day of class before the Feast of St. Joseph, which is tomorrow.
You guys know I have a special devotion to St. Joseph; that's one reason we invoke him
in the prayers before every class.
And as you know, as you may *not* know, St. Joseph is the patron of workers, I think of
fathers; he's also the patron saint of being Italian.
And so I want to tell you one of my favorite Italian folktales.
I get this from Italo Calvino's collection Italian Folktales.
My kids love this story, I like this story, so I want to share with you.
It's sort of, you know, folk wisdom, folk tale from Italy, southern Italy I think.
It's the story of an Italian man who had a special devotion to St. Joseph.
He was absolutely a St. Joseph man all the way down the line.
Whenever he was in trouble: “San Guiseppe, ora pro me!”
And every time something went well: “San Guiseppe, grazie, grazie!”
So tremendously devoted to St. Joseph was he that he never once called upon any of the
other saints, or upon Our Lady, or indeed even upon the name of the Lord Himself.
Always “San Giuseppe help me, San Guiseppe thank you."
Other than that, he was a perfectly good guy, a very good Catholic, a Knight of Columbus,
lots of grandchildren. [laughter]
So he dies and goes to the pearly gates.
He gets to the front of the line, and he steps forward.
St. Peter looks in the Book of Life, and he says “It says here that you had a special
devotion to St. Joseph.” "That's right,” says the Italian.
“It says you that you never once called upon the name of Our Lady, or of any of the
other saints, or even of our Lord Himself,” he says.
“That's right, St. Joseph took care of it all for me.”
St. Peter shakes his head sadly and says, “You can't come in. You can't come in.”
“What do you mean?! This is outrageous!”
“Sorry, it's very specific here in the book: ‘faith in Jesus Christ crucified’ is the
one requirement for getting in, you don’t meet the minimum standards.
You can't come in.” There’s a lot of wild complaining and in-your-face protests.
St. Peter says, “I'm sorry, you don't meet the entry requirements, there's nothing I can do.
Please step aside. Next in line.” He snaps his fingers.
“Max, Bruno, show this gentleman to the stairs.”
Two big hulking angels come forward, [laughter] to stand on either side of him.
And he’s protesting, we feel kind of bad for this guy, when who should go walking by
on a cloud at about a hundred yards’ distance: it's St. Joseph himself.
So the guy calls out, “Hey, hey San Giuseppe, help me!!”
And Joseph walks over. He and Peter nod to each other, they know each other well.
“What's going on here?” “Just some trouble at the gate, sir.
This man claims to be especially devoted to you.”
“Oh yeah, I know this guy, this guy's great! You should let him in!” [laughter]
St. Peter says, “Actually, unfortunately he doesn't meet the requirements, I can’t…”
“What are you talking about?” says St. Joseph.
“Let me explain this to you,” says St. Peter.
So they walk off a short distance away so they can't be overheard.
Our Italian friend and the two angels are watching this from a distance, and there's
a lot of a lot of gesticulation on St. Joseph's part, he's very passionate.
There was St. Peter, with his arms folded, shaking his head.
Finally St. Peter says, his voice is raised enough that they can hear it, “NO, AND THAT’S
FINAL!” and he turns and he walks back towards the gate.
St. Joseph calls after him, he says, “FINE!
You know what, fine! Fine!
I'm gonna take my wife, I'm gonna take my boy, and we're going to go have Paradise someplace else!”
[laughter]
So St. Peter had to let him in. [laughter, applause]
My kids love that story.