We submit ourselves, Great Patriarch, to your fatherly embrace

First Guardian and Protector of The Divine

Who guided Christ, your Son and Charge

Through every skinned knee, grief and moment of panic

We ask that we too, may feel the tug of Christ’s hand in ours

Safe in the storms of this life

And find refuge in the harbour your prayers carve out for us,

Among the reef.

For Workers

Teach us, O Patron of Workers, the value we provide

The identity we foster

and the virtue that becomes us, through vocation

That, in an age of addiction and coddling

We might gain your heavenly intercession

In securing purpose over happiness, long looked for

And found only in Your Son’s death to self and resurrection in glory

May we trust to both his sacrifice and example

That works not replace faith,

Nor our faith without deeds, become.

For Wounds

O He who on countless nights entreated with angels who swirled in the ether

On behalf of his Holy Family

Draw us out, through your father’s prayers

From youthful depravity, to put away childish things

Yet become childlike: to enter our fullness, in Christ

A prayer away only, from your Spouse

Our Heavenly Mother

So that whatever our experience of home and hearth

We would know her tender love

And a father’s loyal and selfless toil

In the quiet example you set

Pottering around the workshop of our minds,

Adjusting here, aligning there

So that conformed to Christ, we might be born each day

Into a world awaiting our renewal

For the Church

O Saint Joseph, who utters not a word unneeded

May we speak less and say more, in virtuous action

That language of the heart for which we will answer

In a world who will know us by our fruits.

In every abuse, judgement and hypocrisy we perpetrate,

Lash us with your guardian’s prayers

And may your stern gaze enkindle shame, right and just

At bearing false witness to our salvation

In every curse we utter, liberty we take and loathsome compromise

Prayerfully we ask, for a father’s order to reign in our house

That we who image the Source of All Being

May provide a tribute worthy of the stage He has set for us.

For Fathers

For our fathers, Great Patriarch,

We pray for discipline, confidence and resolve

In a culture which demands everything and offers precious little thanks in return

May they build their homes upon The Rock

Conform their lot to your Holy Family

And – free of extra marital allure, despair or rot –

Run the race through to the finish

To find the land promised to their descendants,

Numbered like the stars.

For Marriage

Over every divorce, custody nightmare

And jets of fire spit in heartbreak warfare

We invoke the blood of The Scapegoat, your Holy Charge

For every man who holds love at arm’s length,

Husband, whose sacrifice goes unacknowledged

And father, whose kids he does not see

O Most Chaste Spouse of the Virgin, pray

That our covenants be made holy

For Families

Over shipwrecked families and haunted homes we pray

O Terror of Demons,

That the spirits of insolence, abuse and despair be rebuked in Jesus’ Name.

That divorce be reconsidered

That order rest on our homes once more

And that the self-sacrificial love of Your Son, which you so humbly mirrored

Might become for us our Way

Our Guiding Light

In the dark nights of the soul

For Children

Guardian of The Word, Tireless Champion,

And Tactical War Chief

Who delivered his Little One from the massacre of innocence

We ask your prayers over our sons and daughters,

Sacrificial lambs to a culture in flames

Guard their innocence, O Liege, from Herod and his lot

And call down the weight of conscience, of Christ’s full judgement

On those who would possess their bodies and minds

May they feel your millstone prayers around their necks

And beg leave of mercy to the Captain Divine

Before they are drowned in The Deep which knows no bottom

The Void which brokers no light to see, nor peace to console them by

Convict all abusers and spare their victims

Of the godless desolation they have wrought upon The Other

And turn our culture back the way it came

From perdition to pardon

Before it is too late

For Culture

O Saint Joseph, whose defence of The Family against the Princes of the Earth

Reverberates across centuries and throughout culture

Pray for us, that we might carry Christ out of The Desert

To seat him on the throne once more

Of our minds, our families, our nations

That we might know the Father’s will

Through how you gave yours over so completely

We remember today, The One you brought forth out of Egypt

Who is even now being born, in the darkest corners of our hearts

May The Light of Christ beam forth in the dawn,

And may you, Saint Joseph, Earthly Shadow of The Father,

Pray for us.