Spend time with Jesus, have a ‘Joseph moment’

By Klysha Best

A scientist at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland spent 30 years studying the human brain. He wanted to know if there was any difference in the brains of people who pray. What he found, Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon told the congregation at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, was astonishing.

“When people reached into silence in prayer, the part of the brain that controls self-agency just comes right down to nothing,” the Archbishop shared during the St Joseph Feast Day Mass and Consecration on Thursday, March 19. “And what happens when that part of the brain silences itself, is that the person experiences a connection with everything.”

That connection, he explained, fills the person with far more love for other people, for the world, for the poor. The scientist, though not a religious man, was shaken by his discovery.

“It’s not that when we’re praying, we’re wasting time,” the Archbishop insisted. “When we’re praying, we’re bringing love. We bring the capacity to love.”

The Archbishop pointed to St Joseph as the ultimate example of such silent, transformative prayer.

“When Joseph picked up Jesus, knowing Jesus is God, having experienced the birth, the angels coming and the message that they gave, what Mary said about the angel, knowing that this is God in his house, that he is with God, and he comes and he holds Jesus in his arms, what are we dealing with there?” the Archbishop asked.

“The most close intimacy with God that any man on Earth has ever had. Holding, protecting, cleaning up after God.”

He urged the men gathered to recognise that they, too, can share in that intimacy.

“The way that Joseph spent time every day with Jesus, we also can have that,” he said. “When we go before the Blessed Sacrament and we sit in silence, and we’re just there with Him, that’s a Joseph moment.”

Archbishop Gordon also reflected on how Joseph earned his title as protector of the Church, and spoke directly to the struggles of modern men, acknowledging the unique pressures of the current generation.

“Your generation has more challenges than my generation ever had,” he said. “The smartphone has brought things into your life at early ages that my generation never had to face. Never.”

Yet he offered a path forward rooted not in strength, but in acknowledged weakness.

“When I am weak, then I am strong,” he quoted St Paul. “Your weakness is not an obstacle to God’s love, mercy, and grace. It is not. The obstacle is when you don’t bend your knee and recognise that you need a saviour.”

The Archbishop concluded with an invitation to every man present. “If you are challenged, struggling, need help, Joseph is your man,” he declared. “Consecrate yourself to him, and he will take you into the loving arms of his son, Jesus Christ.”

The Mass of Consecration was held in collaboration with the National Catholic Men’s Ministry, and attracted men’s groups from parish communities, and students representing Catholic colleges like Fatima, St Mary’s, St Benedict’s, Presentation San Fernando, and Presentation Chaguanas.