The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1958-12-05
JOSEPH BREIG-
St. Joseph
Finds A Home

/ suppose the trouble was that st. Joseph, being
a carpenter, and a good one, shuddered at the thought
of my making a shrine in his honor.
Oh, | have no doubt that he thought kindly of me
after | preached the idea to him through the veil that
lies between earth and heaven.
Probably he remarked to Jesus and Mary in one
of their family gatherings that / deserved some kind
Of mark on the credit side for good intentions. But he
seems to have put down his foot against the shrine
itself.
After all, it is well bruited about in celestial
circles that there is no telling what monstroslty Will
emerge from a meeting of hammer, nails, saw and
HOWEVER tina MAY BE. the fact is that the
years fell from the past like leaves from a calendar.
and the shrine remained only a promise.
Once / did actually succeed in getting a small
statue glued somehow to a log under a rose trelllS
in the back yard; but the rains came, and the WINDS
blew, and you know what happens TO houses nunI on
sand and to Shrines constructed according to the for
mulaS of a man who is totally incompetent to DO any
thing except put words down on paper, one after
another.
ticable; l compromised by putting a statue OF the
~woodworker of Nazareth on the mantel In the llv-
ing room, and explaining that | would try to make It
up by writing something now and then about the hon-
ness with which he embraced the life of sacrifice to
which he was called, and about the fact that no nus
band and father ever really grasps the nopllty OF
being a father and husband until ne has thought long
and hard upon the example of this perfect husband
father who, physically, was neither, but spiritually
THAT SEEMED TO BE all right; it would do, l
told myself. And that was the way it was for another
year or two, until one day the young husband and
father next door, who is not a Catholic but you would
boast about him being one If he were, came In one
day with a huge glass globe-or rather hali-gloDe-
and invited me to guess what in the world 1t was.
/ said it must have fallen from a flying saucer
or some kind of space craft, but finally he let me IN
on the secret-it had been the cover OF one OF those
big arc lamps which used to light the streets OF our
cities. It had been used in an exhibition, and then
they were going to throw it away, so he latched on TO
HE BROUGHT 1T into our house because he and
his wife had said to each other that it would look
dandy with one of our madonna statues inside, anu
maybe a tiny light for illumination.
No final conclusion was reached at the moment,
and | took it that the subject must have been drop
ped, at least for the time being. But one evening !
came in from giving a talk somewhere, and sat down
to watch a western on TV, and just when the hero
was up to his eyes in trouble, Linda (she's Sans
wife. and Sam is the neighbor I've been talking about
pOked her head in and asked could go over to their
house right away.
so OF COURSE | thought something had happen
ed to one of their children, and | went ganoplng
next door. / was directed into the basement, and
there were Sam and my wife, and Linda right behind
me, and Sam had cadged a huge log when the fellow
across the street cut down a tree, and he had fitted
my statue of st. Joseph on the log, under the glass
hemisphere, with a concealed light shining on it, and
I'm telling you, it was just what the doctor ordered.
It is in place in our back yard now. with wires
running underground, and all we need do is turn a
switch, and there is our Illuminated st. Joseph shrine,
and the rains can come, and the winds blow, but this
is no house built on sand. And Sam is going to rig
Lady will be lighted up, too; and that's the story.
Joseph has his shrine, and his carpenters soul IS at
peace with it, which it could hardly have been If /
had muddled the thing through.