‘The greatest husband and father in the history of the world did not shower his family with material things. St. Joseph gave them something of much greater value: He gave them himself. Every moment of every day, through his love, his sacrifice, his labor, he gave them himself. They knew that they always came first in his mind and in his heart, never second.”

With a stirringly beautiful Mass on Wednesday morning, John J. McCartney, a retired physician from Long Island, was laid to rest. He was the father of Dorothy McCartney — research manager at National Review and longtime researcher for the late William F. Buckley Jr. and for Firing Line — and of her brother, John, a Roman Catholic priest. Fr. McCartney presided and delivered the homily at his father’s Mass of Christian Burial, focusing not only on the well-lived life of Dr. McCartney, but also on the call of the Christian man, the fatherly vocation of all men (biological fathers or not), and what exactly life is all about.

The complete homily follows. R.I.P. — KJL

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“Ite ad Ioseph.” Those words, in Latin, come from the first reading of today’s Mass. The Church has traditionally used them to encourage her sons and daughters to seek the prayers and assistance of the greatest saint in Heaven after our Blessed Mother. “Ite ad Ioseph”: “Go to Joseph.”

Today, as a Catholic family, we come together to offer this funeral Mass for my father, John Joseph. In the course of his 93 years, he lived various vocations, each of which was given to him by God: the vocation of son, of brother, of physician, of uncle, of husband, and finally the vocation of father. We who are assembled here today each knew him by the way in which he lived one or more of these different vocations. We are grateful for the many graces God gave him, enabling him to say “yes” to these vocations, to be able live them in such a faithful, dedicated, and at times even heroic way. And so, this funeral Mass becomes an ideal moment to reflect upon the vocation of Christian fatherhood, and on the role of my father’s patron, St. Joseph, in our Catholic faith.

We think of the life of St. Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth. We think of the few stories we have of him from Sacred Scripture: While betrothed to Mary, Joseph discovers that she is to be the Mother of God; he fears he is not worthy to be her husband until he is reassured by the angel, and so takes her as his wife. Joseph is present at Bethlehem, witness to the greatest event in human history, the birth of God on earth. Later, again obeying the voice of an angel, he guards and provides for the mother and child on the dangerous yet life-saving journey to Egypt. At God’s command, he returns to Palestine when the danger is past and settles in the small village of Nazareth. Joseph is the one, according to Jewish law, who gives the child His name, Jesus. He is there in the Temple to hear the old man, Simeon, prophesy that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart (and how those words must have pierced the heart of Joseph, as well). Finally, he is present at the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple, when, along with his spouse, Mary, he hears their Son utter those mysterious and profound words: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

After this, St. Joseph, without ever speaking a word, disappears entirely from Sacred Scripture, except for a few passing references during the public ministry of our Lord, calling Him “the son of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth.”

Although no spoken word of his is recorded by the Bible, St. Joseph speaks to us very clearly indeed. He speaks to us in the faithful way he lived the vocations God gave to him: as worker, as husband, and as father.

We can know something of St. Joseph’s greatness by the importance of these vocations God called him to. The two greatest possessions of God on earth, the Blessed Virgin Mary and His own Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Father chose to place in the care of this simple, humble laborer from a rather obscure village in Galilee. The most important task in salvation history, after those of Jesus and Mary, was assigned to St. Joseph. He would be husband and father, guardian and provider, and head of the little family the world will always call “Holy.”