St. Joseph: A Father after the Father's Heart (Book Review)

 St. Joseph: A Father after the Father’s Heart, Hyderabad: Don Bosco Publishing House, 2021, Rs. 150, pp. 240.

The book is a compilation of articles from various authors writing about qualities of St. Joseph. They have used the litany of St. Joseph as an index and have put together articles on each of the invocations. All the contributors are Salesians from different parts of India but there a couple of contributors from abroad as well. The book lends itself to be a souvenir of the Year of St. Joseph that Pope Francis declared.

Let me start out by commenting on the quality of production. The paper is of good quality and so is the design and layout. It is neat and has an attractive cover. Coming to the content, it gets rather repetitive but that is understandable considering that there is so little Biblical foundation for an exposition of St. Joseph. The articles often reference Pope Francis’ letter Patris Corde and extensively utilize Pope St. John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Redemptoris Custos.

The book becomes tedious as one progresses from chapter to chapter not so much because of the lack of originality but because of the repetitive references to Scripture or the above-mentioned documents. One can sense the trepidation of the authors in expanding the pithy invocation without stepping outside the bounds of acceptability and orthodoxy. They have done a good job nevertheless and offer quite some useful food for thought. While there are some authors who have tried creative means of sharing their ideas others have gone for the regular style of essay writing. Some articles are researched as evidenced by their mention of sources while others contain purely the reflections of the author.

The book is not ground-breaking in any way. It doesn’t offer any novel insights into the person and personality of St. Joseph. What it does is apply a quality of St. Joseph to present life experience and put forward suggestions for a life resembling that of Joseph. In this way, it initiates a reflection on life and spirituality while portraying Joseph as a fitting model. In my opinion, this style would have been more effective if the whole book was written by one person that way s/he would be able to highlight the various aspects of St. Joseph while being careful of repetition. What has happened here is that each author wrote their article totally independent of each other and presumed that they had to spell out every last detail. This gave rise to multiple repetitions that become off-putting after a while. The editors could have done a better job at ensuring that such occurrences are reduced as far as possible but, in their attempt, to retain the methodology of each author, they seemed to have left the content undisturbed as well.

After having read the book, I can say that it isn’t really a memorable one. Although there are a few articles that stand out. These are noteworthy not just because of their content but also because of the way the topic was fleshed out.

The book makes for good one-time reading. It sheds some light on each of the invocations of St. Joseph’s litany and is useful for further reflection.