After celebrations cut short a year ago, this year’s feast represents a tribute to the ‘little miracles’ of St. Joseph, protector of the Church

DETROIT — It’s a devotion that causes traffic to stop — but after a year in which priorities were put into perspective — maybe there is something to braking for St. Joseph. 

St. Joseph Shrine, the Eastern Market parish that was elevated to an archdiocesan shrine last year by Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, hosted its annual St. Joseph Day of Prayer on Friday, March 19, the feast of St. Joseph. 

The celebration not only is a fitting way to honor the foster father of Jesus — especially during the special “Year of St. Joseph” proclaimed by Pope Francis — but a proper celebration of the shrine’s new role, which wasn’t possible last year because of the coronavirus outbreak. 

Since the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest’s arrival at the German, neo-Gothic church in 2016, the parish has become a spiritual hub for all things St. Joseph. On the feast day, faithful from across southeast Michigan come to take in a full day of Masses, music, Eucharistic benediction, confession and a public procession through Eastern Market. 

“The Institute of Christ the King was blessed to receive a great heritage of devotion to St. Joseph when it came here,” Canon Michael Stein, ICKSP, rector and pastor of St. Joseph Shrine, told Detroit Catholic. “We inherited a tradition of the St. Joseph Day of Prayer and been able to develop it and expand it over the past four-plus years here in Detroit. March 19 this year falls on a Friday, and we recommend people make that a three-day weekend.” 

The celebration has become a staple on the calendar for those with a devotion to St. Joseph, one of the many reasons the parish, formerly St. Joseph Oratory, was elevated to the status of a shrine on March 1, 2020. 

“St. Joseph Church is a place of pilgrimage for the souls of the archdiocese and beyond for a multitude of reasons,” Canon Stein said. “He’s our patron saint, the foster father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the most chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the patron of fathers, protector of families, the model of men, the guardian of chastity — for so many reason he comes to the aid of every soul.” 

Progress on historic renewal

This year’s St. Joseph Day of Prayer comes on the heels of a March 1 update on the parish’s historic renewal campaign. The parish is set to begin a $1.8 million stonework restoration project expected to be completed by March 2022. 

RAM Construction Services in Michigan, the same company that has worked on the 38-story Book Tower building in downtown Detroit and the Ford-owned Michigan Central Depot train station in Corktown, will repair or replace the exterior stonework and decorative stone finials. 

Canon Stein said the stonework is the largest restoration project undertaken by the 148-year-old church, eclipsing the $750,000 restoration of its 200-foot steeple and bell tower, which was completed in 2019.  

Funds for the project were raised in part from a $250,000 two-for-one matching grant from the National Fund for Sacred Places in recognition of the parish’s recent restoration efforts, spiritual growth and revival of the church since the Institute’s arrival. 

“This project will bring the sturdiness and beauty of the exterior of the church back to its original form,” Canon Stein said. “It’s also a grave necessity; it’s been a great cause of water penetration that has led to a buildup of mold that has pushed out stones and caused shifting of the structure of the interior of the church.” 

Parish revival stems from Institute’s arrival

Canon Stein says the restoration of the church’s physical stones is only possible with a restoration of the parish’s spiritual stones — its parishioners — who have generously contributed after receiving daily access to the sacraments and spiritual nourishment through the Institute’s charism of “preaching truth with charity.” 

St. Joseph parishioner Daniel Egan has had a devotion to the traditional Latin Mass — which the Institute exclusively celebrates — and was excited when Archbishop Vigneron announced the Institute would take over St. Joseph in 2016 as a breakaway parish from the three-site Mother of Divine Mercy Parish. 

“This church was on the chopping block,” Egan said of the parish’s fortunes at the time. “It had less attendance than St. Josaphat or Sweetest Heart of Mary (Mother of Divine Mercy’s other sites). But with the Institute coming in, they had a great track record of taking over beautiful churches in historic cities, applying timeless principles and creating good, thriving parishes.

“I joke with my friends, ‘Give me that old-time religion,’” Egan added. 

The revival of liturgical life, which now features three Sunday Masses, two weekday Masses and a 12 p.m. Mass and perpetual novena to St. Joseph on Wednesdays, led to the parish’s elevation as a shrine just four years later. 

“The Church defines shrines as places where the sacraments, sacramental life and graces and devotions are more abundantly supplied,” Egan said. “It’s a place where more than the bare minimum standard of liturgical life is being met. The Institute has doubled down, making all these graces readily available, not only to benefit parishioners like myself, but to benefit the entire region.” 

Devotion amidst a pandemic

Last year’s St. Joseph’s Day was meant to be a celebratory day, with Archbishop Vigneron formally issuing the declaration of the church as a shrine before joining the community in a procession with a statue and relic of St. Joseph to Eastern Market. 

But March 2020 had other plans, and with COVID-19 causing a cancellation of public Masses and events across the archdiocese, the formal honor had to wait. 

But that didn’t stop the parish from fulfilling its new sacred duties. 

“With an army of volunteers and online signup sheets, we were able to keep a presence in the church, respecting the limitations, and our church became a place of perpetual adoration in the first couple months of lockdown,” Canon Stein said. “We were immediately able to fulfill our vocation of being a shrine in the heart of this unforeseen restriction, becoming a hub of prayer for the entire archdiocese.” 

The canons of St. Joseph Shrine went to work, livestreaming liturgies and opening the church for private prayer and confessions — including moments when the neighboring St. Bonaventure Monastery and Solanus Casey Center had to deal with their own COVID-19 outbreaks, so the shrine became a place where confessions were heard throughout the day. 

“I was absolutely edified how the canons reacted to COVID-19,” Egan said. “It’s so hard to believe how far we’ve come in 12 months. It’s been one of the most challenging years in our lifetime — a once-in-a-century pandemic — yet the Institute never, never took its eyes off the prize. They are priests of Christ who exist for the salvation of souls.” 

Such devotion, along with faith formation opportunities such as catechism courses for youngsters and 20-minute “Lessons in Liturgy” for adults after Masses, has fostered a sense of community that has thrived — and grown — even during the pandemic. 

“The whole charism of the Institute is showing beauty in all things,” said Maria Kash, a St. Joseph parishioner since 2017. 

“It’s not just the beauty of the Mass; it’s the beauty of their charisms, the beauty of the community, the beauty of the church’s architecture. They tie everything together,” Kash added. “I think for many of us, especially the younger generation, we never heard it explained that way — how our faith ties so much of our lives together.”

Celebrating a Year of St. Joseph 

On Dec. 8, 2020, Pope Francis proclaimed the coming year would be celebrated as the “Year of St. Joseph” in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Pope Pius IX declaring St. Joseph the patron of the universal Church. 

It was that same year, in 1870, when the foundation for the current St. Joseph Shrine church was laid. 

Today, the shrine ends every Mass with a prayer to St. Joseph written by St. Francis de Sales, one of the patrons of the Institute of Christ the King. In addition to the March 19 feast this year, the parish also is celebrating a special Mass for St. Joseph on the 19th of every month. 

“In the last few years, St. Joseph has really come into focus in his importance in the Catholic faith,” Kash said. “St. Joseph had kind of fallen by the wayside, but now we have people consecrating themselves to St. Joseph, coming to the shrine. I think we have more people looking to St. Joseph as a father figure, a pillar of families.” 

More than 5,200 Catholics in the Archdiocese of Detroit signed up to begin a 33-day consecration to St. Joseph — based on the book by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC — on Feb. 15. St. Joseph Shrine is in the midst of its own novena, both of which are scheduled to conclude on St. Joseph’s feast day, March 19. 

Consequently, those interested can begin another 33-day consecration to St. Joseph on March 28 and finish on May 1, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. An additional 1,400 people have signed up for the consecration since Feb. 15. 

“Just as we can consecrate ourselves to Our Lord and his Sacred Heart, giving ourselves entirely to his divine care, we can also consecrate ourselves to Our Lady, and in the next degree below, to St. Joseph,” Canon Stein said. “God the Father entrusted the care of His Divine Son to the most just, chaste man, St. Joseph. Being sons and daughters of the church Christ founded, we can entrust ourselves to his spiritual fatherhood, to his paternal care.” 

Entrusting the future to St. Joseph

Beyond encouraging personal consecrations, the parish is moving forward with plans to expand its presence in the community. Restoration of the 200-foot steeple and improvements to the stonework have garnered plenty of media reports, and the parish’s Oktoberfest has become the prime celebration of German-American culture in the city of Detroit. 

But even more outreach is in the works.  

“We’re planning on painting a mural on the Dequindre Cut, right below St. Joseph Shrine, in honor of St. Joseph and the Year of St. Joseph,” Egan said. “As crazy as the last 12 months have been with the pandemic, it’s a reminder that we have St. Joseph on our side — not just our parish, but across the universal Church. And these storms shall pass.” 

While the parish’s first year as a shrine wasn’t what Canon Stein and the clergy had in mind — canceling Masses, changing liturgical schedules and adapting on the fly — it’s what God allowed. And even amidst the turmoil, it’s still been a year of grace, he said. 

“We have been firsthand witnesses every day to the little miracles of the intercession of St. Joseph,” Canon Stein said. “We are not meant to solve every problem. We’re not superheroes. But we can faithfully and firmly place certain matters beyond our capacities in the powerful hands of St. Joseph, not only as an act of humility, but an act of faith and confidence. 

“St. Joseph was called to protect the Holy Family, called by God to care for His Son on earth when he was at his most vulnerable,” Canon Stein added. “St. Joseph is here to be that guardian, that protector when we are vulnerable. Through all the trials and tribulations, we fly to St. Joseph as our guardian and protector, because he was chosen to be the guardian and protector of Our Mother, of Our Lord. So in turn, he becomes our guardian and protector.”  

Feast of St. Joseph

For a schedule and information about St. Joseph Shrine’s St. Joseph Day of Prayer on Friday, March 19, visit https://institute-christ-king.org/detroit/.