Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Joseph, often called the humble saint, because we know so little about him.

The Augustine Institute has made available Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet’s great sermon on St. Joseph, entitled “Guard what has been entrusted to you.”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), Bishop of Meaux, is celebrated for his pulpit oratory, as it is called, that is, the art of composing and delivering a sermon. Like any good Catholic priest, he often preached from memory and on subjects of more-or-less daily concern to his flock. But in 17th-century France, there was a great appetite for formal pulpit oratory, an appetite regularly satisfied by hour-long sermons for which one would send one’s footman to secure a pew the day before the Mass!

(description from the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology)