As we celebrate the crowning of the Blessed Mother early in May, commemorate the feast of Our Lady of Fatima midway through, and close out the month memorializing the Visitation, it is indeed apropos that a secular feast — Mother’s Day — is also highlighted.

We can contemplate the mother of our Lord as we shower our own mothers with flowers, gifts, feasts and most important, the kind of love, nurturing and sensitivity that they bring to the family.

As an adult convert to the faith over three decades ago, I go to and believe we need Mary because she and Joseph significantly represent how Jesus established his Church as a loving family. Down through the centuries, there has been a community of believers united as his brothers and sisters. All are children of God, created to live and love in his likeness as a family and to help co-create new life with him.

As a Catholic Watchman, I go to Mary because she is our spiritual mother — our Lady, Seat of Wisdom — just as her righteous, courageous and faithful spouse, St. Joseph — the Pillar of Families — is our spiritual father. In a beautiful model of complementarity, we are provided the examples of faith, hope, love and leadership of a family par excellence by these first saints.

As I go to St. Joseph, the patron saint of the Watchmen, he reminds me to value the quality of my work, tasks, situations and assignments, big or small, while taking care of my own family. Especially regarding the integration of my diaconate, spousal and parental responsibilities, I am required to examine the virtues as Joseph and strive to follow his example. In this celebratory 150th year of the Patron of the Universal Church, it is quite fitting that day one of Mary’s month of May is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. As spouse of the mother of God, she was always his queen, for whom he graciously and lovingly labored.

As I offer up special moments in May with my wife and family, such as crowning and blessing a statue of our Mother, praying rosaries and novenas for the blessings and dignity of life, and chanting the Regina Caeli (through the Easter season) and the Angelus (after Pentecost), we can honor the glory of home life of the first domestic church. Mary, who by her example best leads us to Jesus, deserves all the honor a family can muster in lending devotion. I am sure St. Joseph — the zealous defender of Christ in his early and “hidden” years — would certainly agree!

As an adoptive son of God, Mary and Joseph teach me obedience and trust. How being obedient to natural and divine laws established by God represent true freedom. That true freedom doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. On the contrary, you are truly free when you do what is right. Jesus needed a family — a religious and legal Jewish family — to bring God Incarnate into the physical world, to save the world. Once Mary and Joseph experienced their own “annunciations” in the village of Nazareth, they recognized that trust in God’s plans were their lives’ only plans. They traveled through Nazareth, the hills of Judah, Bethlehem, Egypt and back to Nazareth to live a normal and quiet life as a family until Jesus’ public ministry, bringing salvation to the world.

When it comes to go-to saints for top honors, “to whom shall we go?”

Deacon Bird ministers at St. Joseph in Rosemount and All Saints in Lakeville, and assists the archdiocese’s Catholic Watchmen movement. Reach him at [email protected]. Learn about the Catholic Watchmen at archspm.org/faith-communities/men.