St Joseph inspires Hamish to compose a new song

Hamish MacQueen, Director of the Diocesan Youth Service, was inspired to write a song called ‘St Joseph pray for me’. He explains how it came about.

I’ve always been interested in St Joseph. My grandma was called Josephine, named after St Joseph, and when I was confirmed, I took the name Joseph as one of my Confirmation names. He inspires me for lots of reasons. 

St Joseph was compassionate – when he found Mary was pregnant with a child that wasn’t his, he would have been quite within his rights to have her stoned to death, but he didn’t. One translation of the Bible puts it as: “He always did the right thing.” He was also radically obedient to God and trusted him, taking Mary as his wife. I’m sure that can’t have been easy in the circumstances.

Then he loved Mary and Jesus, in a very practical way, working to provide for them. Finally, he must have been an amazing earthly dad to Jesus for God, Jesus’ real dad, to trust him to bring Jesus up. For me as a husband and dad myself, St Joseph really is a fantastic role model.

One evening I was thinking about these things as we started planning an assembly on St Joseph (being the year of St Joseph). I looked at a PowerPoint Presentation that the lay chaplain at Notre Dame School, Alex Savage, had put together, that seemed to capture why St Joseph inspired me so much. From that this song just came together.  I do write songs, but have never written one so quickly, so perhaps the intercession of St Joseph had a hand in it.

You can watch ‘St. Joseph Pray for me’ and other resources on St Joseph by the Ignite Team at www.youtube.com/igniteyea

Pictured above is Hamish MacQueen

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