- Rosary and The Way
- Pilgrimage
- Shrine of Saint Joseph
Shrine of Saint Joseph
PATH 6 — SACRED PLACES CLOSER TO HOME
Sterling, New Jersey — thirty minutes from home and a world away from everything else
Pilgrimage does not always require a passport or a plane. Sometimes it is thirty minutes from your front door, down a familiar road, to a place where the world quiets down and something in you opens back up.
The Shrine of Saint Joseph in Sterling, New Jersey is one of those places for me. We visit often — sometimes for the beautiful gift shop, sometimes just to walk the grounds for a few hours when I need to be on holy ground. It is the kind of place that asks nothing of you except your presence, and gives back far more than you expected to receive.
The shrine includes a church, a rosary garden, a silent garden for sitting, and the grounds themselves — which invite a particular kind of walking that I can only call meditative. Eyes open, worldly thoughts receding, the quiet doing its work.
Shrine of Saint Joseph
THE SILENT GUARDIAN
Saint Joseph — Who Speaks Without Words
Saint Joseph does not speak in the Scriptures. Not once. The Gospels record no words from the man who raised the Son of God, who carried the infant Jesus into Egypt in the dark of night, who worked wood with his hands and taught a boy the quiet dignity of daily labor. His life is told entirely through what he did.
When the angel appeared to him in a dream instructing him to take Mary as his wife, Joseph did not question. He did not ask for signs or explanations. He simply obeyed — and his obedience sheltered the most important story ever told. That is the kind of faith that does not make noise. It just holds.
He is also the patron of a happy death — having died, tradition tells us, in the arms of Jesus and Mary. There is a comfort in that patronage that goes deeper the older you get. To ask for his intercession at the end of life is to ask for the same peace that surrounded him: loved, held, ready.
In a world full of noise, Joseph’s quiet strength and unwavering faithfulness offer a lesson that never goes out of date — trust in God’s plan, even when it asks everything of you, even when you do not fully understand it yet.
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A PERSONAL WITNESS
The Candle That Stayed Lit
Whenever possible I light a candle in remembrance of friends and loved ones who have passed. It is a simple act and a sacred one — placing a flame in front of God on behalf of someone you love and trusting that He sees it.
My father underwent a surgery he did not recover from. During that time I was making the drive from home to the hospital and back — a road that, with a stop at the Blue Army Shrine to light a candle, added up to about two hours each way. That evening the wind was blowing hard. I lit the candle anyway, not sure it would hold. My gas tank was on empty. I made it home.
The next day I stopped to relight the candle, expecting to find it out. It was still burning.
The angels were watching over me that night — over the candle, over the gas tank, over the road home. I truly believe these are sacred candles and that God watches over our intentions even when the wind is trying to put them out.
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Take the time — and light a candle for someone you love.
MEDITATIVE WALKING
Walking the Grounds
I call it meditative walking. Eyes open on the beautiful landscape, mind releasing its grip on the ordinary concerns of the day. A chance to remove myself from worldly thinking without going anywhere dramatic or far.
Sometimes when I am here there is no one else around. That solitude has its own gift — the silence of the grounds feels less like emptiness and more like presence. On other visits I have found retreats in progress, young people gathered on the grass deepening their faith, strangers becoming briefly a community in the way that only sacred spaces seem to make possible.
The shrine also has a beautiful gift shop — worth a visit on its own. We often stop there before or after walking the grounds, and it has a way of sending you home with something small that carries the quiet of the place back with you.
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A DISCOVERY
The Oratory of Saint Joseph
On one of my visits I discovered a newer building that had been added to the grounds — the Oratory of Saint Joseph. I sat inside for a while and let the room settle around me. As I sat meditating I began to notice the images on the shrine wall. Five stages of Saint Joseph’s life with Jesus and Mary, depicted there in sequence.
I stayed with them quietly. There is something about seeing a life told in images rather than words that suits Joseph particularly well — the man who never spoke in Scripture, whose story was always told through what he did rather than what he said. Looking at those five stages I understood something about him that I had not quite been able to put into words before.
A shrine can be a place where something you have known for a long time finally makes itself felt. The Oratory was that kind of room for me that day.
Sacred Places Closer to Home
You Don’t Have to Go Far
Pilgrimage begins with the willingness to show up on holy ground. These sacred places in New Jersey are close enough to visit often — and each one offers something the others do not.
Also in New Jersey
Our Lady of Mount Virgin
An outdoor Stations of the Cross garden — walking the Way of the Cross in the open air, surrounded by sacred art and natural quiet.
Visit →Also in New Jersey
St. Joseph’s by the Sea
A retreat house by the water — for silent weekends or a quiet week away, where the sound of the sea becomes part of the prayer.
Visit →Path 6
All Pilgrimages
From Medjugorje to Lourdes to a shrine thirty minutes away — pilgrimage takes whatever shape God gives it. Explore the full path here.
All Pilgrimages →