Tuesday, May 1, 2018

May 1 - St. Joseph the Worker


+ The principal feast of St Joseph is celebrated on March 19, but this second feast of Joseph the Worker was inaugurated by Pope Pius XII in 1955 to counteract a Communist holiday on May 1. The new feast replaced that of the Patronage of St Joseph, later called the Solemnity of Joseph (another secondary feast). The appropriateness of this new feast is grounded in the fact that Joseph was a carpenter by trade and trained his son Jesus as a carpenter as well.

Joseph indeed was the worker-carpenter at Nazareth who provided for the needs of Jesus and Mary; and he initiated the Son of God into human work. Therefore, on the day when a holiday in honor of workers is celebrated in many countries, Christian workers venerate him as their exemplar and protector.

There is a God-given right to work, coming from the command of God to Adam to subdue the earth and take care of it - how else could this be accomplished other than by work. Therefore, the feeling of completion that one gets from work ought not be denied or downplayed – it is very much a “sacred sweat”!

In our day and age, in the circumstances in our own country, and in so many other countries of the world, the rights and dignity of workers needs to be honored and protected – by providing jobs in the first place for all who want them and seeing to it that they have safe work environments and policies set in place to ensure their employment rights.

St. Joseph quietly and faithfully trusted God to provide what he needed as a worker/provider – and then he worked his whole life as a way to repay God for his trust in him to accomplish certain specific tasks; may we embrace our God-given tasks and assignments today – whether we are technically employed by an agency or not: for we are always in God’s employ “subduing with love” “the earth and its creatures” that he has given us to care for – all the days of our life!

St. Joseph, the Worker – pray for us! 


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