Saint of the Workers St Joseph

On the first of May, we fondly remember St Joseph, spouse of Holy Mother Mary, who has much to say to today’s under worker and over-worked. He put in long hard days of work and took pride in the skilled work of his hands. Joseph was happy that wonderful day when an angel’s message brought joy, while waiting for Jesus’s special birth, he designed a cradle fir for his boy.

He also knew when it was time to punch out and take the wife and boy to a festival. And despite the fact that he never climbed the corporate ladder or because of it the church holds up St Joseph as the very model of a working person. People invoke the carpenter’s name in asking God to help them ‘do the work you have asked’, and do it ‘for the good of others’.

We sometimes need help from the outside world, in the stressful work we do today. When seeking help from the outside, the workers are bound to call on their patron, the carpenter from Nazareth. Some people are out of work, looking for work. They are asking St Joseph to help them out. Others are having problems in the workplace, and so they, too, look for help from the saint. He somehow sanctifies the daily grind.

We have to emphasise on the dignity of work. Work was not above Joseph and Jesus. They were both craftsmen. It was honourable for them to do manual work. We all collaborate with the Almighty in all the work we do. We work not just for ourselves, but for others as well.

Pope John Paul II has called the sanctification of daily life. The ‘Holy Father’ sees the ‘Holy Family’ as starring in this drama of human work and divine action. Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. Mary, on her part, kept the fire running in the house. If the family of Nazareth is an example and model of human families in the order of salvation and holiness, so to, by analogy, is Jesus’s work at the side of Joseph the carpenter. Manual labour particularly receives special attention in the gospel. Human work, as exemplified by St Joseph had broad currency in the economy of salvation. At the work bench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of redemption. All of which explains why folks in business or any line of work might engage St Joseph as the middle man, so to speak, in their transactions with the maker of all things.

Work is a necessity of life, but it is never an end in itself. It is always related to God’s plan for us, and it should be carried out with detachment and dependence on the ‘Creator’.

You and I are all working people and from working families, and St Joseph, a worker himself, will look after our needs, if we only take the time to ask him, who next to Mary, our heavenly mother, is the greatest saint in heaven. Today’s fathers need him. Today’s families need him. Today’s society needs him.