Sancti Ioseph Opificis

LESSON: St. Joseph the Worker

During Our Blessed Lord’s public ministry, He returned to His home town of Nazareth. Even though He already enjoyed great renown throughout the country for His preaching and teaching, healings and other miraculous works, in His home town He is still known more by His family.

For any of us who have moved away from our home towns, we have probably experienced the same thing, no matter what direction our life has taken us, our parents’ friends and neighbours still know us by our family more than anything.

In Our Lord’s case, the townspeople know Him as the carpenter’s son, which means that St. Joseph’s was know to his friends and neighbours by his trade. It is often pointed out that the greatest saint ever to have lived (apart from Our Blessed Mother) was not a priest, a prophet, or a king, he was a husband, a father, and a labourer.

The feast that we celebrate today, holds up St. Joseph as the model for us in our work, and is a reminder to us that work, in the Christian understanding, should be something holy and good. Of course, we can fall into the trap of thinking of work only as a burden, as something to be endured, and certainly there is an element of toil associated with work of any kind.

Pope St. John Paul II describes it this way in his encyclical Laborem Exercens:

Laborem Exercens 27. Human Work in the Light of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ

All work, whether manual or intellectual, is inevitably linked with toil. The Book of Genesis expresses it in a truly penetrating manner: the original blessing of work contained in the very mystery of creation and connected with man’s elevation as the image of God is contrasted with the curse that sin brought with it: “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life”. This toil connected with work marks the way of human life on earth and constitutes an announcement of death: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken”

Nevertheless, through Christ work has been redeemed.

ILLUSTRATION: Christ redeems human work

Our Lord was on this earth for thirty-three years, but only three of those were spent on His public ministry. The majority of His time on earth was spent working, alongside St. Joseph as a carpenter, and no doubt so even after St. Joseph’s death. So just as Christ redeems all things, he redeems work, and brings it back to its original meaning.

Again, St. John Paul says:

Laborem Exercens 26. Christ, the Man of Work

For Jesus not only proclaimed but first and foremost fulfilled by his deeds the “gospel”, the word of eternal Wisdom, that had been entrusted to him. Therefore this was also “the gospel of work”, because he who proclaimed it was himself a man of work, a craftsman like Joseph of Nazareth.

Laborem Exercens 26. Christ, the Man of Work

It can indeed be said that he looks with love upon human work and the different forms that it takes, seeing in each one of these forms a particular facet of man’s likeness with God, the Creator and Father.

In the toil of work, we find a small part of the Cross, and if we willingly accept it, then we also share in the work of redemption.

The original meaning of human work was to share in the work and activity of the Creator, because man is unique in his likeness to God, man should imitate God in His work.

Again, turning to St. John Paul we read:

Laborem Exercens 25. Work as a Sharing in the Activity of the Creator

The knowledge that by means of work man shares in the work of creation constitutes the most profound motive for undertaking it in various sectors. “The faithful, therefore”, we read in the Constitution Lumen Gentium, “must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation, and its orientation to the praise of God. Even by their secular activity they must assist one another to live holier lives. In this way the world will be permeated by the spirit of Christ and more effectively achieve its purpose in justice, charity and peace

Work, then, is not something that we should endure as a burden, but something that we should welcome as a holy activity.

APPLICATION: Sanctifying our work

Most of us do not have the time to spend long hours with Our Lord in prayer. We will spend much of our day at our occupation, performing our day’s work. We need to be mindful then, that in our daily work, we are sharing in the creative work of God, and the redeeming work of Christ. This means that we need to sanctify our work, be sanctified by our work, and sanctify others through our work.

The first aspect, sanctifying one’s work, means making our work holy by doing it for love of God, with the greatest possible human perfection, and offering it to God in union with Christ, if we do this well, then it provides a foundation for the other two aspects.

The second aspect, sanctifying oneself in one’s work, is, in a certain sense, the result of the first. A person who tries to sanctify his or her work necessarily becomes holy. That is to say, they allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify them, identifying them ever more closely with Christ. Of course, this means that we also must have recourse to many other means to become identified with Christ: prayer, sacraments and means of formation through which Christian virtues are developed.

With the third aspect, sanctifying through one’s work, something similar happens. Undoubtedly it can be deemed to be a result of the other two, for by sanctifying one’s work and becoming identified with Christ, Christians necessarily produce fruit; they sanctify others through their work, in keeping with our Lord’s words: He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

The Church has given us St. Joseph as the model worker, the model even for Our Lord who spent most of His years here on earth performing His daily work in the carpenter’s shop along side His earthly father. Let us look to St. Joseph today and every day as a reminder to us to perform our work well, for the glory of God, in union with Christ as a way of sanctifying ourselves and the whole world.