T he Memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker has been celebrated liturgically since 1955. On this day the Church, inspired by Saint Joseph’s example and under his patronage, commemorates in a special way the human and supernatural value of work. All work is collaboration in God’s own work of creation, and, through Jesus Christ, in accordance with our love for God and for our fellow men and women, it can become true prayer and apostolate.

Work is a gift from God.

The Church, in presenting Saint Joseph to us today as a model, is not endorsing just one particular form of work, manual labor, but is testifying to the dignity and value of all honest human occupations. In the first reading at Mass (Gen 1:26; 2:3) we read the Genesis account of man’s participation in the work of Creation. Sacred Scripture also tells us that God placed man in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it (Gen 2:15).

From the beginning of man’s existence, work is for him a command of nature, a feature of his condition as created being, an expression of his dignity, and a means whereby he co-operates in the great overall task of divine Providence. All that original sin did was to change the form of this co-operation, as we also read in the Book of Genesis: Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life... In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread (Gen 3:17.19).

A fter the fall of our first parents, what had been intended originally as something pleasant and agreeable has since become difficult, and very often exhausting; but there has been no change in the relationship of man’s work to his Creator and its role in the redemption of mankind. The conditions attaching to work cause some people to look upon it as punishment, or, alternatively because of the malice of the human heart estranged from God, as a mere form of merchandise or an ‘instrument of oppression’, to such an extent that on occasions it is difficult to appreciate its very real grandeur and dignity. Others see work exclusively in terms of a means for making money, or as an expression of selfish personal affirmation, and fail to realize the value of work in itself as something divine, whereby man collaborates with God and offers his Creator something in which all his natural and supernatural virtues come into play.

For many centuries manual work was looked down on as no more than a way of earning a living, and was considered to be something basically worthless or degrading. Nowadays materialistic societies tend to classify people according to ‘how much they make’ and to their ability to obtain a greater level of material well-being at more or less any cost. It is time for us Christians to shout from the rooftops that work is a gift from God and that it makes no sense to classify men differently, according to their occupation, as if some jobs were nobler or of less significance than others.

Work, all work, bears witness to the dignity of man to his dominion over creation. It is an opportunity to develop one’s personality. It is a bond of union with others, the way to support one’s family, a means of contributing to the improvement of the society in which we live and to the progress of all humanity (J. Escrivá, Christ is passing by, 47).Saint Joseph was a tradesman who worked for his living, and today’s feast proposes him to us as a model and patron (John Paul II, Redemptoris custos, 15 August 1989, 22).

We should have frequent recourse to him to ensure that the work we do never loses its innate dignity or value, for it is not uncommon that, when God is forgotten, from the factory dead matter goes out improved, whereas the men them are corrupted and degraded (Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 15 May 1931, 135). Our work, with Saint Joseph’s help, ought to leave our hands as a prayerful and pleasing offering to God. # # #

With permission from Scepter UK. Short excerpt from IN CONVERSATION WITH GOD by Francis Fernandez.

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