St. Joseph the Worker

The feast of St. Joseph the Worker, May 1st, fell on a Sunday this year, so it didn't get quite the recognition it might if it fell on a week day. But we Catholic men at work shouldn't let the day escape unnoticed. Here's a rich meditation on this wonderful feast dedicated to all of us who labor. It was written by a Benedictine abbot, now deceased. I found it a few years back and fortunately saved it, since you can't find it today. I think it captures all that we try to communicate in our posts.

      Few Catholics realize the tremendous spiritual value of a life of ordinary unimportant work lived by one who offers it to God as a prayer. This is one of the greatest lessons we should learn from St. Joseph, the humble and holy worker of Nazareth. He, and his Divine Foster-Son, Jesus Christ, not only worked, but were of the working class. They lived an ordinary, modest, unassuming life of monotonous poverty and labor as poor village carpenters. They did not putter around the shop as some sort of hobby, or as weekend-warriors. They had to work hard, real hard, earning their bread by the sweat of their brow. It was not as though they could just sit back and have everything done for them by the angels, or by the continual working of miracles. They had to do all the work themselves, or else the work would never have gotten done. They, like us, had to struggle to make ends meet, or else there would never have been “meat” for the table, and they would have starved. The Holy Family did not seek to escape the responsibilities of life, or to take it easy and have everything go their way. Their “meat” was to do the will of the Father, and His will for them was to work and to endure the million-and-one humdrum burdens of life. But because they did all, and suffered all, out of love for God and out of abandonment to His will, they turned their work into worship, their lives into a prayer. And so can we. In his well-known book, The Spiritual Life, Fr. Tanquerey writes: “As St. Thomas justly remarks, we pray not only when we explicitly make a request to Almighty God, but whenever we turn our hearts to Him or direct any act of ours towards Him; so much so, indeed, that our life becomes a continual prayer when our activities are constantly directed towards God. ‘Man prays whenever he so acts in thought, word, and deed as to tend towards God; hence, life is a constant prayer if wholly directed towards God.’” All we have to do to turn our work, our daily duties, into a prayer is to make the simple intention of offering it all to God. It is, however, a good idea to renew this offering throughout the day, and for this all that is needed is the simple prayer, “All for You, dear Jesus,” or something similar. Or, we can renew this offering by the simple turning of our mind and heart towards Him, remembering His presence, and making even just a wordless act of love for Him and abandonment to His will.
 
      The humble life of work of St. Joseph and of our Lord teaches us that it is not what kind of job we have in life that matters – whether it is one of social importance or one that is humble and unnoticed – but how well we do it for God. It is not fame, fortune, or material success that matters in life, but whether we have used our work for the purification and sanctification of our soul. By remaining patient, meek, humble, and ever confident in God’s loving Providence, we can use our work, however hard and discouraging it may often be, as a means to draw ever closer to God. Our life, like the life of the Holy Family at Nazareth, may be homely, full of simple everyday duties, unnoticed, colorless even, yet it too can veil an intense interior life of divine worship and love of God. And it is this which will draw down grace and blessing upon ourselves, our loved ones, and even the whole world.