Understanding Our Work Through Jesus' Work

Having understood our work through God's work, we now switch our attention to Jesus. Many of us know that Our Lord spent the first 30 years of His life in Nazareth. There He grew up under the watchful eyes of His mother Mary and foster father Joseph. We likely also know that Jesus learned to work assisting Joseph. After Joseph died, Jesus "took over," so to speak, the family business. Now we'll try to deepen our understanding of our work by looking more closely at Jesus work. Our guide, once again, will be Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski.

We learn that, in addition to the example of Joseph, Jesus also looked to His Heavenly Father, Who, as we've seen, was and is a hard worker. Do you remember when Mary and Joseph had to go looking for Jesus during one of their journeys to the Temple in Jerusalem? When they expressed dismay at His having caused such worry when He parted from them for a few days, Our Lord said: "How is it that you sought me? Did you not know, that I must be about my father' s business?" (Luke 2:49)

As for those 30 years or so of what we call Our Lord's "hidden life" in Nazareth, no detail is provided in the Gospels. But Cardinal Wyszynski points out that:

Public opinion calls Christ an artisan and the son of an artisan...following the example of His foster-father, He practiced His trade and small farming, too. For it was the custom in the Holy Land of those days for every small artisan to supplement his income by cultivating a small plot of ground from which he derived the most basic means of life. 

We call farming to feed yourself "subsistence" farming. While most of us are familiar with our Lord's work in the shop with Joseph, I had never heard about this aspect of Our Lord's work. It throws a whole new light on His intimate knowledge of the land and those who work it. Think, for example, of the detail in the Parable of the Sower; or His references to the mustard seed and the fig tree, to pruning, dunging, and grafting vines. Our Lord knew what He was talking about not only because He was God, but also because He was a man who worked the land Himself.

These Gospel parables are too close to real life to have come from the lips of a man who had not had direct experience of their subject. Spending all His time among people at work, Jesus had a thorough knowledge of it and a great respect for it.

The importance of the nature of Our Lord's work to those of us who work cannot be exaggerated. We tend to gloss over Our Lord's "hidden" life. Perhaps we give a cursory acknowledgement to His work as a cabinet maker and carpenter. But now think carefully: His work wasn't some game, something He did on the side. He earned a living with both His work in the shop and His farming the land so that He and His dear mother could eat, especially after Joseph died and left Him as head of household. His experience of work was therefore no different than our own. He wasn't an actor going through the motions. He had to work, just as most of us have to work. Cardinal Wyszynski notes:

For years there has been talk of creating a feast of Christ the Worker. There would be nothing artificial or exaggerated in this. On the contrary, nothing could be nearer the reality. Such a feast would only honor that great labor which Christ, by His example, taught people to work.

With this background, you likely will better understand how and why Our Lord chose working men for His companions when He began His public life. He Himself was one of them. He knew the way they lived, the way they thought because He lived and though just as they did by facing the same daily challenges of work. And so next time we'll look at those workers we call the Apostles.